Tech firms will have legal duty of care
The Online Safety Bill is expected to make its final passage through parliament later this year but regulation was first promised by the UK Government in 2018.
The new legislation is wideranging and represents a significant shift in policy to a more interventionist approach.
It means tech companies will have a legal duty of care for young users and must assess their products for child abuse risks. They will need to put measures in place to protect children and Ofcom will be given powers to ask messaging services to monitor users.
The new legislation means senior tech bosses will be held criminally liable for significant failures that put children at risk.
Girls will be given specific protections and companies will be forced to crack down on so-called tribute pages and “breadcrumbing”.
These use legal but often stolen images of children to form networks of offenders.
Sites will also have to consider how child groomers work across various social media apps and games so they can work together to stop abuse spreading across different platforms.
Some messaging services, such as WhatsApp and Signal, have urged ministers to rethink the plans. They fear the legislation could undermine end-to-end encryption – a way of ensuring a message can only be read by the sender and the recipient.
Currently, even the companies operating the apps cannot unscramble messages.
A leading technology law expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned the Online Safety Bill represents a “seismic” shift in the way content is regulated online.
He said: “Although you have the regulation of content for specific reasons, like privacy, this is a much more far-reaching thing.
“It’s going to regulate all sorts of online content for the first time – and it’s going to involve a move away from a previous regime known as notice and take down.
“That’s where if someone had a concern about something on a platform, the provider could take a look at it and decide whether to remove it.
“The Online Safety Bill will involve platforms taking proactive steps to remove content themselves rather than waiting for people to complain about it, which is really a very significant shift.”