The Online Safety Bill has now passed through its parliamentary stages and is set to receive Royal Assent.
Maria said, ‘after many years of work, the Online Safety Bill is set to become an Act and will protect millions of people in the UK when they use this internet. This law covers a rapidly changing space, and holds large social media companies to account in order to keep users safe.
I am especially proud that my intimate image abuse amendments will become law under this Act. I have been campaigning for nearly ten years to get offences into legislation that will protect victims of intimate image abuse, and the Online Safety Bill will take the huge step of outlawing sharing images without consent. There is still work to do on the making and taking of these images, and their removal from the internet, but the four new offences in the Online Safety Bill will make a huge difference when it comes to prosecuting perpetrators and abusers.’
The Bill makes the UK one of the leading countries for protecting children and adults online. In order to protect children, social media platforms will be expected to:
- remove illegal content quickly or prevent it from appearing in the first place, including content promoting self-harm.
- prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content.
- enforce age limits and age-checking measures.
- ensure the risks and dangers posed to children on the largest social media platforms are more transparent, including by publishing risk assessments.
- provide parents and children with clear and accessible ways to report problems online when they do arise.
The Online Safety Bill makes it easier for adults to control what they see online, providing three layers of protection:
- Making sure illegal content will have to be removed.
- Placing a legal responsibility on social media platforms to enforce the promises they make to users when they sign up, through terms and conditions.
- Offering users the option to filter out harmful content, such as bullying, that they do not want to see online.
Ofcom will have the power to fine social media companies up to £18 million or 10% of their global annual revenue if they do not follow rules.
Intimate Image Abuse
The Online Safety Bill solidifies the next step in tackling intimate image abuse, seeing the sharing of intimate images without consent become a criminal offence. This follows a near-decade long campaign by Maria Miller and signifies a huge development in recognising the seriousness of this crime.
The new laws on intimate image abuse include:
- A base offence that criminalises sharing an intimate image without someone’s consent.
- A more serious offence of sharing an image with intent to cause alarm, humiliation or distress.
- Another more serious offence of sharing for sexual gratification.
- An additional offence of threatening to share an image, whether or not the image actually exists or whether it is shared in the end or not.
- Lifetime anonymity and special measures during the court process for victims.
Maria’s intimate image abuse laws differ from the previous ‘revenge porn law’ by removing the requirement to prove intent, replacing this with the base offence which hinges only on the consent on the person in the image. Without that consent, the sharing will be illegal. This brings intimate image abuse law in line with the majority of other sexual offences.
Crucially, these new laws will also cover deepfakes – images made to look as though they are of someone specific even though they are computer generated. The majority of deepfaked images are pornographic, meaning no one is safe from intimate image abuse anymore; images don’t even need to exist for them to be convincingly created. The new laws do this by including manufactured or manipulated images in the definition of a relevant image.
Incidences of intimate image abuse are increasing greatly. The Revenge Porn Helpline found that cases increased by over 40% between 2020 and 2021, rising from 3,146 cases to 4,406, and female victims, not only representing 75% of cases, suffer on average 60 times more content of them released than do male victims.
The pandemic had a severe impact on the amount of abuse, with reports to the Revenge Porn Helpline increasing by 87% between 2019 and 2020. Reports continue to rise, and the impact on victims is devastating.
Maria’s work will make it easier to prosecute abusers, and provide anonymity and special measures in court to victims of this crime – giving them the confidence to come forward.
