Ofcom is today consulting on strengthening its draft illegal harms codes of practice and guidance under the Online Safety Act, by specifying animal cruelty and human torture as types of content that platforms must tackle.
Under the Act, when new legal duties on platforms come into force, tech firms will have to assess the risk of illegal content on their services, take steps to stop it appearing and act quickly to remove it when they become aware of it.
To implement the Act, Ofcom is required to consult on codes of practice and guidance that set out how platforms can comply with their duties. Straight after the Act was passed, we consulted on our ‘first-edition’ illegal harms codes and guidance to allow us to start enforcing the new laws as quickly as possible.
The Act lists over 130 ‘priority offences’. An animal cruelty offence was added to the legislation at a comparatively late stage in its passage through Parliament, meaning it was not included in our initial illegal harms consultation. A lot of animal cruelty online content may also fall outside of this offence under the Act.
Additionally, the priority offences in the Online Safety Act do not fully capture obscene content depicting torture of humans.
To address this, we are proposing to add illegal animal and human torture content to our codes and guidance. This will ensure that providers understand that they should remove this kind of seriously harmful content when they become aware of it, even if it is not fully captured by the priority offences under the Act.
Next steps
Today’s consultation closes on Friday 13 September 2024. Subject to careful consideration of all responses received, we plan to publish our final illegal harms codes and guidance – including our decisions on today’s proposals – in December 2024.
Following this, platforms will have three months to conduct their illegal content risk assessment. The codes of practice will also be subject to a Parliamentary approval process. At this point, the duties on platforms become enforceable.