Online Safety Bill

Online Safety Bill

The purpose of the Bill is to:

● Deliver the manifesto commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online by improving protections for users, especially children, whilst protecting freedom of expression.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

● Preventing online fraud and scams by requiring large social media platforms and search engines to prevent the hosting or publication of fraudulent paid-for advertising.

● Tackling the most serious illegal content, including child sexual exploitation and abuse.

● Ensuring communication offences reflect the modern world, with updated laws to tackle threatening communication online as well as criminalising cyberflashing.

● Safeguarding freedom of expression. Tech companies will no longer be able to arbitrarily remove content. If users feel like they have been treated unfairly, they will have the right to appeal. And journalistic and democratically-important content will also be protected from arbitrary removal.

● Restoring public trust by making companies responsible for their users’ safety online, whilst supporting a thriving and fast-growing digital sector.

The main elements of the Bill are:

● Introducing a duty of care on online companies, making them responsible for protecting users and tackling illegal content. This will create safeguards and standards so that users know when and how companies are using tools to identify illegal content and to stop harmful material being viewed by children.

● Empowering users by ensuring the largest platforms give users tools to exercise greater control over the types of people and content they interact with.

● Protections for democratic and journalistic content. The Bill sets a higher bar for the removal of content that contributes to democratic political debate, and all

‘recognised news publishers’ will be exempt from the Bill’s safety duties (for both children and adults).

● Requiring providers who publish pornographic content on their services to prevent children from accessing that content, and for the largest platforms to put

in place proportionate systems and processes to prevent fraudulent adverts being published or hosted on their service.

● Ensuring the big social media companies keep their promises to users by enforcing their terms and conditions consistently. Requiring platforms to have effective and accessible user reporting and redress mechanisms to report concerns about harmful content, and challenge infringement of rights (such as wrongful takedown).

● Designating Ofcom as the independent online safety regulator and giving it robust enforcement powers to uphold the regulation. This will include fines of up to £18 million or ten per cent of qualifying annual global turnover – whichever is greater – as well as business disruption measures, making them less commercially viable in the UK. Senior managers of tech firms can be held criminally liable if they fail to comply with information requests from the regulator.

Territorial extent and application

● The Bill will extend and apply across the UK.

Key facts

● In 2020, adult internet users in the UK spent an average of three hours and 37 minutes online each day, up by nine minutes compared to 2019. However, over 80 per cent of UK adults expressed a concern about going online in 2020.

● In a month-long period during 2020, the Internet Watch Foundation and its partners blocked at least 8.8 million attempts by UK internet users to access child sexual abuse material online.

● During COVID-19 lockdowns, research by YouGov showed that 47 per cent of children and teens had seen content they would rather avoid, leaving them feeling uncomfortable (29 per cent), scared (23 per cent), and confused (19 per cent). One in seven (13 per cent) were exposed to harmful content on a daily basis.