Internet Safety – from Green to White Paper
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock took to the airways on Sunday 20th May to announce his Department's reaction to the results of their consultation on the Internet Safety Green Paper . You can read the CMF response to it here.
It was clear from the consultation that users (including children) "feel powerless to address safety issues online and that technology companies operate without sufficient oversight or transparency." Organisations including CMF were supportive of a code pf practice for social media platforms, and many, including ourselves, went further and came down on the side of regulation, as the platforms' previous attempts to self-regulate have proved ineffective.
Now the government is laying out its next steps which include more work with the big social media platforms to encourage them to "put their houses in order" but at the same time consideration of what form regulation might take.
All of this will lead to a White Paper before the end of 2018 and legislation will follow.
For us at CMF, while we await the ever-bedevilled detail, it's a significant step in the right direction. Aligning the internet to existing "real-world" rules has long been something we have campaigned for.
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