Tech companies have been ordered to take images of non-consensual intimacy offline within 48 hours. Failing to do so exposes them to fines of up to 10% of their global annual turnover or having their services blocked in the United Kingdom.
An amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill requires companies to spring into action and remove intimate images without a victim’s consent in less than 48 hours.
According to a press release from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, victims should only need to flag such images once. In addition, these images should be removed across multiple platforms in one go, with new uploads being automatically deleted.
“No woman should have to chase platform after platform, waiting days for an image to come down. Under this government, you report once, and you’re protected everywhere. The internet must be a space where women and girls feel safe, respected, and able to thrive,” Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said in a statement.
Alex Davies-Jones, Minister for Violence Against Women and Girls, adds that these new rules will send a clear message to companies.
“By requiring companies to remove non‑consensual intimate images within 48 hours, we are finally putting the onus where it belongs, on the tech firms with the power and resources to act. It’s a vital step towards making the online world safer, fairer, and more respectful for women and girls,” she stated.
In an opinion piece that was published in The Guardian on Thursday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the violence against women a “national emergency.” He stated that the posting of non-consensual intimate images is part of that crisis and that it must stop immediately.
“Too often, those victims have been left to fight alone, chasing takedown of harmful content site to site, reporting the same material again and again, only to see it reappear elsewhere hours later. That is not justice. It is failure,” Starmer wrote.
“We are putting tech companies on notice: any non-consensual intimate image that is flagged must be taken down within 48 hours. The burden of tackling abuse must no longer fall on victims. It must fall on perpetrators and on the companies that enable harm,” the Prime Minister added.
On Wednesday, the United Kingdom’s media regulator Ofcom said that it will speed up its decision on proposed new requirements for tech companies to proactively use technology to block illegal intimate images at the source.
One of the measures is “hash matching,” a technology that websites and apps can use to detect intimate images that are shared without consent, including sexual deepfakes.
Ofcom says it will announce its final decision on its proposals in May.
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