UK Could Jail Social Media Bosses Who Breach Child Safety Rules (theguardian.com) 55
Downing Street has said it is considering a Tory-backed amendment to the online safety bill that would allow for the imposing of jail sentences on social media bosses who are found not to have protected children's safety. The Guardian reports: No 10 said on Thursday it was open to the proposal, which is backed by at least 36 Conservative MPs including the former home secretary Priti Patel and the former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith. The amendment would give Ofcom, the communications watchdog, the power to prosecute executives at social media companies that are found to have breached the law. If ministers include it in the bill, it will mark the third time the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has bowed to the demands of his backbenchers, after U-turns on planning and onshore windfarms.
The bill is aimed at cracking down on a range of online content that ministers believe is causing serious harm to users and was informed in part by the testimony of Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who accused the company of repeatedly putting profits ahead of user safety. The bill will force companies to remove any content promoting self-harm, depicting sexual violence or facilitating suicide. It will also require companies to impose and enforce strict age limits and to publish assessments of the risks their platforms pose to young people. As it is currently written, the bill gives Ofcom the power to levy fines on companies of up to 10% of their global turnover for breaches in the law. Ofcom will be able to prosecute executives only if they fail to cooperate with an investigation. This has upset many Conservative MPs, however, who believe the regulator should be given tougher powers.
The amendment, which has been signed by 37 MPs overall, would allow Ofcom to prosecute individual executives if they were proved to have connived with or consented to breaking the elements of the bill designed to protect children's safety. Judges would be allowed to impose prison sentences of up to two years. [...] Other changes to the bill, which has its report and third reading stage in the House of Commons next week, include altering earlier plans to tackle content seen by adults that is harmful but falls below the threshold of criminality, such as cyberbullying and sexist and racist material. Tech companies will be required to state clearly in their terms and conditions how they will moderate such content. Users will also be given the option of asking to have such content screened out when they are on social media platforms. A Downing Street spokesperson said on Thursday: "Our aim is to hold to account social media platforms for harmful content, while also ensuring the UK remains a great place to invest and grow a tech business. We are confident we can achieve both of these things. We will carefully consider all the proposed amendments to the online safety bill and set out the position when report stage continues."
The bill is aimed at cracking down on a range of online content that ministers believe is causing serious harm to users and was informed in part by the testimony of Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who accused the company of repeatedly putting profits ahead of user safety. The bill will force companies to remove any content promoting self-harm, depicting sexual violence or facilitating suicide. It will also require companies to impose and enforce strict age limits and to publish assessments of the risks their platforms pose to young people. As it is currently written, the bill gives Ofcom the power to levy fines on companies of up to 10% of their global turnover for breaches in the law. Ofcom will be able to prosecute executives only if they fail to cooperate with an investigation. This has upset many Conservative MPs, however, who believe the regulator should be given tougher powers.
The amendment, which has been signed by 37 MPs overall, would allow Ofcom to prosecute individual executives if they were proved to have connived with or consented to breaking the elements of the bill designed to protect children's safety. Judges would be allowed to impose prison sentences of up to two years. [...] Other changes to the bill, which has its report and third reading stage in the House of Commons next week, include altering earlier plans to tackle content seen by adults that is harmful but falls below the threshold of criminality, such as cyberbullying and sexist and racist material. Tech companies will be required to state clearly in their terms and conditions how they will moderate such content. Users will also be given the option of asking to have such content screened out when they are on social media platforms. A Downing Street spokesperson said on Thursday: "Our aim is to hold to account social media platforms for harmful content, while also ensuring the UK remains a great place to invest and grow a tech business. We are confident we can achieve both of these things. We will carefully consider all the proposed amendments to the online safety bill and set out the position when report stage continues."
How far up the chain? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll wager it'll be some dumb schmuck in a local office that gets jail time, not the guys at the very top...
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Agreed, but I'd love to see them try to write some jurisdiction-busting clauses into the legislation, just for the hell of it.
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But that head of UK operations will have some degree of control over UK operations. And if he/she doesn't have control of stuff that would land them in jail, they can raise the issue with authorities and not be the one held responsible. If they don't raise the issue and try to cover it up, then they would rightly be held at least partly responsible.
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You mean the same Elon Musk who has actively been tackling the CP issue that existed long before he took over? The CP issue that the former Twitter bosses said was impossible to tackle and refused to actively do anything about? The CP issue that the media ONLY began to really report on AFTER Musk took over?
Why would they go after Elon?
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The UK's reach is much more limited after brexit. Can't easily extradite them from the EU anymore. So yeah, limited opportunities to actually arrest those they deem responsible.
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They aim at the head of the regional branch in UK. But I would prefer they ease the recourse to a limited ban of the product for the behaviours they don't want. Jail is scary for one guy. A one month outage is scary for an entire Board.
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I would prefer they ease the recourse to a limited ban of the product for the behaviours they don't want. Jail is scary for one guy. A one month outage is scary for an entire Board.
Not as scary as it is for the employees. Feel free to scale up to giving the whole board prison time, though.
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Not as scary as it is for the employees.
So they should be immune from consequences because, "they were just following orders"?
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So they should be immune from consequences because, "they were just following orders"?
In your scenario, people who were not even involved with the bad decision will be punished. It's a real "wrath of god" solution to the problem, where even people who weren't responsible are punished because they were nearby.
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You think the typical Nazi camp guard, was included in the decision as to where they were assigned and how the camp was to be administered I suppose?
At some point if you know the company you work for is actively breaking the law, well you should resign or face the music along with everyone else. Just because you are not personally involved should not absolve you of responsibility.
We are not talking about sending people to prison here. I am talking about punishing these organizations enough to actually harm
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You think the typical Nazi camp guard, was included in the decision as to where they were assigned and how the camp was to be administered I suppose?
So to be clear, you're equating people who resell PII without authorization or similar to people who participated in an attempt at genocide? What possible purpose could there be for your false equivocation except for massaging Nazis?
The people who should share the burden are not the other employees, they are the shareholders. In the really real world, having your basic needs met is tied to your employment, and you would put people out on the street because of something their managers did.
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So to be clear, you're equating people who resell PII without authorization or similar to people who participated in an attempt at genocide?
No there is obviously no moral equivalence. It however an illustrative case of where society clearly said, you are responsible for the action of a group you participated in as member. Its not enough to simply claim you were not an authority or even opposed, if you were an enable anyway.
In the really real world, having your basic needs met is tied to your employment, and you would put people out on the street because of something their managers did.
Yes because lets be honest, those people had choices who they decided to work for, those people had a lot more freedom to leave when they saw problems, many of the Nazi guards were conscripts and we don't even excuse them, th
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> At some point if you know the company you work for
> is actively breaking the law, well you should resign or
> face the music along with everyone else
Breaking the law where? If I'm sitting pretty in San Mateo and obeying the laws of the city, state, and nation in which I reside and am physically present; I should never, EVER, under any circumstances, need to worry about whether anything I do is illegal in the UK, China, France, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada, or anywhere else in the world.
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Even within EU, UK could not obtain an extradition based on this law. This law appears to be a world's first. The European Arrest Warrant only works when the alleged facts are considered criminal in both the issuing and the executing jurisdictions.
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There is NO WAY to be sure children on any site cannot access a given content type except to remove it entirely from that site.
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I'll wager it'll be some dumb schmuck in a local office that gets jail time, not the guys at the very top...
This is what middle management are for... Fodder to protect senior management.
However nothing of the sort will happen as this is just the UK (conservative) government shouting "WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN"*. It's a dog whistle in the UK to scare the curtain twitchers who think a peado is around every corner (basically the Tory's main audience). . *not you, Catholic priests.
Double standard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Have any police or other government employees been jailed as a result of the UK's many multi-decade child grooming scandals? Rotherham, Rothdale, Telford? Was even a single public official ever jailed for refusing to investigate or act on grooming, rape, and more serious crimes?
If those public employees entrusted with children's safety do not face jail for their failures, why should people in the private sector be threatened with jail?
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Why don't you give it a try and let us know. You know you want to.
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i think its mostly related to marketing makeup and diet adverts
the other things maybe up to others interpretation
brought to you by Make UK relevant again
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No Chance (Score:2)
If this ever gets made into a law, which isn't certain, there's absolutely no way anyone's going to jail. If (say) the head of Facebook UK was even suspected of such a thing, let alone put on trial, FB would simply "demonstrate" how important it is to the UK economy (and I wouldn't be surprised if a few others did the same as it would set precedent for them), and magically the case would get downgraded to a fine or a stern talking-to.
Either way, no one "important" is ever going to jail. Maybe some lowly mid
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How is Facebook important to the UK economy?
Re:No Chance (Score:5, Insightful)
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How is Facebook important to the UK economy?
They pay the good baksheesh.
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Like it or hate it, it is responsible for a large amount of money-go-round. If you made it disappear tomorrow, there would be some (probably measurable) harm done to the UK economy. Say nothing of the political fallout.
Can we do it for C-levels that fail to secure data (Score:3)
The Equifax and OPM data loss warranted serious jail time
Just another step down that slippery slope (Score:2, Interesting)
When they tell you it's all about protecting children, the one thing you can be sure of is that it's absolutely not. It's about politicians and their owners getting their long, flexible snouts into the private business of average people for purposes of monetization and control.
And as a side bar...one thing we've seen over and over again is that the people who squawk loudest about saving innocent children from the vile attentions of diddlers are the very people who get caught with massive collections of kid
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When they tell you it's all about protecting children, the one thing you can be sure of is that it's absolutely not. It's about politicians and their owners getting their long, flexible snouts into the private business of average people for purposes of monetization and control.
It's funny how quickly some people jump to characterizing those they disagree with as absolute villains. "Think of the children" is frequently a vote getter. It's infinitely more likely that anyone pushing for this for disingenuous reasons is just doing it for the votes then it is that they're up to the super villainy of wanting to control all aspects of our lives. That's just straight up conspiracy nuttery.
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You obviously don't have a clue what's been happening in the UK over the last 20 years. Perhaps you should enlighten yourself a little before you open your yap. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
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No, it's more like I understand that right wing nutters nowadays have gone completely overboard attributing truly bizarre motivations to things.
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Maybe if you puled your dick out of it it would stop complaining.
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Ha, mom jokes?
Well I suppose you're doing your best... Keep trying little guy!
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I travel their frequently as I have a number of friends there and frequently read British news as part of getting non American sources for some of my news but sure, you can pretend I'm completely ignorant if that makes you feel better.
Gotta love it when some one cant prove their own point so they have to make something up about someone else.
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For someone so well informed you certainly posted a lot of stupid/naive shit. One doesn't have to believe a politician is evil incarnate to surmise that all else being equal they will chose to acquire more power rather than less. That doesn't make one a conspiracy nutter, jus
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One doesn't have to believe a politician is evil incarnate to surmise that all else being equal they will chose to acquire more power rather than less
The problem with your argument is that there's no logic to it. Political parties wax and wane in almost every democracy and they certainly do in our two. Power grabbing for the sake of power while you're in control is just handing your political adversaries power as they will inevitably be back in control at some point. Extending a governments reach by the smallest of margins to earn votes on the other hand actually makes sense.
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You're full of crap. If you've ever had a UK visa stamp on your passport, I'd be shocked.
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Hahaha. What a world you live in where traveling to the UK is an unlikely thing.
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The same party (Score:2)
Who covered up and outright refused to investigate Jimmy Savile? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Ask the Regulator (Score:2)
There are 2 elements here:
in other words the usual (Score:2)
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