Who would have thought ‘safety’ might be this government’s legacy? Whether it’s AI and its bid to be regulator-in-chief or its promise to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online”, Rishi Sunak’s government has bounded eagerly into post-Brexit bureaucracy.
The landmark Online Safety Bill – legislation designed to put reins on the seemingly uncontrollable rise of illegal content and content harmful to children found online, such as revenge porn and hate speech – gained Royal Assent last month.
With Big Tech companies in the crosshairs of the new Online Safety Act, or OSA, it’s worth pausing a moment to consider how the implications will ricochet around the thousands of other businesses with sites or platforms with functionality that allows user-generated content to be shared between users (whether or not content is actually shared)....