DIGITAL Secretary Matt Hancock has today told the NSPCC’s annual conference that social networks owe a duty of care to their users.
The Government will publish a White Paper in the autumn, setting out laws to regulate social networks as part of the Internet Safety Strategy.
It has not yet been revealed what model regulation will take, and whether it will place a legal duty of care on social networks.
Speaking at the How Safe Are Our Children 2018 conference in Westminster, Mr Hancock said: “Social media platforms are effectively public spaces. And the owner of any public space, online or offline, has a duty of care to the public who are invited in.”
The NSPCC is calling for the forthcoming White Paper to include measures to force social networks to build protections for children into their platforms, and to require sites to publish annual safety reports to reveal how many safety reports they receive, and how they resolve those reports.
