Online safety bill ‘a missed opportunity’ to prevent child abuse, MPs warn

The sharing of some of the most insidious images of child abuse will not be prevented by a new government bill that aims to the make the internet a safer place, MPs have said.

The draft online safety bill is not clear or robust enough to tackle some forms of illegal and harmful content, according to a report by the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee. The landmark bill places a duty of care on tech firms to protect users from harmful content or face substantial fines imposed by the communications regulator Ofcom.

"In its current form what should be world-leading, landmark legislation instead represents a missed opportunity," said Julian Knight, the chair of the DCMS committee. "The online safety bill neither protects freedom of expression, nor is it clear nor robust enough to tackle illegal and harmful online content. Urgency is required to ensure that some of the most pernicious forms of child sexual abuse do not evade detection because of a failure in the online safety law."

The report urges the government to tackle types of content that are technically legal such as "breadcrumbing", where child abusers leave digital signposts for fellow abusers to find abuse content, and deepfake pornography, which it says are not covered by the bill currently, although creators of deepfake images can be prosecuted for harassment. On child sexual abuse, the committee said the bill should tackle behaviour by predators designed to evade content moderation.

"One starting point should be to reframe the definition of illegal content to explicitly add the need to consider context as a factor, and include explicitly definitions of activity like breadcrumbing on the face of the bill," says the report.

As currently drafted, the bill's duty of care is split into three parts: preventing the proliferation of illegal content and activity such as child pornography, terrorist material and hate crimes; ensuring children are not exposed to harmful or inappropriate content; and, for large tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, ensuring that adults are protected from legal but harmful content, a catch-all term covering issues such as cyberbullying.

The report recommends that the bill gives a definition of legal but harmful content that includes undermining someone's reputation, national security or public health. The category should also account for attempts to interfere in elections or deter the public from voting, it says. Legal but harmful content is not strictly defined in the draft bill but it gives the culture secretary a key role in defining it.