Turning conversation into action: designing a safer online world

We were delighted to launch our Safety by Design Code of Practice in Parliament this week, at a roundtable hosted by Tom Collins MP, and attended by MPs, Peers, members of the OSA Network, policymakers and regulators.

Co-produced by experts from 5 Rights Foundation, NSPCC, Molly Rose Foundation, Flippgen, Refuge, Glitch, End Violence Against Women Coalition and Internet Watch Foundation and backed by 35 other members of our Network, it is a product that shows what good looks like at a time when demands for the Government to follow this approach are building.

In the past week, two Select Committees - the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and the Education Select Committee - called in their responses to the Government's online safety consultation for a stronger focus on safety by design.

"We recommend that the Government uses the powers available to it to impose clear, enforceable duties on platforms to prioritise child safety by design, backed by meaningful sanctions for non-compliance." (Education Select Committee)

"Services should be safe by design for all users. Features that can cause behavioural addiction, such as infinite scrolling, should be designed out in social media and AI online services." (Science, Innovation and Technology Committee)

Parliamentarians attending the roundtable - including Baroness Kidron, Baroness Morgan, Baroness Keeley, Sir Jeremy Wright MP and Anneliese Dodds - also voiced their support for this approach.

Today, the Chair of the National Police Chiefs Council has told the BBC that child sexual abuse online had worsened because tech firms had chosen not to make child safety "a core design principle": "This refusal to prioritise safety by design is boosting criminals' speed and reach", said Chief Constable Gavin Stephens.

As we set out at the Parliamentary roundtable, the vast majority of other sectors are not allowed to develop and roll out products and services that have not been safety tested. It would be inconceivable to think that toy manufacturers could market toys without proving that they had met basic product safety standards. Or for food to be sold that did not meet basic food safety rules. Or for cars to be on the road that had not passed rigorous safety testing.

The Online Safety Act was intended to stop that happening with social media and other user-to-user services. It says so in the first section of the Act: that regulated services must be safe by design. But this has not been delivered.

The former DSIT Secretary of State 18 months ago asked Ofcom to make “safety by design” one of its Strategic Priorities for Online Safety. In response, the regulator gave a list of all the things they said they were already doing and that they “will continue to have regard to the SSP as we carry out our work to make all UK users online lives safer.”

Their codes of practice - which were meant to be “iterative” - are largely preserved as narrow lists of ex-post measures, asking services to undertake the bare minimum to address harm after it has happened, not to look upstream at how their own design choices may be causing that harm.

On the day of our launch, at DSIT questions, the current Secretary of State was asked by Monica Harding MP why there was no online safety legislation in the King's Speech and if she would adopt our code of practice on safety by design to meet the overwhelming public support - as evidenced in the polling we published alongside the Code - for a more comprehensive approach to online safety regulation. In response, the Secretary of State listed all the criminal offences she had introduced in the past 12 months but made no commitment to anything beyond the narrow options in the existing consultation.

In the meantime, industry is laughing all the way to the bank. TikTok went so far recently as to tell the Education Select Committee - in an inquiry session that cited evidence that children are being groomed on TikTok - that their services are “safe by design”.

The public, the parents, children and safety experts have had enough. We’re effectively being gaslit by industry all the while harms are increasing online. Children are ever more at risk - that is unfortunately a given - and deliberate, harmful design choices are also driving measurable harm to women, minoritised groups, vulnerable adults. We need the regulator and the Government to act to stop the harms - from which these companies are profiting at huge expense to our children and to everyone in society - at source.

That’s why the OSA Network worked with eight expert partners to develop this code of practice. It sets out what safety by design looks like, drawing on established industry principles and with a cross-harm impact. It is ready for adoption - there is nothing to stop Ofcom introducing such a code now - and we have also provided an amendment to the OSA to set out a definition for what this means, to ensure there is clarity for all players going forward.

At the Parliamentary roundtable, we called on the Government to ensure that it does not lose the opportunity of this consultation to deliver what the OSA promised. In opposition, the Labour Party were a strong supporter of the legislation and pushed the then Government hard to go further and faster, even promising a first session Bill to improve the Act when they came into power.

That Bill never materialised. And there is no legislation on the horizon anytime soon. The Government is happy to regulate for growth, but not regulate for safety, preferring instead - but only when pushed - to tinker round the edges in a piecemeal way, or introduce yet more criminal offences. Attempting to prosecute your way out of a problem without addressing the profit-driven motives of the companies designing these services only shifts further burdens and resources onto overstretched public services - from the police and criminal justice system, through to health and education.

This is not just about who takes responsibility for the harm but about who shoulders the costs. Our Code offers the Government an opportunity to take a small but significant step towards rebalancing the scales.

Finally, and crucially, parental demands for bans or for restrictions on limited numbers of features and functionalities - all of which Ofcom could already have age-gated within their own powers - will only go so far. It may seem better than nothing. But without using this opportunity to address harmful design - in its totality - the Government will only create a further headache for itself further down the line when what it appears to be promising, a safer online life, fails to materialise.

You can access our full Code of Practice and our Parliamentary brief as PDFs at the bottom of the page.