The Online Safety Bill drafted by the government of the United Kingdom will be extended, and this time it will include scam ads after the pressure from campaigners.
The government has also launched a consultation on strengthening existing regulation of the online advertisement industry, laying out a wide range of options to tighten the rules for advertisers.
U.K.'s Online Safety Bill
In May 2021, when the draft of the Online Safety Bill was published, the U.K. government said that it would impose a duty of care on digital service providers to moderate user-generated content in a way that prevents users, especially minors, from being exposed to harmful online content.
Since then, parliamentary committees have been going over the proposal. While there has been broad backing from M.P.s for regulating online platforms, there have also been calls from other people from the parliament for changes to ensure the legislation does not fail.
The parliament wants to make sure that all of the intended targets are hit, including cyber bullies, trolls, racists, terrorists, pedophiles, and more, according to TechCrunch.
However, outside the parliament, campaigners have been pressing for the Online Safety Bill to be tightened to be able to deal with the targets a lot better.
Online Safety Bill Drafts
Despite the past drafts of the bill already facing criticism of being too weak, in recent weeks, there have been several announcements from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sports or DCMS to bolt-on even more provisions in the name of further strengthening the proposal, according to U.K. Finance.
For example, the DCMS wants the government to bring pornography websites in the scope so the bill can require robust age checks to prevent children from accessing adult content online.
Another example is expanding the list of criminal content and offenses that will be added to the bill to force more takedowns from several platforms.
Also, the recent announcement that the largest platforms will be required to give users a verification option and the ability to receive replies and messages from verified accounts only in order to help users beat trolls online.
The scam ads is another issue that the U.K. government has been under sustained pressure for the Online Safety Bill to tackle, with consumer protection campaigners warning that a law, targetting user-generated scams could just end up driving scammers to professional channels by encouraging bad actors to pay platforms to carry their messages as ads.
At least two parliamentary committees criticized the drafted bill, and they published reports about it in the past few months. They also pushed for harmful paid advertising to be brought into the bill's scope.
The U.K. government has responded to campaigners' concerns by agreeing to further expand the bill's scope. The U.K. government added that the new measures will apply to the largest social media platforms and search engines, according to CNBC.
The tech giants will be required to put in place proportionate systems and processes to prevent the publication and hosting of fraudulent advertising on their service and remove it when they are made aware of it.
Related Article: Facebook, Google Slammed for 'Failing' to Stop Scam Adverts--Should Online Safety Bill Include Online Scam Now?
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Sophie Webster
