As part of a revision to the laws controlling online behaviour, the British government plans to make it illegal to incite others to injure themselves online and will punish social media companies that do not take down such content.
Although it is currently against the law to advocate for suicide, the British Ministry of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport said in a statement that it now wants to mandate that social media companies remove a wider array of content.
Digital Secretary Michelle Donelan stated that social media companies ‘can no longer stand by as passive bystanders… and they’ll face sanctions for permitting this abusive and damaging behaviour to continue on their platforms under our laws.’
The ideas, according to the Conservative government, are intended to prevent people from seeing pictures and videos that Molly Russell, a 14-year-old whose passing in 2017 raised ongoing public anxiety, might have viewed.
The coroner who was looking into her death concluded in September that social media platforms had provided her with content that ‘romanticised acts of self-harm by young people.’
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