In a letter to the PM, Russell argued that the Online Safety Act, which aims to force tech giants to take more responsibility for their sites’ content, needed fixing and said a “duty of care” should be imposed on the firms…reports Asian Lite News
UK laws on internet safety are “very uneven” and “unsatisfactory”, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has said, following calls from campaigners to tighten the rules.
On Saturday, Ian Russell, the father of Molly Russell, who took her own life at 14 after seeing harmful content online, said the UK was “going backwards” on the issue.
In a letter to the PM, Russell argued that the Online Safety Act, which aims to force tech giants to take more responsibility for their sites’ content, needed fixing and said a “duty of care” should be imposed on the firms.
Kyle expressed his “frustration” with the Act, which was passed by the previous Conservative government in 2023. The Conservative government had originally included in the legislation plans to compel social media companies to remove some “legal-but-harmful” content, such as posts promoting eating disorders.
However, the proposal triggered a backlash from critics, including the current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who were concerned it could lead to censorship. In July 2022, Badenoch, who was not then a minister, said the bill was in “no fit state to become law” adding: “We should not be legislating for hurt feelings.”
Another Conservative MP, David Davis, said it risked “the biggest accidental curtailment of free speech in modern history”. The plan was dropped for adult social media users and instead companies were required to give users more control to filter out content they did not want to see. The law still expects companies to protect children from legal-but-harmful content.
Kyle said the section on legal-but-harmful content had been taken out of the bill adding: “So I inherited a landscape where we have a very uneven, unsatisfactory legislative settlement.”
He did not commit to making changes to the current legislation but said he was “very open-minded” on the subject. He also said the act contained some “very good powers” he was using to “assertively” tackle new safety concerns and that in the coming months ministers would get the powers to make sure online platforms were providing age-appropriate content.
Companies that did not comply with the law would face “very strident” sanctions, he said. Ministers are not ruling out further legislation but wanted “to be agile and quick” to keep up with fast-moving trends, a source said.
