1. In October 2017, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) published its Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper.[1] The Green Paper considered proposals to tackle a wide range of online harms including, for example, hate crime and cyber bullying, and set out three key principles:[2]
The Green Paper explained that the Home Office led the government’s response to online child sexual exploitation and abuse, so the Internet Safety Strategy would only make “appropriate links … where the Strategy offers additional solutions to these problems”.[3]
2. The government invited responses to the Green Paper and in May 2018 published its own response.[4] Its response set out plans for a social media code of practice and a requirement for companies to produce transparency reports providing data about the scale of harmful content on their platforms. The government also announced its intention to publish a joint DCMS and Home Office White Paper[5] which specifically included reference to both harmful and illegal online content.
3. In April 2019, the Online Harms White Paper was published.[6] Having set out its proposals (considered below), the government posed a number of consultation questions. The consultation period ran from 8 April 2019 to 1 July 2019 and thus spanned the second public hearing in this investigation. The initial consultation response was published in 2020.[7]