The ECAJ says the Online Safety Act doesn’t do enough to protect vulnerable groups and needs to be strengthened urgently, in its submission to a review of the Act.
The volume of antisemitic content online and antisemitic incidents and discourse offline is increasing. Gaps in the Online Safety Act allow antisemitism to flourish online, and allowing it to flourish online contributes to it flourishing offline.
The ECAJ’s submission to a review of the Act made 16 recommendations, including:
- The Act needs to be widened to protect vulnerable groups, not just individuals.
- The Act needs to be widened to respond to online harms not explicitly captured by existing regimes: online hate, pile-on attacks, technology-facilitated abuse, abuse of public figures.
- The Act needs stronger reporting requirements and penalties.
- Services with higher risk and reach should have higher regulatory requirements.
- There should be a sliding scale of penalties, with greater penalties for more serious and systemic offending.
- Penalties need to be a meaningful deterrent and should take into account services’ global turnover.
Services should have an annual independent eSafety audit.
