As part of the Plan for Change, tougher sanctions will be brought in to combat the unacceptable content circulating online that advertises deadly and illegal knives and other offensive weapons to young people – or which glorifies or incites violence.
The government has already announced a significant fine of up to £10,000 for individual tech bosses whose platforms fail to remove this content within 48 hours following a police warning. Following significant consultation with the Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime, the government is going even further with an additional fine of up to £60,000 to be paid by the company. This means tech platforms and their executives could collectively face up to £70,000 in fines for every post relating to knife crime they fail to remove.
A greater range of online platforms will be liable under these new laws to also include online search engines as well as social media platforms and marketplaces, to capture all online providers which might currently be failing to remove content.
The move bolsters further measures set out yesterday by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Ofcom, to protect children from a broad spectrum of harmful online content including pornography, suicide and self-harm under the Online Safety Act. The laws will be some of the most comprehensive online safety protections in the world and mean platforms must protect children from content including suicide, self-harm, and pornography by taking steps such as introducing age checks like photo ID matching or facial age estimation and filtering out harmful content from algorithms.
Crime and Policing Minister, Dame Diana Johnson said:
The kind of content that young people scroll through every day online is sickening and I will not accept any notion that restricting access to this harmful material is too difficult.
Our children need more from us. That is why we are now going further than ever to hold to account the tech companies who are not doing enough to safeguard young people from content which incites violence, particularly in young boys.
Curbing the impact of this kind of content will be key for our mission to halve knife crime, but more widely our Plan for Change across government to do more protect young people from damaging and dangerous content.
As previously announced, the Home Office will introduce a new system to be carried out by a new policing unit backed by £1.75 million of funding to tackle the sale of knives online. This will operate out of the Met, but on a national scale. They will be responsible for issuing Content Removal Notices which inform the tech platform of illegal content, giving them a 48 hour window in which they must remove it.
Failure to comply will now result in a Civil Penalty Notice rather than taking the company to civil court, which include the respective fines for both executives and the wider company. This will mean sanctions can be inflicted much more quickly and is the same penalty that an employer may receive for employing an illegal worker to reflect the vital importance of removing harmful knife related content.
Patrick Green CEO of The Ben Kinsella Trust said:
The portrayal of knife crime on social media has significantly hindered efforts to reduce it. Beyond merely normalising, glamorising, and desensitising young people to violence, it has often provided an illegal avenue for purchasing knives without adequate safeguards, such as proper age verification.
Social media companies and their executives have repeatedly failed to address these issues. Therefore, I welcome today’s announcement from the government to take decisive action and hold these executives accountable.
I also thank the government for listening to the Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime and for extending these sanctions to include social media companies, who have a responsibility to keep young people safe on their platforms.
These sanctions are part of a range of measures being introduced by this government in its mission to halve knife crime in a decade. These include:
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banning zombie-style knives and ninja swords, with a nationwide surrender scheme launching in July
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introducing stronger 2-step verification for online retailers selling knives online and banning delivery of weapons to alternative addresses that don’t match the buyer
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requirement for online retailers to report any bulk or suspicious-looking purchases of knives to the police
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launching a consultation in spring on the introduction of a licensing scheme for retailers who wish to sell knives
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increasing prison sentences for selling weapons to under 18s from 6 months to 2 years
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introducing a new offence for possessing a weapon with intent for violence with a prison sentence of up to 4 years
The sanctions for tech platforms will be introduced via an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill which was tabled on 24 April for committee stage.
