UK online safety bill
Copyright infringement is not intended
Context: The UK government has introduced the Online Safety Bill in the British Parliament.
What are the key proposals of the bill?
- It proposes that executives of social media platforms whose companies fail to cooperate with the Ofcom’s information requests can now face prosecution or jail time within two months of the bill becoming law.
- These executives could be held criminally liable for destroying evidence, failing to attend or providing false information in interviews with Ofcom, and for obstructing the regulator when it enters company offices.
- Ofcom will also have the power to fine companies failing to comply with the laws up to 10 per cent of their annual global turnover, force them to improve their practices and block non-compliant sites.
- Encrypted private messaging services will have to use “accredited technology” to identify child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) content, and swiftly take down that content.
- Major service providers will also need to make clear in their terms of service what legal content is acceptable on their sites, and provide user-friendly ways to complain when things go wrong.
- For the first time, users will have the right to appeal if they feel their post has been taken down unfairly.
- News content will be completely exempt from any regulation under the Bill.
- Social media platforms will only be required to tackle ‘legal but harmful’ content, such as exposure to self-harm, harassment and eating disorders, set by the government and approved by Parliament.
Are there any concerns around the proposed law?
- Threat to freedom of speech and dilution of security offered by encrypted platforms.
- Bill’s ability to allow unchecked political speech to flourish on social media platforms
- Provides extraordinary discretion to the Secretary of State and Ofcom to design ‘codes of conduct’ that will define ‘legal but harmful’ content and impose additional requirements such as age verification and undermine end-to-end encryption.
- The bill could encourage “state sanctioned censorship of legal content”.
UK bill similarities with recent legislation in India around the regulation of social media intermediaries:
- Under the new IT Rules amendments, messaging services with more than 5 million users in India like WhatsApp and Signal need to enable the identification of the first originator of a particular message.
- India’s IT Rules require companies like Meta, Twitter, WhatsApp etc. to appoint a chief compliance officer to ensure that their platforms are compliant with the law.
- Chief compliance officer can be held liable in “any proceedings” related to third-party content on the platform.
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