By Online safety bill to make UK the safest place to browse
An updated proposal on an internet safety bill will make the UK the safest place to browse across the internet, the government says.
New laws will require social media platforms and tech firms to prevent its users from being exposed to ‘harmful’ content.
The Online Safety Bill has been developed across five years which will allow communications regulator, Ofcom to issue fines or even block sites who fail to comply with the bill.
Ofom will now have the power to hold executives “criminally liable” if they do not comply with their “information requests”
According to Sky News, managers will also be criminally liable for destroying evidence, giving false information, failing to attend Ofcom interviews or obstructing regulators if they enter their offices.
The most popular social media firms must complete risk assessments on a multitude of harmful content that ‘could’ appear on their platforms, and how they plan to eradicate them.
It is understood that “legal but harmful” materials will be confirmed by the government in a secondary legislation.
A new addition to the bill will require firms to report child sexual abuse to the National Crime Agency.
The announcement follows concerns that the previous proposal was not “strong enough”
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said tech firms were not being held accountable for abuse, harm and criminal behavior that plagued their sites.
“If we fail to act, we risk sacrificing the wellbeing and innocence of countless generations of children to the power of unchecked algorithms”, she said.
“Since taking on the job I have listened to people in politics, wider society and industry and strengthened the Bill, so that we can achieve our central aim: to make the UK the safest place to go online”, the Culture Secretary added.
Some campaigners have suggested targeting “legal but harmful” content could damage free speech.
Jim Killock, head of the Open Rights Ground said:
“Failure to remove it will ban Brits from doing normal things like making jokes, seeking help and engaging in healthy debate online”
“There are now lots of new and unworkable ideas tacked on at the last minute, making it a monstrous melange of fit to fail duties that will make minority groups less safe online”, he added.
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