Social media platforms will face significant fines if they fail to protect users from criminal content online under new powers that have come into effect today.
In December, Ofcom published the first edition of its codes of practice and guidance on tackling illegal harms, which include terror, hate, fraud, child sexual abuse and assisting or encouraging suicide. The regulations form part of the UK’s Online Safety Act, which was finally signed into law last year.
Social media firms must now carry out ‘illegal harms risk assessments’ to ascertain how likely it is that users could encounter illegal content on their service, or, in the case of ‘user-to-user’ services, how they could be used to commit or facilitate certain criminal offences.
Ofcom said it would begin assessing platforms’ compliance with the new rules in the coming months before launching targeted enforcement action. The regulator said that file-sharing and file-storage services are particularly susceptible to being used for...