The Bill, which would introduce fines and site blocks for social media platforms that fail to protect users from harmful content, is to return to Parliament next week. It was previously delayed amid Boris Johnson’s resignation and withdrawn from the schedule in October following Liz Truss’s resignation.
‘Deepfakes’ typically use editing software to make and share fake images: for example, a website that virtually strips women naked received 38m hits in the first eight months of 2021.
The government also intends to introduce a package of laws tackling abusive behaviour such as installing hidden cameras and ‘downblousing’, where photos are taken down a woman’s top without her consent. These include a new offence of sharing an intimate image without consent and two more serious offences based on intent to cause humiliation, alarm or distress, and for obtaining sexual gratification. Two specific offences will be created for threatening to share images and installing equipment to enable images to be taken.
The proposed reforms build on recommendations made by the Law Commission in July, in its paper ‘Taking, making and sharing intimate images without consent’.
Ruth Davison, CEO of Refuge, which campaigned for threatening to share intimate images with intent to cause distress to be made a crime, welcomed the proposed reforms.
However, some civil liberties organisations, including Liberty, have expressed concerns about elements of the Bill, including that restrictions on ‘legal but harmful’ content are too vague and could restrict free speech, and that it creates a two-tier approach to online and real-world communications.
Other concerns include that the Bill obliges online platforms to assess the content, which they are likely to do via machines and algorithms, thus removing any nuance.
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