The proposals includes fines for non-compliance of up to the greater of £18 million or 10% of a provider’s annual global revenue.

By Gail Crawford, Rachael Astin, Alain Traill, Katie Henshall, and Amy Smyth

On 12 May 2021, the UK government published the Online Safety Bill (the Bill), which aims to establish a new regulatory regime to address illegal and harmful content online, including fines and other sanctions in the event of non-compliance. While further developments and guidance are expected, the proposed regime seemingly will have significant implications for in-scope user-to-user services and search engines.

The Bill follows the publication of the Online Harms White Paper by the Home Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport in April 2019. An initial government response to the consultation was published in February 2020, and a full government response in December 2020. (For more information, see Latham’s blog posts on the White Paper launch; government interim response; and government full response).