People who use social media posts to encourage self-harm face criminal prosecution under government changes to the revived online safety law.
Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan will update the bill to criminalize promoting self-harm when the legislation returns to parliament next month.
The move follows this year’s inquest into the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing material online related to self-harm, suicide and depression. In a ground-breaking verdict, the coroner ruled that the “negative effects of online content” contributed to Molly’s death.
“I am determined that the hateful trolls who encourage the young and vulnerable to self-harm are brought to justice,” Donelan said. “So I’m strengthening our online safety laws to make sure these vile acts are stopped and the perpetrators face jail.”
The proposed amendment to the bill, which returns to the House of Commons on December 5, also requires social media companies to prevent such content from appearing online or face the threat of substantial fines. The bill imposes a duty of care on technology platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to prevent illegal content, which will now include material encouraging self-harm, from being exposed to users. Communications regulator Ofcom will have the power to impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s revenue.
Donelan said: “Social media companies can no longer remain silent bystanders. They will face fines for allowing this abusive and destructive behavior to continue on their platforms under our laws.”
Posts such as: “Who would a suicidal girl love?” continue to spread through social media technology platforms?
Progress on the online safety bill has been halted twice since it was introduced to parliament in 2021 amid concerns from Tories over its impact on free speech. In July, Kemi Badenoch, then a Conservative leadership candidate, said the bill was not in a “suitable state” to become law and, in an apparent reference to the content provisions of the bill that are “legal but harmful”, that “we shouldn’t be legislating for hurt feelings”. The then culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, responded, questioning whether encouraging others to take their own lives should be defined as “hurt feelings”.
Donelan indicated that criticism from some parliamentary colleagues would be addressed by removing provisions on legal but harmful material for adults. In September, he said the part of the bill that addresses content that causes harm but falls below the threshold of criminality is “the part we’re going to change” when the legislation comes back.
A spokesman for the Molly Rose Foundation, a charity set up by Molly Russell’s family, said the proposal to criminalize promoting self-harm “seems like a significant move” but that more content should be addressed.” harmful but legal” to the bill.
“Based on evidence presented at the Molly Russell inquest in September, the ‘harmful but legal’ content likely did more harm to Molly’s mental health,” the spokesman said. Referring to one of the posts seen by Molly and cited in the inquest, they added: “This new offense would prevent posts such as: ‘Who would love a suicidal girl?’ or would they continue to be spread across social media technology platforms? It is therefore important that other ‘harmful but legal’ content, of the kind we know was harmful to Molly, also falls within the scope of the bill.” .
The inquest has given fresh impetus to the reintroduction of the bill after a coroner’s court heard evidence that the teenager had consumed large amounts of harmful material online before her death. Of the 16,300 pieces of content Molly interacted with on Instagram in the six months before she died, 2,100 were related to suicide, self-harm and depression. It also emerged that Pinterest, the image-sharing platform, had sent her content recommendation emails with titles such as “10 Depression Pins You Might Like”.
Promoting suicide is already illegal and the bill will strengthen provisions to protect children from harmful content when it returns.
A change to the bill has already been confirmed with the announcement last week of new offenses covering the taking or sharing of intimate images of a person. It will criminalize the sharing of pornographic deepfakes (images or videos manipulated to look like a person) and downblousing, where photos are taken of a person’s top. The installation of equipment to take an illicit image of a person will also be penalized.