Culture Secretary threatens to speed up social media sanctions in Online Safety Bill
Social media executives could be held criminally responsible for safety breaches on their platforms within months of the Online Safety Bill becoming law, the Culture Secretary has said today.
Nadine Dorries told a Parliamentary committee that she wants to speed up the introduction of personal liability sanctions to bring about a faster response to possible online harms.
She also signalled that the Government wants to strengthen existing laws to make it a criminal offence if social media users issue “genuinely threatening communications” that seek to cause physical or psychological harm.
Under the current draft Online Safety Bill, social media companies will have a two-year grace period before facing any criminal sanctions so as to allow them to prepare for the changes.
Instead, Dorries is looking at a “three to six months” time period, she told the committee today.
“They know what they’re doing now,” Dorries said. “They actually have the ability to put right what they’re doing wrong now; they have the ability now to abide by their own terms and conditions. They could remove harmful algorithms tomorrow.”
Dorries: Zuckerberg and Clegg should ‘stay in the real world’
The News Media Association, which represents national and regional newsbrands, welcomed Ms Dorries’ commitment to look at a full exemption for news publishers from the scope of the Online Safety Bill, including a positive duty on platforms not to take down news publisher content.
NMA CEO Owen Meredith said: “We believe that a full and robust exemption from the regime is the best way to balance the need to protect freedom of speech with the laudable objectives of the legislation to crack down on online harms propagated by the platforms.”
Earlier in the session Dorries personally called out Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, who last week announced a holding company rebrand to Meta and explained his vision of the “Metaverse”.
She said” “People like Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg and others, who are wanting to take off into the Metaverse, my advice would be ‘stay in the real world’.
“This bill will become an Act very, very soon, and it is the algorithms that do the harm and you will be accountable to this Act.”
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