Facebook and Twitter forced to reveal full scale of online hate in victory for The Sun’s Block the Bullying campaign
The report will detail how many abuse complaints are received by the online giants - and how many are taken down
FACEBOOK and Twitter face a crackdown on cyber bullies and online abuse - in a victory for the Sun's Block the Bullying campaign.
A new internet safety strategy is set to be rolled out tomorrow, with the social media giants told to sign up to an code of practice and reveal how many complaints it receives and acts on.
It comes after The Sun's Block the Bullying drive that has committed to educating children, parents and schools about the horrendous effect filming an act of bullying, then sharing it on social media, can have.
Together with the NSPCC, The Sun called on internet companies to pull down sickening videos of children beating up other children as soon as they are made aware of them - with politicians now pushing to make Britain the safest place in the world to go online.
NSPCC praised the work of campaigns like the Sun's Block the Bullying, with a spokesperson saying: "Keeping young people safe online is the biggest child protection issue of our generation.
"Social media companies are marking their own homework when it comes to keeping children safe, so a code of practice is definitely a step in the right direction but ‘how’ it is implemented will be crucial."
They added: "However, there’s no doubt a lack of focus on children’s safety is a missed opportunity.
"Young people face a unique set of risks when using the internet and it is important any strategy recognises the challenges they face online and requires industry to act to protect them."
Under the expected proposals, social media companies are being called onto voluntarily sign up to the new online code of practice that will see them reveal how they handle complaints, and the ways they moderate content.
Speaking at the Tory conference last week, Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said: "As a government we have a duty to protect children and vulnerable people from the less-family friendly corners of the internet."
She added: "We have all heard about the dangers of cyber-bulling, Twitter abuse and trolling on the internet.
"These are problems that Conservatives are tackling head on.
"I believe Britain should be the safest place in the world to go online and this government is determined to make that a reality. Put simply, behaviour that is unacceptable in normal life should be unacceptable on a computer screen."
She said she wanted to see a plan introduced to better educate children on how to be safe online.
Recent studies show girls are twice as likely than boys to be to the victims of cyber-bullying - but they are twice as likely to be the bullies themselves.
A 2016 report from the Cyberbullying Research Center indicated that a third of students between 12 and 17 had been targeted online.
Studies recently showed that kids returning to school were facing an epidemic of online bullying.
In February, a heartbroken mum revealed her 14-year-old daughter was driven to suicide by Snapchat bullies.
Prosecutors were recently advised to take hate crime spread on social media as seriously as offline offences.
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