Making The Internet Safer – We Have To Change The Business Models – Regulating Content Won’t Do The Job
An upheaval of the law governing what can be published online is taking place in the shape of the online safety bill. The bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, has the hyperbolic ambition “to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online”, and proposes to do this through a complex system of regulation.
It calls for platforms, search engines and social media to regularly assess the risks of harms stemming from their services and take measures to mitigate them. The regulator, Ofcom, will carry out its own risk assessments, establish risk profiles for different platforms (such as YouTube, Instagram or Tinder), and publish guidance in the form of “codes of practice”.
The act will apply even where the platform provider is abroad. This means that all platforms ta...