Are you feeling any safer yet? Has the Online Safety Act made you feel any less concerned about your children’s welfare in the digital world? It is early days, but I doubt we’ll be witnessing a golden age of online responsibility any time soon. The idea that Ofcom can hold the tech bros and their protector-in-chief President Trump to account increasingly feels like David requesting that Goliath fights fair.
And yet it is progress that on 17 March the act’s duties on illegal content came into effect. Social media companies, search engines and messaging apps are now required to remove illegal content more quickly and to reduce the risk of such content being published on their platforms. Ofcom is threatening to move fast to enforce the rules, which could result in fines of up to £18m or 10 per cent of global revenue (whichever is greatest). In extreme circumstances, executives of offending companies could be jailed. In reality, the regulator will work with offending companies to improve systems. It has taken over three decades of internet usage to get our biggest communicators to do something about illegal content. Imagine: it’s as if The One Show was only now being told to stop showing how-to terror guides.
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