The UK government has brought its long-awaited Online Safety Bill (OSB) before Parliament, introducing new criminal sanctions for tech company executives and senior managers alongside further criminal offences.

As it currently stands, the OSB would impose a statutory “duty of care” on technology companies that host user-generated content or allow people to communicate, meaning they would be legally obliged to proactively identify, remove and limit the spread of both illegal and “legal but harmful” content.

Failure to do so could result in fines of up to 10% of their turnover by the online harms regulator, which was confirmed to be Ofcom in December 2020.

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