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March 19, 2022 03:30 am

Tech Execs Could Face Jail Time Under Revised UK Online Safety Bill

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Proposed UK laws could see top managers at tech companies be jailed if they fail to meet the demands of regulators. The laws, coming in the form of an Online Safety Bill, were introduced to Parliament on Thursday after almost a year of consultation. The UK government commenced work on the proposed laws in May last year to push a duty of care onto social media platforms so that tech companies are forced to protect users from dangerous content, such as disinformation and online abuse. Under the proposed legislation, executives of tech companies could face prosecution or jail time if they fail to cooperate with information notices issued by Ofcom, UK's communications regulator. Through the Bill, Ofcom would gain the power to issue information notices for the purpose of determining whether tech companies are performing their online safety functions. A raft of new offenses have also been added to the Bill, including making in-scope companies' senior managers criminally liable if they destroy evidence, fail to attend or provide false information in interviews with Ofcom, or obstruct the regulator when it enters company offices. The Bill also looks to require social media platforms, search engines, and other apps and websites that allow people to post their own content to implement various measures to protect children, tackle illegal activity and uphold their stated terms and conditions. Among these measures are mandatory age checks for sites that host pornography, criminalizing cyberflashing, and a requirement for large social media platforms to give adults the ability to automatically block people who have not verified their identity on the platforms. The proposed laws, if passed, would also force social media platforms to up their moderation efforts, with the Bill calling for platforms to remove paid-for scam ads swiftly once they are alerted of their existence. A requirement for social media platforms to moderate "legal but harmful" content is also contained in the Bill, which will make large social media platforms have a duty to carry risk assessments on these types of content. Platforms will also have to set out clearly in terms of service how they will deal with such content and enforce these terms consistently.

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