As per Reuters, the UK government announces to make it illegal to encourage harmful content online and will fine the social media companies that fail to remove such content online.
Promoting suicide is already illegal, but UK’s Digital, Culture, Media, and Support Ministry stated that they now want social media companies to block a broader range of content.
According to the UK government, social media companies must remove and limit users’ content that deliberately encourages people to harm themselves. Full details of the announcement, like the criminal penalties faced by people who encourage self-harm and the scale of fines faced by the tech companies, will come next month when legislative amendments are put before the parliament.
Read more: Korean researchers develop a new deep-learning model to generate social behaviors in robots
Earlier proposals were designed to ban ‘legal but harmful’ material online that drew criticism from tech companies and free speech campaigners. However, children and mental health charities are strongly supporting the new announcement.
Michelle Donelan, the Digital Secretary of Britain’s Digital, Culture, Media and Support Ministry, stated that the social media firms will no longer remain silent observers and will face fines for allowing abusive and destructive behavior on their platforms as per the law.
