Source · Select Committees · Petitions Committee
Recommendation 9
9
Accepted
Paragraph: 50
It is not acceptable that young people should see encountering abuse as just part of...
Conclusion
It is not acceptable that young people should see encountering abuse as just part of the online experience. We welcome the strength of the duties the draft Online Safety Bill would impose on platforms to help reduce the chance that children and young people will come across or be targeted by abusive content online. However, we are concerned that the draft Bill’s chosen threshold for the child user condition may mean children will remain at risk of encountering abusive and other harmful content on smaller platforms, where it can still lead to real-world harm.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government maintains that the Online Safety Bill's child user condition already addresses the committee's concern about smaller platforms, as it applies to any service likely to attract a significant number of child users regardless of platform size.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
50
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted
We thank the Committee for this recommendation. The Online Safety Bill is designed to bring into scope services which pose the greatest risk of harm to users and where there is currently limited regulatory oversight. In order for the regulatory framework to be effective, the scope of the Bill must be targeted and proportionate. This legislation is intended to protect children not only on services which are targeted at them, but on any in-scope services which they are likely to access. All services will need to assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by children and if so, deliver additional protections for them. The child user condition is met if children form a significant number or proportion of users on a service, or if the service, or any part of it, is of a kind that is likely to attract a significant number or proportion of child users. This condition has no relation to a platform’s size; a service will meet the condition if a significant number or proportion of their users are children. Services who do not consider they are likely to be accessed by children will need to record the evidence that they have that children are not accessing their service, and keep this under review. The requirement to undertake, and keep up to date, a suitable and sufficient assessment about child access is an enforceable requirement. Ofcom may take enforcement action where providers do not carry out an assessment and keep it up to date, (and might be alerted to this via user complaints for example), including the potential for fines.
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