The reform of the protection bill reduces from two years to two months the grace period for criminal proceedings against senior managers
Tech chiefs face prosecution and up to two years in prison if they obstruct the communications watchdog’s investigations next year, as part of a sweeping overhaul of a landmark online protection bill.
The government has reduced the era of grace for prosecutions of criminals of senior executives for 22 months from two years to just two months, tech bosses can be charged with crimes starting early next year.
The update was announced as the government publishes a amended online protection bill, which imposes a duty of care on social media platforms and seeks engines to protect users from destructive content. The new measures include:
New criminal offences in England and Wales covering cyber flashing, virtual “stacks” and sending threatening messages on social media.
Tech corporations want to prevent fraudulent classified ads from appearing online.
The big platforms want to deal with express categories of legal but destructive content, which can come with racist abuse and eating disorder-like messages.
Sites that host pornography will have to perform age checks on other people they visit to access their content.
The updated law presented to Parliament on Thursday confirms and puts forward proposals across the UK for fines or jail time for senior executives that do not guarantee “accurate and timely” responses to requests for information from regulator Ofcom.
It introduces two other new criminal offences that apply to companies and workers: falsification of data requested through Ofcom; and obstructing or delaying raids, audits and inspections through the control body. A third new offence of thief shall apply to workers who provide false information in interviews with the supervisory body.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said tech corporations were not responsible when abuse and the habit of thieves were “unleashed” on their platforms. Referring to algorithms that adapt what users see on social media platforms, which were heavily criticized in the review of the bill, he added: “Given all the online threats, it makes sense for us to secure similar fundamental protections in the virtual age. If we don’t act, we threaten to sacrifice the well-being and innocence of countless generations of young people by force of out-of-control algorithms.
The duty of care of the law applies to corporations that host user-generated content, such as Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok, and to search engines such as Google.
It falls into several categories, including: restricting the dissemination of illegal content, such as terrorist material, photographs of child sexual abuse, and hate crimes; young people of destructive content; and for larger, adult platforms of legal but destructive content that would possibly come with racist abuse and content similar to gastronomic disorders.
The precedence categories of legal but destructive content, which generation corporations will be required to monitor, will be explained in the secondary legislation. The government argues that this means that the definition of destructive content will be delegated to generation executives. Still, civil liberties teams worry. it will give ministers the strength to censor content. On Wednesday, Open Rights Group called the bill an “Orwellian censorship machine. “
Companies that break the law face fines imposed through Ofcom of up to 10% of global profits, which, in the case of Facebook’s parent company, would be worth around $12 billion (£9. 2 billion) or £18 million, whichever is greater The watchdog will also have the strength to block sites and apps under the draft law, which is expected to be enacted by the end of the year.
Other bill tweaks come with the ability of users of larger social networking sites to block unnamed accounts, in an effort to counter online trolls. Big tech corporations will have to provide “risk assessments” to Ofcom in which they will detail how their platforms can cause harm to users, adding how algorithms work, and the systems they have put in position to prevent that damage.
Dorries told ITV’s This Morning on Wednesday: “It’s the algorithms that cause the damage, so this bill will force platforms to disclose the algorithms to our regulator so they can stumble upon evil and keep the platforms for account. “
The bill will exempt the content of news publishers and hounds from censorship, Dorries on Wednesday called on all protected journalistic content “as long as it is legal. “Platforms seeking to remove journalistic content will need to notify its removal and allow an appeal opposed to removal, Dorries added. The bill also includes provisions protecting content of “democratic importance,” which aims to protect political debate.
The bill’s launch came as Instagram, owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, introduced new equipment for parents and guardians to monitor teens’ use of the platform. the platform. Meta also introduced new parental controls for its true virtual Oculus headset, adding that it gives parents the ability to block access to certain apps. warns that virtual truth will provoke a new wave of disorder with virtual police platforms.