The forthcoming Online Safety Bill was discussed on the Radio 4 programme 'Woman's Hour' this morning:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0016h9c
To summarise:
Their political correspondence from Westminster Mark Darcy described it as a massive bill that is now starting to make its way through Parliament. He went on to say that it will cover a wide variety of user generated content, such as inciting or threatening violence, hate crime against those in the protected groups eg disabled, black, LGBT+ people, financial crime, scams, protection of children from harmful material, cyber flashing, posting material that triggers epileptic fits etc.
It was described as groundbreaking and evolving all the time and is being designed to easily add further measures, so has been described as the framework into which other furniture can be added as and when required.
There will be very heavy financial penalties for the owners or managers of user generated content websites. Non compliance could see individuals personally fined or have criminal charges brought against them.
Nadine Dorries says that she has an acute understanding of how inappropriate behaviour affects people, as she used to be the health minister in charge of mental health issues and is keen to put a stop to bad behaviour on the internet where it causes devastating mental health problems. MP's said they found it very difficult to listen to the parents of a 14 year old girl who had committed suicide because of what other people on the internet had been saying to her.
Restrictions will also be made on whats been called 'legal free speech' that may be theoretically legal but is, nevertheless, harmful behaviour eg encouraging suicide, encouraging people not to eat, encouraging them to access illegal pornography.
There have now been calls by people, including Carol Voderman and Carherine Allen, for the Metaverse/Virtual Reality (VR) to be specifically written into the final law as, for example, children have been approached by adults to provide an embodied experience of a sexual nature, minorities have been subject to insults & harassment etc. In the future it's expected that people will spend up to ten years of their life in a VR environment.
When it was stated that some people disagreed with the Bill, the response was that some people actually tried to push back on the legislation to make online grooming of children an offence.