Dan Milmo of The Guardian asks key questions on the online safety bill due to become law this year.
Legislation puts duty of care on tech firms to protect under-18s but does not mandate use of specific age-checking technology.
The Online Safety Bill aims to protect children from harmful content, specifically pornography, by requiring all pornography websites to implement age verification measures. This means users will need to prove their age through government ID or other authoritative sources. Non-compliance carries severe penalties, including fines or website blocking.
The bill outlines a comprehensive approach, expanding on existing regulations and creating a new “base offence” for sharing intimate images without consent, regardless of motive.
However, despite the bill’s ambition, concerns remain about its effectiveness. While mainstream social media platforms will be required to prevent children from accessing pornography, specific details regarding the definition of “primary priority content” have yet to be finalized. Furthermore, implementing these provisions might take more than 18 months after passing the bill.
The bill’s effectiveness in protecting children from accessing pornography will depend on the clarity of its definitions, the strength of its enforcement mechanisms, and the cooperation of tech companies in implementing these measures.
Will the online safety bill prevent children from accessing pornography?
The bill requires all pornography websites, such as Pornhub, to ensure children do not encounter their content. This will require age-checking measures. The legislation refers to stringent age verification – checking a user’s age via government ID or an authoritative data source such as a person’s bank – as a means of doing so. Breaches of the act carry the threat of a fine of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover or, in extreme cases, blocking a website altogether.
Read the article in full here to learn what the act proposes to do on adult material.
