Is online safety ‘by design’ finally within reach?
Oliver Hayes, Global Action Plan’s Policy and Campaigns Lead reflects on the Online Safety Bill’s journey through parliament and what that means for children’s online safety
As Carnegie UK’s Maeve Walsh pointed out, a child born when a previous Secretary of State promised to make the UK the ‘safest place online’ is now starting their second year of primary school. So yes, the Government’s flagship Online Safety Bill has taken… a while.
But on 12 September the finishing line came into sight. MPs debated final changes proposed by Peers and, barring any unforeseen hiccups, the Online Safety Bill in its current form will become Law by November.
The Bill is huge, sprawling and multi-faceted. For some, it is also deeply controversial.
The government has openly stated that its priority is children’s safety, and Global Action Plan has been concerned with how the Bill seeks to achieve that. In our view the vectors of harmful online content – recommender algorithms, design choices, addictive product features, etc. – are just as consequential as the content itself.
We don’t think it is reasonable to expect social media companies to remove all the billions of harmful posts or videos online, but we do expect that they shouldn’t purposely promote and amplify toxic content for profit.
So, we were pleased to back Baroness Kidron’s efforts to secure important changes that brought the design, functionality and features of 'a service' (Instagram, Snapchat etc.) into the scope of the risk-assessments the Bill mandates.
These efforts were successful – the House of Lords updated the Bill such that Meta and co would finally be on the hook for the harm caused by their product design. All that remained was MPs’ approval.
So, on Tuesday 12 September the Online Safety Bill came back to the Commons, whereupon the Government conceded that such protections should be included, though put forward their own preferred wording in place of Baroness Kidron’s.
The government's version omits the new "safety duties" Peers proposed, but it does spell out that big tech must risk-assess for harm caused by design features that affect “how much children use the service”.
This shouldn’t be confused with legislating to limit screen time – any such risk-assessment logically should consider algorithmic recommender systems, because if you're serving a given child more and more of the kind of content they can't ignore, you're demonstrably affecting “how much” they’re using your service.
Equally, this improvement leaves the door wide open for Ofcom – the regulator tasked with implementing and enforcing the Bill – to really dig into the harms caused by the whole plethora of 'persuasive design' strategies and features that platforms employ, such as auto-play & infinite scroll.
“It is very much now on Ofcom to really interrogate the design and feature issues alongside the content ones, and I think that's definitely what parents want and what the Lords wanted.”
- Baroness Kidron
Perhaps the tech companies will argue that none of these features pose a risk to children, but Ofcom will surely be presented with a huge amount of evidence to the contrary.
Global Action Plan will certainly be making that case, including by drawing Ofcom’s attention to the tens of thousands of concerned citizens calling for action to rein in social media. Please add your name if you want to be among them.
Finally, and as Baroness Kidron pointed out, we must remember how absurd it is that tech companies should need laws to make them behave responsibly towards children:
“Frankly, there is nothing in the bill that they couldn't have designed their services to do in the first place.”
- Baroness Kidron
Interested in hearing more? Join us in holding Big Tech to account – explore our Safer Socials campaign here.