New regulations have been made against ‘revenge porn’ and other harmful content, which includes sexually explicit posts that appear from time to time on social media platforms and are shared to harm people without their consent. In line with the new measures announced by the UK’s Minister of Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Nadine Dorries, social media companies have been requested to take immediate action to remove such content from their sites.
The UK Labor Party, however, described the move as rather “weak” and inadequate. Labor’s Lucy Powell urged Dorries to toughen the laws even further to make top executives of companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google criminally liable for these systematic and repeated incidents of maintaining security online.
The new law will focus on posts made to psychologically harm people.
According to the new regulations, harmful content such as pornographic content and hate speech published on social media belonging to a person unannounced will be removed from these platforms. On the other hand, people who voluntarily upload their own nude images to a person or a platform will not be stuck with the new regulations. Instead, the law will be rewritten to focus on posts and messages with the intent to psychologically harm a person.
Under the new law, regulator Ofcom could fine social media companies that fail to remove harmful material from the platform, up to 10 percent of their global turnover, or even ban them from operating in the UK. In addition to these, new measures; will require sites to use automated or human content moderation to detect and remove content, ban illegal search terms, and prevent blocked users from re-registering under new names.
For now, sites only need to take action in cases of terrorism and child sexual abuse; However, if a complaint is made, actions can be taken against revenge porn, hate crime, fraud, illegal drug or weapon sales, incitement or facilitation of suicide, human trafficking and sexual abuse.
New decision assessed as ‘insufficient’
“Today’s changes mean we can put the full weight of the law against those who are using the internet as a weapon to destroy people’s lives and are doing it faster and more effectively,” Dorries said. While speaking, Powell noted that these measures were insufficient.
Stating that the new ‘Online Safety Act’ is too weak to ensure the eradication of hate, crime and child abuse in the online world, Powell said, “Ofcom has all the tools under its belt, including making top bosses criminally liable for persistent failure to cover online harm. He needs to have access.”
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