Stronger regulation of social media platforms is needed because their culture “needs to change”, MPs and peers have been told.
Online safety campaigner Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly took her own life after viewing harmful content, said the Government’s draft Online Safety Bill was an essential tool to help stop the spread of abuse.
Giving evidence to a joint committee of MPs and peers examining the proposed Bill, Mr Russell said stricter rules around protecting people from harmful content, and harsher punishments for sites that fail to do so was the only way to force change.
“It seems only when either news stories break in a particularly public way or when perhaps regulations change that platforms respond,” he said.
“From our view, the corporate culture at these platforms needs to change. They need to be proactive rather than reactive.
“After all, they have the resources and skills to do this, but it’s so often done as an afterthought.
“They should live up to their words about taking online safety seriously.”
Mr Russell was joined before the committee by a number of other online safety campaigners and experts to give evidence on how to improve the draft Online Safety Bill, which was published by the Government earlier this year.
The draft Bill proposes to introduce new rules for online platforms to ensure they protect their users from encountering harm, being bound by a new duty of care – overseen by Ofcom as the sector’s new regulator – with large fines and having...
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