The legislation will take an uncompromising stance on child safety, by holding social media companies accountable for the content they host. The new bill will be enforced by UK telecom regulatory agency Ofcom.

Failure to remove harmful content for children could result in prison sentences, or a fine of £18 million or 10% of the company’s global annual revenue, making the penalty capable of reaching billions.

“We hear from children about the completely unacceptable levels of abuse and harm they face online every day,” said Sir Peter Wanless, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) chief executive.

“That’s why we have campaigned strongly for change alongside brave survivors, families, young people and parliamentarians to ensure the legislation results in a much safer online world for children.”

Annabel Turner, founder of CyberSafe Scotland said: “Our children and young people are currently experiencing things online that most people struggle to comprehend. Schools tell us that the safe spaces we are able to create are vital because they enable children to share experiences they otherwise would have no opportunity to.

“In them sharing those with us, we have an obligation to honour their stories and to share what it is that is happening. From the normalisation of the sexual abuse and harassment of very young children, to the types of harmful content that they are seeing repeatedly as a result of certain design choices, the Bill will be an important part of our toolkit for protecting children online.”

The new bill will also address the ongoing violence against women in the online space. It will now be easier to convict someone who shares intimate images without consent, and further criminalise ‘deepfake’ pornography. 

The bill also mandates social media firms to block and remove fraudulent adverts, and addresses concerns related to animal cruelty and torture, even if the activity occurs outside the UK but is visible to UK users.

The Online Safety bill has been contested in the months leading up to now, with the most controversial topic being encrypted messages. Under the terms of the bill, messaging apps could be obligated to scan encrypted messages for child abuse material. 

Recently, the UK Government said it will not enforce the scanning of encrypted messaging until Ofcom can prove it is feasible to do without completely compromising the integrity of encryptions. This came on the heels of WhatsApp threatening to leave the UK rather than change its encryption policy in March. 

The fact remains that scanning everyone’s messages would destroy privacy as we know it. That was as true last year as it is today. @WhatsApp will never break our encryption and remains vigilant against threats to do so. https://t.co/iHsBOhkp8r

— Will Cathcart (@wcathcart) September 6, 2023

WhatsApp owner, Meta, is moving forward with plans to encrypt its other messaging service, Messenger, is also facing backlash in the governmental domain. This is due to the fact 22 million pieces of child abuse imagery were detected and reported by the company the year they announced their plans for full encryption. 

According to the BBC, home secretary Suella Braverman sent concerns to Meta over the implications of fully encrypted messaging in July. 

On 20 September, Braverman said Meta had “failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers. They must develop appropriate safeguards to sit alongside their plans for end-to-end encryption.”

Signal, another encrypted messaging service, is in less imminent danger of leaving the UK, according to The Verge. Its president, Meredith Whittaker, told them: “While it’s not everything we wanted, we are more optimistic than we were when we began engaging with the UK government. It matters that the government came out publicly, clearly acknowledging that there is no technology that can safely and privately scan everyone’s communications.” 

The onus of carrying out the Online Safety Bill successfully will fall on Ofcom, which has a crucial balance to strike between making the UK the “safest place in the world to be online,” and not driving away online services used by millions of people across the nation. 

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“It will be essential that (Ofcom) sets robust data quality controls, clear technology standards and auditing codes of practice to ensure affected firms have a comprehensive integrated risk management framework in place to guide their implementation of the UK’s new laws,” said Chris Dimitradis, chief global strategy officer at the Information Systems Audit and Control Association.

“While instructive and readily accessible regulatory guidance will be an important first step towards realising the Government’s ambitions, it will ultimately reside with businesses to equip their staff with the IT training and skills that they need to use, manage and understand data to avoid being caught breaking the law. This includes having the right processes in place to inform, correct and compensate stakeholders,” he said. 

According to Ofcom, after the bill receives Royal Assent, they will consult on the first set of standards they expect tech firms to meet in “tackling illegal online harms, including child sexual exploitation, fraud and terrorism,” in a phased approach.