UK government wants to hold online platforms liable for harmful content

The UK government has proposed a package of measures to combat illegal and harmful content on the internet. The proposal states that online platforms must do more to combat this content, on pain of fines and blockades.

The platforms the government is talking about are not just social media. It concerns any online platform that trades in user-generated content and online interaction between users. The government cites file hosters, forums, messenger services and search engines as examples.

The harmful types of content identified in the announcement include: incitement to violence, violent content, suicide encouragement, disinformation, cyberbullying, and easily accessible “child inappropriate material”. Further on in the proposal, the examples of catfishing, radicalization and loverboy practices are also mentioned. The penalties for hosting terrorism and child abuse content for too long would be extra heavy because of the objectionable content.

According to the package of measures, the services must take ‘reasonable steps’ to ban harmful content from their platform. In addition, they must respond quickly to complaints from users, deploy fact-checkers against disinformation and help educate their users about these malicious online behaviors and how to deal with them.

Part of the proposal is also to set up an enforcement body to verify whether the companies behind these platforms fulfill the intended responsibilities. It is not yet clear whether this supervision should become the task of an existing government body or whether a new agency will be set up for it. A levy on tech companies to pay for this supervision is also being considered.

This oversight body would also have the power to force platforms to issue an annual transparency report, in which they must report what malicious content has been posted on their platform and what they have done about it.

At the moment these are still proposals for measures. These have been combined in the so-called Online Harms White Paper, of which an executive summary is also available. The British public and business now have 12 weeks to give their views on these proposals.

British startup advocate Coadec fears the measures will put too much pressure on smaller companies relatively speaking, while giants like Google and Facebook have the resources to easily meet these responsibilities. The organization told Business Insider that.

In Australia, similar legislation recently passed Parliament. One of the triggers for that legislation was the New Zealand shooting in March, which was broadcast live on a Facebook stream for more than an hour. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself already called on governments at the end of March to take an active role when it comes to maintaining the internet.