How Edited and Disappearing Content Poses a Challenge to The UK’s Online Safety Regulations Tackling Harm Facing Young People Online

Colegate, Ellie

Abstract

Two timelines are created when a piece of user-generated content is published online. One concerns the content and its existence; the other is connected to its impact on users exposed to or interacting with such. These timelines, if mapped, could assist regulators in identifying, mapping, and reducing the harm users experience as a consequence of their online interactions. A piece of content's topic, nature, or format can cause considerable harm to younger users. Such impacts have driven the works of governments and international conglomerates alike in introducing regulations to reduce the presence of harmful content online. However, it has been shown that content, regardless of the topic or format, can be edited, disappear by design, or be removed.

As users are granted the ability to retrospectively edit and amend their content in parallel to the widespread consensus of the presence of harmful content online and the introduction of regulations, such abilities could make harmful content harder to detect and identify. By directly focusing on the new thresholds for identifying and reducing content harmful to young people outlined in the UK’s Online Safety Act, this exploratory paper examines the challenges edited and disappearing content poses to a successful regulatory framework actively reducing harm online. It focuses on how two timelines can exist online and how the direct conflict between regulators and control platforms may negatively impact the mission of reducing harm to online users. Presenting pragmatic regulatory ways forward to reduce harmful content regardless of technical frontiers.

Citation

Colegate, E. (2024, March). How Edited and Disappearing Content Poses a Challenge to The UK’s Online Safety Regulations Tackling Harm Facing Young People Online. Presented at Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference 2024, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference 2024
• Conference Location: University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom
• Start Date: Mar 26, 2024
• End Date: Mar 28, 2024
• Publication Date: Mar 27, 2024
• Deposit Date: Apr 4, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 9, 2024
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/33290709
• Related Public URLs: https://www.slsa.ac.uk/index.php/annual-conference