Recommendation 19

HM Government · verbatim extract Accepted

The OSA’s duties will deliver greater transparency and accountability from providers, ensuring Ofcom is well informed, adult users are empowered, and companies are publicly held to account for keeping their users safe online. The strongest protections in the framework are for children, and services which are likely to be accessed by children are required to take measures to protect them from harmful content including that which doesn’t meet the criminal threshold. Under the current framework, the OSA compels Ofcom, the independent regulator, to require categorised services to produce annual transparency reports on safety related issues and the experiences of their users. The contents of these reports are at Ofcom’s discretion, but may include information about the incidence and dissemination of illegal content, content that is harmful to children and content subject to the user empowerment duties. They may also include information about the systems and processes a provider operates to deal with certain types of content, including the provider’s algorithms. Under the OSA, Ofcom also have information gathering powers which they can use to require providers to enable Ofcom to observe how their algorithms function - these powers should help keep providers accountable and enable adult users to make more informed decisions about what platforms they want to use. The OSA focuses on empowering adult users to make more informed choices about the services they use and the content they engage with. The OSA requires Category 1 services to have clear and accessible Terms of Service (ToS). Where these set out kinds of legal content for adults they don’t accept on their platforms and or circumstances in which they may ban or suspend a user. Category 1 services are required to enforce these terms, applying them consistently and transparently so that adult users can have greater assurance of the kind of experience they will have on a service. This means if a company’s ToS say that harmful misinformation content is not permitted, they should have the systems and processes to remove such content when it is reported to them by users. Although Category 1 services are required to enforce these ToS, it is ultimately their decision what legal content they do or do not allow on their platforms, reflecting the sort of space they want to create for their users. This will enable greater transparency about content, enabling adult users to make more informed choices about the services they use. The OSA’s user empowerment duties will also ensure that adult users have greater assurance of the kind of experience they will have on a service, by requiring providers to empower adult users of Category 1 services to choose whether or not to engage with legal content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions for suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, and content that is abusive, or incites hate, on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment or disability.