Under an amendment to the much-anticipated Online Safety Bill, tech chiefs could be jailed for up to two years over failure to ensure protection for children on their social media platforms in Britain.
The development came as the UK government agreed to toughen the proposed law surrounding child safety to ward off the possibility of a first parliamentary defeat for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The Online Safety Bill has been in the headlines for stricter online regulations influenced by the case of 14-year-old Molly Russel, who, according to press reports, took her life after being exposed to social media content depicting elements of self-harm and suicide.
The legislation is aimed at making the internet safer for children by introducing a range of measures, including enforcing age verification requirements and placing increased responsibility on leading tech corporations to take concrete steps for the protection of children from potentially harmful content.
UK’s Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan said the changes to the bill will “deliver shared aims of holding people accountable for their actions in a way which is effective and targeted towards child safety, whilst ensuring the UK remains an attractive place for technology companies to invest and grow.”
Donelan said the amendment to the legislation could see tech bosses being jailed if they “consented or connived in ignoring enforceable requirements, risking serious harm to children”. The minister added, however, that she believed the bill already included other provisions to make tech executives liable for failing to prevent a provider committing an offence.
“While this amendment will not affect those who have acted in good faith to comply in a proportionate way, it gives the Act additional teeth to deliver change and ensure that people are held to account if they fail to properly protect children.”
An earlier amendment to the Online Safety Bill proposed imposing substantial fines on social media firms over failure to remove content encouraging self-harm. In case of violations, UK’s telecom regulator, Ofcom, would slap fines amounting to 10 per cent of the company’s total revenue.
The Online Safety Bill has garnered both support and criticism, the major concern being its potential impact on the right to free speech on social media platforms. The legislation, however, adds to the increasing regulation of online content and practices of the Big Tech in the UK, where leading platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have been slapped with hefty consecutive fines lately.
