Strives to protect minors and platforms to enforce their own rules, Parliament from United Kingdom Develops a law to penalize social networks that do not care about their users.

The project is already under discussion and is focused on caring for children, moving away from sexual, violent content and that which threatens their physical integrity, even though the platforms themselves do not allow this.

If the law is not followed, technology companies, such as networks or search engines, will enter legal proceedings that will result in a fine of up to 22 million dollars or 10% of their worldwide turnover, which, for example, purpose will be more than 10,000 million dollars. But the consequences may spread before these sites are blocked.

The course of the project included the possibility of a presentation criminal charges against the heads of the companies, holding them responsible for all content published in these applications.

“Our aim is to hold social media platforms accountable for harmful content, while ensuring that the UK remains a great place to invest and grow tech businesses,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on the law.

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Legal processes to protect consumers

All social networks have operating agreements and policies, one of which is the minimum login age, which is generally 13 years old. Therefore, the law seeks to compel companies to create stricter alternatives to enforce this, in addition to warning underage users of the risks they may face when accessing the platform.

To do this, apps must conduct a risk assessment of the harm their services may cause to children and then explain how they will address those risks in their services.

The Office of Communications will be responsible for the enforcement of the law based on the premise: if the application provides content restriction, it must be done.

For example, yes tiktok or Instagram Tells the user, as part of the profile creation agreement, that the promotion of eating disorders is prohibited, that it is not illegal, but that if it is harmful, the law requires the social network to fulfill its promise, or it will be fined.

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In this way, they want to protect minors from harmful content and what harms them, as well as protect the rest of the users of publications that are within the legal framework, but affect others, such as racism or sexualization.

To do this, they also created new criminal offences, such as inciting self-harm, pornographic deepfake, which is altered sexual images, intimate photos without authorization, and cyberflashing, which is sending obscene content without permission.

At the same time, the law imposes an obligation on all companies to protect consumers from illegal content such as child sexual abuse images, revenge pornography, death threats, the sale of firearms and terrorist material.

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