Data rights
Social media leaders will be forced to provide orphaned parents with the content of their children's accounts to help them understand why they died under new laws announced by the government.
Ofcom, an online watchdog, will gain new powers to request personal data on behalf of bereaved parents and coroners following a series of high-profile cases in which they were denied access to accounts of dead children.
Executives who refuse to hand over social media content face up to a year in prison and fines of up to 10% of their companies' global turnover.
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Announcing changes to the Internet Safety Bill in the House of Lords, Culture Minister Lord Parkinson said companies will no longer be allowed to “fence in” families looking for answers to the question of social media's role in their deaths.
“We need to ensure that companies can’t get in the way of parents who have lost a child and that those parents are treated with the humanity and compassion they deserve,” he told colleagues.
Actions to be set out in the amendments to a bill next week are aimed at preventing a recurrence of the trauma suffered by the parents of 13-year-old Molly Russell, who were denied access to her social media accounts for nearly five years after she took her own life. her life.
The obligation to take care of her
According to their lawyer, Merry Varney, social media provided Molly's parents with only a “tiny fraction” of the requested material, despite being asked to by the coroner.
Even data provided by companies showed that Molly received 16,000 “destructive” posts in the past six months calling for self-harm, harassment and even suicide.
The coroner concluded that she died from an act of suicide-harm while suffering from depression and “the negative effects of online content” that “more than minimally contributed” to her death.
Under the amendments, Ofcom will have the authority to require all social media firms of any size to provide data that will help explain to orphaned parents and investigators how and why a child may have died.
This may include content that the child has “viewed or otherwise interacted with”, algorithms that may have resulted in hazardous material, and the way the child has interacted with it, such as viewing, sharing, saving, zooming, or pausing.
Any company management that fails to provide or retain content “without good reason” can be fined up to 10 percent of their firm's global turnover or sentenced to up to one year in prison. Currently, the maximum fine for not cooperating with a coroner is only £1,000.
It follows a campaign led by Baroness Kidron, who introduced the amendments first, and orphaned parents, including Molly Russell's father Ian.
Baroness Kidron said: “This is an important day for the families of those who have been harmed online. The government has promised to provide bereaved parents and investigators with humane access to critical information at a tragic time.
“We must create a child-safe online world where tragedies like those of today's families are not commonplace. Our shared goal is to provide security by default and create the digital world that children deserve.”
MP Sajid Javid, former home secretary and supporter of Baroness Kidron's amendments, said: “This is a landmark moment in providing the families of the victims with a humane path to justice. For too long, they have been met with delays and deafening silence after the loss of their loved ones.
“We have always hoped that the tragic lessons of their loss could form the basis for a new beginning. From today, this new beginning can begin to take shape.”
Lord Parkinson, Minister for Culture, said they would introduce their own amendments that would also aim to make parent access to data “easier “. and humane.”
“Big companies need to be transparent with parents about their data access options and need to respond quickly to their requests,” he said. “All platforms will be required to comply with Ofcom's requests to provide information about the deceased child's online activity.”
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