Iain Stewart MP has welcomed new internet safety laws that will shield children and protect free speech online, thanks to improvements proposed by the Conservative Government to the Online Safety Bill.
The changes will offer users a ‘triple shield’ of protection when online: social media firms will be legally required to remove illegal content, take down material in breach of their own terms of service, and provide adults with greater choice over the content they see and engage with.
The Conservative Government’s improved the Online Safety Bill will make sure that tech firms are accountable to their users, and empower adults to make more informed choices about the platforms they use.
The Online Safety Bill will also create a new criminal offence of assisting or encouraging self-harm online, and will give adults greater control over online posts they may not wish to see, such as the glorification of eating disorders, racism, anti-semitism, or misogyny.
Such content might not meet the criminal threshold and so internet companies will have to offer adults tools to help them avoid it. These could include human moderation, blocking content flagged by other users or sensitivity and warning screens.
Firms will be made to show how they enforce their user age limits, to stop children circumventing authentication methods, and they will have to publish details of when the regulator Ofcom has taken action against them.
The changes to the Online Safety Bill have been welcomed by the Children’s Commissioner For England, Dame Rachel de Souza; alongside charity Kick it Out, which opposes racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in football; Mumsnet; the Jewish Community Safety Trust; and the Antisemitism Policy Trust.
The Conservative Government is boosting protections for women and girls online by requiring platforms to take proactive steps, including allowing users to manage who can interact with them or their content.
New duties on tech companies will strengthen the Bill’s protection of free speech by preventing social media giants from removing or restricting user content, or suspending or banning users, where their content does not breach either their terms of service or the law.