Ofcom leads global assault against social media abuses

SOCIAL media firms face a global assault by regulators to protect the public from harmful online content and conduct.

Sharon White, Ofcom’s chief executive, said yesterday she was bringing together regulators from around the world to coordinate action against online harm on social media platforms, many of which are based in the US.

Ofcom believes lessons can be learnt from countries that have already introduced new laws, including Germany, where social media platforms are set deadlines to remove hate speech, and Australia, where the government can block and filter web content.

Cooperation between independent regulators could reap better results in tackling online harms, Ofcom reported.

Its report was published to coincide with a call by Ms White to end the “lottery” that left social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube unregulated, as revealed yesterday by The Daily Telegraph.

Her report identified child exploitation as the biggest threat and one of five key areas of online harms that Ofcom said the public expected the government to set standards.

More than half (53 per cent) of the public cited child exploitation as their biggest internet fear. More than a third identified the risk of grooming, children seeing inappropriate sexual or violent material and adults masquerading as young people online.

The other four areas were protection from illegal content, such as hate speech or extremism, cited by 37 per cent; risky but not necessarily illegal material, such as self-harm or violence (27); illegal or harmful interactions, such as bullying, harassment or trolling (39); and misleading content, including disinformation and fake news.

Andy Burrows, associate head of child safety online at the NSPCC, said: “Regulation of social networks is necessary, desirable and achievable and the Government must listen to Ofcom’s findings.”

About 40 per cent of those aged 16 to 24 said they had encountered and reported offensive, disturbing or harmful content.

Ms White suggested regulation could be modelled on the telecoms sector, with targets set for how quickly social media firms took down offensive posts or prevented harmful conduct.

William Perrin, who helped set up Ofcom, said it should be given the job of enforcing a statutory duty of care on the social media giants. Mr Perrin supported imposing a duty of care on internet firms to protect the public from online harms, the model on which The Daily Telegraph is campaigning. The way social media impacts young people’s mental health needs to be better understood. A briefing paper by the Centre for Mental Health says there is evidence to show positive and negative effects on mental health by using social media, but more research is needed if young people are to be helped “navigate the challenges of 21st-century life”.