Nine out of 10 in Wales back social network regulation as NSPCC launches plan to tame Wild West Web

• New survey reveals more than 90 per cent of British parents support statutory regulation.

• NSPCC launches detailed proposals for taming the Wild West Web.

• New criminal offence for gross breaches by tech companies.

• Sanctions to include hefty fines of millions, shaming tactics and disqualification of directors.

Tuesday 13 February

MORE than nine out of ten adults in Wales (94 per cent) back regulation of social networks to make tech firms legally responsible for protecting children, a new NSPCC survey has revealed.

Sixty per cent adults in Wales believe that children are not protected from sexual grooming by social networks and a similar proportion (57 per cent) disagreed that young people were safe from inappropriate content on social media, such as self-harm, violence or suicide.

Across Britain, nine out of ten parents surveyed supported regulation of social media to keep children safer.

The figures emerged as the children’s charity released a detailed proposal setting out how a robust independent regulator should enforce a legal duty of care to children on social networks.

The NSPCC’s ‘Taming The Wild West Web’ vision, drawn up with the assistance of international law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, proposes the introduction of a social media regulator to force social networks to protect children on their platforms.

The regulator would:

• have legal powers to investigate tech firms and demand information about their child safety measures;
• require social networks to meet a set of minimum child safeguarding standards (making their platforms safe by design) and to proactively tackle online harms including grooming;
• deploy tough sanctions for failures to protect their young users – including steep fines for tech firms of up to €20m, bans for boardroom directors, shaming tactics and a new criminal offence for platforms that commit gross breaches of duty of care (akin to corporate negligence and corporate manslaughter).

A huge majority of adults in the NSPCC’s survey also backed a call for social networks to be legally required to make children’s accounts safe, including the highest privacy settings by default, friend suggestions turned off, not being publicly searchable, and geolocation settings turned off.

Des Mannion, the head of NSPCC Cymru/Wales, said: “The support for statutory regulation of social networks is now overwhelming.

“It is clear that society will no longer tolerate a free for all under which tech firms allow children to operate in a precarious online world with a myriad of preventable risks.

“Social media bosses should be made to take responsibility for the essential protection of children on their platforms and face tough consequences if they don’t.  Over a decade of self-regulation has failed, and enough is enough.

“The UK Government’s Online Harms White Paper must impose a legal duty of care on social networks.  Our proposal to tame the Wild West Web would make the UK a world leader in protecting children online. We urge the UK Government to be bold and introduce these measures without delay.”

Under the NSPCC plans, the regulator would have legal powers to demand platforms to disclose information so it could better understand the extent of the risk of harm and abuse and to investigate potential breaches.

Tech firms would have a duty to risk assess its platforms and promptly notify the regulator if children had come to harm or been put at risk on their sites.

Breaches of duty of care would result in enforcement notices and requirements to publish information on their platforms about the breach.  In the case of gross breaches, tech firms would be charged with a criminal offence and directors overseeing the duty of care could face disqualification.

The public can support the NSPCC’s Wild West Web campaign by signing the petition now.