It remains to be seen whether the need to get the detail right will prevail over the rush to adopt it quickly. The decision to leave online advertising out of scope could be a missed opportunity
A lot of progress in little more than a week: Despite having had little time to analyse the bill and gather evidence from stakeholders, the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill has succeeded in identifying the parts most in need of improvement. On Thursday, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Nadine Dorries, gave evidence to the committee and confirmed that the current bill is “not the final word” and that some parts will be redrawn, partly as a result of their work.
Criminal sanctions will be introduced almost immediately: The aspect on which the Secretary of State was most explicit was the need to shorten the current grace period before social media executives could face criminal sanctions – from two years to between three and six months. She said online companies “know what they are doing now” and do not need all that time to adjust their algorithms to remove harmful content. Dorries also suggested that the bill needs to improve on how Parliament can scrutinise the powers of the Secretary of State and the operation of the online safety regime. There could be a role for the committee to continue its work once the bill is passed, due to the expertise it has developed.
The Facebook whistleblower’s testimony made a noticeable impact: The hearings of the past week also gave the committee a strong case to recommend further changes. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified just how committed Facebook still is to its engagement-driven business model. Safety is still seen as a cost, and regulation would help Facebook improve on that front, which would be good for its long-term growth. She suggested the fact Facebook is hiring 10,000 engineers for its Metaverse rather than enhancing online safety is telling of the company’s priorities. Based on Haugen’s evidence, the committee could recommend that the bill focus more on systemic algorithmic harms rather than content moderation. Today, Nadine Dorries acknowledged the bill leaves online advertising out of scope, failing to cover an important source of online harms, and referred to possible future legislation to look at this separately in more detail.
The Government wants to move quickly: The committee will produce a report with recommendations to amend the bill, at the latest by 11 December. The Secretary of State said it will take the recommendations very seriously, but also asked the committee to publish them as soon as possible to speed up the process. It remains to be seen whether the need to get the detail right will prevail over the rush to adopt it quickly.
Source: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/534/draft-online-safety-bill-joint-committee/
