Seeking to protect minors and for the platforms to comply with their own rules, the Parliament of United Kingdom is processing a law to penalize social networks that do not take care of their users.
The project is already under debate and is focused on taking care of children, to keep them away from , violent content and that puts their physical integrity at risk, despite the fact that the platforms themselves do not allow it.
If the law is not followed, technology companies, such as networks or search engines, will enter into a legal process that will lead to fines of between 22 million dollars or 10% of their worldwide turnover, which, for example, in the case of Goal would be more than 10,000 million dollars. But the consequences could extend to the blocking of these sites.
The progress of the project has also included the possibility of presenting criminal charges against the heads of the companies, giving them responsibility for all the content published in those applications.
“Our aim is to hold social media platforms accountable for harmful content, while ensuring the UK remains a great place to invest in and grow a tech business,” the Prime Minister’s office said on the issue. processing of this law.
Legal processes to protect users
All social networks have agreements and operating policies, one of those points is the minimum age of entry, which is mostly from 13 years. Therefore, the law seeks that companies generate stricter alternatives so that this is enforced, in addition to warning underage users of the risks they may encounter when entering the platform.
For this, apps have to do risk assessments of the harm their services may cause to children and then explain how they will address those risks in their services.
The Communications Office will be in charge of enforcing the law, based on a premise: if the application ensures that it restricts content, it should be done so.
For example, yes tiktok either instagram tells the user, within their agreements for the creation of the profile, that content that promotes eating disorders is prohibited, that it is not illegal but if harmful, the law will require the social network to fulfill its promise or face a penalty fee.
In the United Kingdom, a law is pending to force applications to protect their users or they will be fined.
In this way, they want to protect minors from harmful content and that cause them harm, as well as shield the rest of the users of publications that are within the legal framework, but that affect others such as racism .
For this they also created new criminal offenses, such as inciting self-harm, pornographic deepfakes, which are altered images, intimate photos without authorization and cyberflashing, which is sending obscene content without authorization.
At the same time, the law places an obligation on all companies to protect users from illegal content such as child abuse images, revenge pornography, death threats, firearms sales, and terrorist material.
