Making the Online Safety bill more effective

Today the government announced new amendments to the Online Safety Bill that protect children and boost free speech – making online content safer and holding social media companies to account. 

  • Internet use amongst children continues to rise, but unregulated social media has presented risks for too long – so we must take action to make the internet safer for young people.
  • That is why, through our Online Safety Bill, we will make the internet safer for children while also protecting free speech – including by criminalising the encouragement of self-harm, requiring firms to show how they enforce user age limits, and prohibiting platforms from banning users where they do not breach their terms of service. 
  • Under the new legislation there will be fines for companies that fail to protect children, while there will also be free speech safeguards ensuring that tech firms and future governments cannot censor legitimate views.

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