Ofcom has issued tech companies with new steerage to guard on-line customers, particularly ladies and ladies, and encourage them to transcend the authorized necessities of the On-line Security Act.
Beneath the brand new steerage, tech companies have been urged by the regulator to implement varied measures to make it simpler for individuals to keep away from abusive content material and more durable to create it.
The 4 primary areas of hurt that Ofcom is searching for to sort out with the brand new steerage are misogynistic abuse, coordinated harassment, stalking and image-based sexual abuse.
In an effort to take care of every of those classes, the regulator has inspired tech corporations to impose measures to stop and punish these posting dangerous content material together with prompts forward of posting, timeouts for repeated abusive posters and demonetising misogynistic abuse and sexual violence content material.
It has urged companies to introduce the power to rapidly block a number of accounts without delay, to introduce extra refined instruments for monitoring stories and introduce know-how to detect and take away non-consensual intimate pictures.
“Once I take heed to ladies and ladies who’ve skilled on-line abuse, their tales are deeply surprising. Survivors describe how a single picture shared with out their consent shattered their sense of self and security,” stated Ofcom boss Dame Melanie Dawes.
“That’s why as we speak we’re sending a transparent message to tech companies to step up and act in step with our sensible trade steerage, to guard their feminine customers in opposition to the very actual on-line dangers they face as we speak.
“With the continued assist of campaigners, advocacy teams and skilled companions, we’ll maintain corporations to account and set a brand new commonplace for girls’s and ladies’ on-line security within the UK.”
The steerage has been welcomed by Expertise Secretary Liz Kendall.
“Tech corporations have the power and the technical instruments to dam and delete on-line misogyny. In the event that they fail to behave, they’re not simply bystanders, they’re complicit in creating areas the place sexism festers and a society the place abuse in opposition to ladies and ladies turns into normalised,” she stated.
Learn extra: Tech Secretary ‘deeply involved’ over Ofcom’s OSA implementation
