Report urges UK government to beef up online safety measure

LONDON (AP) — Proposed British rules aimed at cracking down on harmful online content should be beefed up with tougher measures like making it illegal to send unsolicited graphic images, requiring porn sites to ensure children can't gain access and moving faster to hold tech executives criminally liable for failing to uphold the regulations, lawmakers said in a new report.

The committee of lawmakers recommended a series of major changes to the U.K. government's draft online safety bill early Tuesday that would make digital and social media companies more responsible for protecting users from child abuse, racist content and other harmful material found on their platforms.

The proposals by Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government and similar rules that the European Union is working on underline how Europe is at the vanguard of the global movement to rein in the power of digital giants like Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

The committee of British lawmakers is scrutinizing the draft bill to offer recommendations on how the government can improve it before it's presented to Parliament next year for approval.

“The era of self-regulation for big tech has come to an end," committee chairman Damian Collins said. “The companies are clearly responsible for services they have designed and profit from, and need to be held to account for the decisions they make."

The committee has been hearing evidence from tech executives, researchers and whistleblowers such as former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen, whose revelations alleging that the company put profits ahead of safety have galvanized legislative and regulatory efforts around the world to clamp down on online hate speech and misinformation.

Under the proposed rules, the U.K.'s communications regulator, Ofcom, would be appointed to investigate internet...