Postdigital Intimacies for Online Safety

This report offers a multi-sector response to the Online Safety Bill (OSB). The shape and content of the OSB has generated discussion amongst policy specialists, stakeholders and lobbyists in key services and sectors, political advisors and appointed representatives, and academics and researchers – as well as a general public interested in what the OSB will mean for people made vulnerable or at risk of harms online. We report on the discussions that took place in four co-production workshops with representatives from the areas of: intimate digital health tools and services marketed to those who identify as women; image-based and technologically-enabled abuse; “toxic” internet communities; and protections for people with mental health conditions and neurodiversity. As the OSB reaches the final stages of approval through the UK government, this report provides a response from people working in these areas, highlighting the voices and perspectives of those invested in ensuring a vibrant, equal, inclusive, and safe digital society can flourish. Our recommendations include the need for: robust, transparent risk assessment and frameworks for preventing harm that work across life-stages; going above and beyond the current OSB legislation to raise awareness and educate to reduce harms; recognition in the OSB and elsewhere of the national threat of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG); and, an increase in information sharing and working across sectors of the technology industry, service providers, and charity, law, and government to generate new approaches for a better future.