Ofcom is consulting on strengthening its draft illegal terms of practice and guidance under the Online Safety Act 2023, specifying animal cruelty and human torture as new types of content platforms must tackle.
Under the Act, when new legal duties on platforms come into force, tech firms will have to assess the risk of illegal content on their services, take steps to stop it appearing and act quickly to remove it when they become aware of it.
To implement the Act, Ofcom is required to consult on codes of practice and guidance that set out how platforms can comply with their duties. Straight after the Act was passed, Ofcom consulted on their ‘first-edition’ illegal harms codes and guidance to allow it to start enforcing the new laws as quickly as possible.
The Act lists over 130 “priority offences”. An animal cruelty offence was added to the legislation at a comparatively late stage in its passage through Parliament, meaning it was not included in Ofcom’s initial illegal harms consultation. Many animal cruelty online content may also fall outside of this offence under the Act. Additionally, the priority offences in the Online Safety Act do not fully capture obscene content depicting torture of humans.
To address this, Ofcom are proposing to add illegal animal and human torture content to its codes and guidance. This will ensure that providers understand that they should remove this kind of seriously harmful content when they become aware of it, even if it is not fully captured by the priority offences under the Act.
The consultation ends on 13 September 2024. Following the consultation and consideration of responses, Ofcom plans to publish its final illegal harms codes and guidance in December 2024. Platforms will have three months to conduct their illegal content risk assessment. Codes of practice will be subject to a Parliamentary approval process. Once they have been approved, the duties on platforms will become enforceable.
