The UK has announced that they will lead the charge in “a new age of accountability” for social media. Earlier this week, Digital secretary Oliver Dowden and Home Secretary Priti Patel published the UK government’s highly anticipated plan for online safety legislation. The new laws set out a requirement for companies to “remove and limit the spread of illegal content,” including child sexual abuse and terrorist material.
These new “online harms” proposals have been borne from over 18 months of consultation; they come at a time where Silicon Valley face both hostility in Brussels and anti-trust suits in the US.
Ofcom has been given the green light to enforce penalties for tech companies of up to £18m, or up to 10% of global turnover, depending on which is higher. To put this into perspective, 10% of Facebook’s last year revenues is equal to $7.9bn. Ofcom also possess the power to block services that do not comply and impose <u>individual</u> criminal sanctions on senior managers who repeat offend.
The online safety bill will segment tech platforms by reach / type of service and assign varying degrees of duty of care requirements accordingly. At the top end of the scale will be the blue-chip social media companies; which is expected to include the likes of Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Private messaging and dating applications are likely to be assigned lower requirements and are seen as a lower burden.
In response to the bill, reported by the FT:
Twitter said: “We support regulation that is forward-thinking, understanding that a one-size-fits-all approach fails to consider the diversity of our online environment.”
YouTube said online safety was its “top priority”, with more than 10,000 content moderators working across sister company Google.
Oliver Dowden, UK culture secretary states that “We are entering a new age of accountability for tech to protect children and vulnerable users.” On the back of these regulations, this could certainly be the case, and the UK may kicked the snowball off the mountain top.
Despite the bill being passed, there remains a number of naysayers who believe the bill threatens competition. Among them, Dom Hallas, executive director at the Coalition for a Digital Economy, who represents tech start-ups warns:
“These plans risk being a confusing minefield that will have a disproportionate impact on competitors and benefit big companies with the resources to comply,”
Many forward-thinking tech teams have taken the the recent changes as an opportunity to improve their content policies and prepare their product for the future. If you happen to be one of these team members and looking to raise capital or for an exit, we have worked with some of the industry-leading players and would be keen to hear about your ambitions.
“These plans risk being a confusing minefield that will have a disproportionate impact on competitors and benefit big companies with the resources to comply,”
