On Monday, the U.K. Government published proposals for "tough new measures to ensure the U.K. is the safest place in the world to be online," claiming these to be the world's "first online safety laws." An independent regulator will be put in place with the "powers to take effective enforcement...
The government will next week confirm the launch date for a UK-wide age block on online pornography as privacy campaigners continue to raise concerns about how websites and age verification companies will use the data they collect. From The Guardian.
All the signs are that the government will shortly propose a duty of care on social media platforms aimed at reducing the risk of harm to users.
DCMS Secretary of State Jeremy Wright wrote recently:
"A world in which harms offline are controlled but the same harms online aren’t is not...
Dear Secretary of State,
We write to you as civil society organisations who work to promote human rights, both offline and online. As such, we are taking a keen interest in the government’s focus on tackling unlawful and harmful online content, particularly since the publication of the Internet...
Social media companies have agreed “takedown” arrangements with the Attorney General’s Office to ensure the swift removal of prejudicial comments about active trials. From The Guardian.
This Final Report on Disinformation and ‘Fake News’ repeats a number of recommendations from the interim report published last summer. The Committee calls for the Government to reconsider a number of recommendations to which it did not respond and to include concrete proposals for action in its...
Social media companies are to be told to sign a legally binding code of conduct as ministers seek to force them to protect young people online, it has been reported. From The Guardian.
The U.K. government is rushing to finalize a draft law against online harms such as cyberbullying and child exploitation, but key details of the proposal have yet to be nailed down amid concerns about stifling innovation. From Politico.eu.
The UK government has spent almost £100,000 of taxpayers’ money in the last week buying Facebook adverts in a bid to convince the public to support Theresa May’s Brexit deal – only for the key vote to be delayed. From The Guardian.
IN AN UNPRECEDENTED move Wednesday, British lawmakers published hundreds of pages of internal Facebook emails and other documents that previously had been ordered sealed as part of an ongoing legal case between Facebook and a now-defunct app developer called Six4Three. From Wired.