OnlineSafetyBill
The Online Safety Bill was tabled as a draft Bill in the British Parliament on Thursday 17 March 2022. I was passed by Parliament in October 2023 and is now the Online Safety Act.
It has been in gestation since 2014, when the government proposed introducing a mandatory parental control system. At that time, discussions between lobbyists for the various interests involved, including children's charities and vendors of Internet filtering systems, were in deep discussions with Ministers. There was an Online Safety Bill in 2015, that was not adopted. It targeted broadband providers with filtering measures. This draft Bill targets social media platforms, and potentially anything else that enables users to communicate with each other. Any app with a share button could be in the frame.
The draft Bill was released in May 2021.
This section of my website is exclusively dedicated to the Online Safety Bill. I will be posting analysis and commentary. I've been through the Bill section by section, and issue by issue. I have a created chart of clauses. I look for the policy issues, and how the text of the law links up to support the measures provided for. I look for the actors - who is behind this law, who is lobbying the hardest, are there different factions, for example. I ask difficult questions about what the measures would mean in practice, what does the opaque legal text really mean? My analysis builds on my track record of research into online enforcement measures and the 'copyright wars' since 2008.
This research is written up in my books - feel free to check them out! A Copyright Masquerade: How Corporate Lobbying Threatens Online Freedoms and The Copyright Enforcement Enigma - Internet Politics and the 'Telecoms Package'.
IPtegrity politics
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- Online Safety and the Westminster honey trap
- Shadow bans: EU and UK diverge on user redress
- EU at loggerheads over chat control
- Why the Online Safety Act is not fit for purpose
- Fixing the human rights failings in the Online Safety Act
- Whatever happened to the AI Bill?
- Hidden effects of the UK Online Safety Act
- EU puts chat control on back burner
- Why did X lock my account for not providing my birthday?
- Creation of deep fakes to be criminal offence under new law
- AI and tech: Asks for the new government
- How WhatsApp holds structural power
- Meta rolls out encryption as political headwinds ease
- EU law set for new course on child online safety
- Online Safety Act: Ofcom’s 1700-pages of tech platform rules
- MEPs reach political agreement to protect children and privacy
About Iptegrity
Iptegrity.com is the website of Dr Monica Horten, independent policy advisor: online safety, technology and human rights. Advocating to protect the rights of the majority of law abiding citizens online. Independent expert on the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on online safety and empowerment of content creators and users. Published author, and post-doctoral scholar, with a PhD from the University of Westminster, and a DipM from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Former telecoms journalist, experienced panelist and Chair, cited in the media eg BBC, iNews, Times, Guardian and Politico.