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The Bill will allow UK regulators to hold top tech executives ‘personally responsible’ for keeping children safe on their platforms.
In eleventh-hour amendments to the Online Safety Bill, UK lawmakers have bolstered protections for children by setting higher standards of age verification for access to porn websites.
As it passes through the UK House of Lords today, the latest updates to the Online Safety Bill will hold services that publish or allow pornography on their sites to “a new higher standard” on the age verification and estimation tools they use.
Content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders will also be restricted and regulators will hold top tech executives “personally responsible” for keeping children safe on their platforms, the government said in a statement today (30 June).
“This government will not allow the lives of our children to be put at stake whenever they go online, whether that is through facing abuse or viewing harmful content that could go on to have a devastating impact on their lives,” said UK technology minister Paul Scully.
“To prevent any further tragedy and build a better future for our children, we are acting robustly and with urgency to make the Online Safety Bill the global standard for protecting our children.”
The changes will also help to address difficulties that coroners and bereaved parents have experienced when trying to access their loved ones’ social media data, by enabling Ofcom to obtain information on a child’s social media use if it is requested by a coroner.
The UK’s communications regulator is set to get a spate of new powers through the latest legislations.
Earlier this week, for instance, Ofcom was given the power to direct private companies to deploy certain technologies that bypass encryption – which ensures messages can only be read by the sender and receiver – and scan for child sex abuse material (CSAM) on phones.
First drafted in 2021, the Online Safety Bill wants to crack down on the possession and sharing of CSAM on popular privacy-focused messaging apps such as iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal.
Apple, WhatsApp and Signal, along with a host of privacy rights groups, have taken a stand against the provision that they believe will compromise end-to-end encryption and violate their users’ privacy.
“End-to-end encryption is a critical capability that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists and diplomats,” Apple said in a statement to the BBC.
“It also helps everyday citizens defend themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud and data breaches. The Online Safety Bill poses a serious threat to this protection and could put UK citizens at greater risk.”
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