UK Lawmakers Look to Enforce Blocking Tool for Harmful Media

upstart writes:

The latest idea in the long gestation of the online harms legislation:

The UK government is putting forward changes to the law which would require social media platforms to give users the option to avoid seeing and engaging with harmful - but legal - content.

Presenting the amended Online Safety Bill to Parliament this week, Michelle Donelan, the minister for digital, culture, media and sport pledged to create a "third shield" to protect users from harmful content. She promised the mechanism, to be built by platform providers if the bill makes it into law, "transfers power away from Silicon Valley algorithms to ordinary people."

"Our new triple-shield mechanism puts accountability, transparency and choice at the heart of the way we interact with each other online. If [the content] is illegal, it has to go. If it violates a company's terms and conditions, it has to go. Under the third and final layer of the triple-shield, platforms must offer users tools to allow them to choose what kind of content they want to see and engage with," Donelan told Parliament.

[...] Rather than strict ID-base age-verification, platform providers would be forced to publish data revealing the risk of children viewing such content on their systems.

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