Hello, I'm Imogen and I'm James.

And we're both tech and data specialists from Phil Fisher Silicon Valley.

Today we are talking about the UK's new online safety act and the key details you need to know.

At long last it has finally finished its journey through Parliament.

The revolutionary piece of legislation that we've been promised will overhaul the protections

for Vamurable Groups online.

But in its final form, who does the Act apply to?

When can we expect it to take effect?

And what do businesses need to do to make sure they comply?

So James, I feel like we've been hearing about this forever.

But for those of our listeners hearing about it for the first time, what is the online safety bill?

And why has it taken so long to be enacted?

Yeah, thanks, Imogen.

So to start off, it might worth just flagging that we're recording this before final royal assent has been given for the act.

And there's no date that has been set for that as yet.

So timelines that we're going to be talking through might need to move around a bit, but the hope

is that we're almost at the end of a very long road. So as the name suggests, the objective

of the online safety bill was to grapple with the challenges posed by harmful activity and content

online, particularly when

we were looking at vulnerable groups like children, with a rising concern about the use of

social media platforms to promote and facilitate extremism and the spread of misinformation, particularly

like we saw during the 2017 UK general election, as well as concerns around childhood bullying

...