Big Tech Forced to Remove Animal Torture Videos Under New Online Safety Laws

Undated photo of a bulldog. Jacob King/PA

Social media firms will be forced to remove content facilitating animal torture under upcoming UK online safety laws.

An amendment tabled in Parliament on Friday will require social media platforms to crack down on content encouraging or facilitating animal torture.

The amendment comes after campaigning by Labour peer Baroness Gillian Merron to add animal torture to the Online Safety Bill.

On Thursday, the UK government listed section 4(1) (unnecessary suffering) of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 as a priority offence in the Bill.

Animal Torture Content

That means that animal torture content will now be classified in the bill as a priority offence, bringing it to the same class as other types of content like child sexual abuse, threats to kill, and revenge pornography that social media companies will be required to remove or face huge fines.

The government noted recent examples of facilitating this includes the Monkey Haters case, a year-long BBC investigation which uncovered a global monkey torture ring stretching from Indonesia to the United States.

The BBC found that found that hundreds of customers in the United States, UK and other countries, paid people in Indonesia to torture and kill baby long-tailed macaques on film.

The government said that The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 now “provides one of the toughest sanctions in Europe.”

It said it has increased the maximum sentences available to our courts for the most serious animal cruelty cases. We have raised sentences from six months to five years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said this “kind of activity is deeply disturbing and not something an animal-friendly nation like the UK should ever tolerate.”

“Social media sites must not be used as platforms to promote the sadistic and harrowing actions of some deeply depraved internet users, and today we’re taking steps to make sure it is swiftly removed so both animals and users can be protected.

“The Online Safety Bill will make the UK the safest place in the world to be a child online, and it will now stop the proliferation of animal abuse too.”

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey added that “the UK has some of the highest animal welfare standards worldwide.”

“Animal abuse is abhorrent and should not be circulating online, so these new rules will ensure social media platforms act swiftly to remove this content.”

Online Harms

The bill, which is in its final stages, will give Ofcom, the communications regulator traditionally responsible for regulating sectors including TV, radio, fixed-line and mobile phones, and the postal services, power to regulate the internet.

The biggest social media platforms will have to carry out risk assessments on the types of harms that could appear on their services and how they plan to address them, setting out how they will do this in their terms of service.

On Thursday, the government claimed that it won’t use powers in the Online Safety Bill to scan messaging apps for harmful content after saying the technology to do it doesn’t yet exist.

It said a clause in the upcoming online safety laws that would have allowed regulators access to private messages sent using end-to-end encryption won’t be enforced.

Conservative Peer Lord Moylan has previously told NTD’s “British Thought Leaders” programme that handing powers to “independent and unaccountable” regulators is a “hopeless set-up for in a democratic society” and “totally offensive to democratic principles.”

During the House of Lords debate, Lord Moylan said the Bill “does not address the fact that end-to-end encryption will be breached if Ofcom finds a way of doing what the Bill empowers it to do, so why have we empowered it to do that?”

He added that he was concerned about “this bizarre governance structure where decisions of crucial political sensitivity are being outsourced to an unaccountable regulator. ”