Social Media: Regulation
(asked on 8th April 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the Answer of 25 March 2025 to Question 39835 on Social Media: Regulation, whether (a) his Department and (b) Ofcom has made an assessment of the impact of designating end-to-end encryption as a risk factor in the (i) Illegal Harms Codes of Practice and (ii) illegal content risk assessment guidance on regulated businesses' willingness to offer end-to-end encryption to users in the UK.
Answered by
Feryal Clark
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Ofcom is responsible for assessing the possible implications of its codes of practice and guidance under the Online Safety Act (OSA).
As previously noted, the OSA does not ban any service design and the European Conventions of Human Rights (ECHR) requires all UK public bodies, including Ofcom, to act in a way that complies with ECHR rights. Companies are legal persons having rights afforded by the ECHR.
DSIT will carry out a Post Implementation Review to assess the effectiveness of the legislation, including how the OSA has addressed harmful online content while protecting UK users’ rights.