British Secretary for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Nadine Dorries has warned that Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg could end up in prison if the company, which is now known as Meta, fails to comply with new online safety legislation.
Andy Burrows, head of child safety online policy at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), a British child protection charity, however, remained downbeat on Dorries' pledge.
Burrows insisted that unless the Online Safety Bill is "strengthened sufficiently, criminal sanctions offer bark but no bite".
According to him, "children need well-designed regulation that learns lessons from other sectors if the bill is to match the rhetoric and prevent inherently avoidable abuse".
The remarks come a few days after the government boosted the bill with the addition of a number of new criminal offences which could result in jail sentences for high-ranking executives of internet platforms.
The list of priority offences currently includes revenge porn, hate crimes, fraud, the sale of illegal drugs or weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, as well as people smuggling and sexual exploitation. Under the Online Safety Bill, any material containing the aforementioned offences must be removed from social platforms and steps taken to stop users encountering it.
As for the just-added offences, they pertain to posting messages that convey a threat of serious harm, sending a communication with the goal of causing psychological harm or serious emotional distress, and deliberately sending a false message with the intention of causing harm.
She expressed hope that the bill would be a "notice to the online platforms to say here it is, we're letting you know what it is now, so start doing what you need to do".
The culture minister was echoed by Damian Collins, the Conservative chair of a joint committee of MPs and peers that scrutinised the bill, who described the changes as something that would "give social media businesses more clarity on what's expected of them, and users more certainty that they will be protected, especially children".
The online safety legislation obliging social media companies to shield their users from harmful content became a hot topic following the murder of Conservative MP David Amess on 15 October 2021. The suspected killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was charged with murder and accused of plotting terrorist attacks. Amid the aftermath of the Tory lawmaker's killing, Labour leader Keir Starmer pointed the finger at social media platforms, arguing they "are failing to crack down on extremism" and calling for "tough sanctions".
Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram, were earlier bashed for failing to do enough to prevent content that promoted "hate and division" or created a toxic environment for their young users, especially teenage girls. Meta was recently sued for £2.3 billion ($3.1 billion) due to claims that at least 44 million Facebook users in Britain had their personal data exploited after signing up to the social networking giant.