Online Safety bill back after 5 month delay
The Online Safety bill has returned to parliament after a five-month delay.
According to the UK government the online safety bill “delivers the government’s manifesto commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online while defending free expression.”
The bill is focused on protecting children under the age of 18 from seeing potentially harmful content online.
Many mental health charities hope that this will help reduce suicide rates amongst young people.
Online social media platforms will be forced to follow the new policy that will limit online content – including harmful posts about self-harm.
This comes after 14 year old Molly Russell committed suicide after seeing suicide and self harm related content online.
Social media platforms will have to monitor and report any harmful content involving children.
They also have to use age monitoring technology. Some, such as Instagram, are already doing this.
However, this bill has been criticized for making it “Illegal to be rude” and having too close of a watch on people’s online activity. The Labour party and the Samaritans have also criticized this bill calling it a “huge step back”.
The aim of the bill is to treat things that are illegal in real life the same way online.
