Prime Minister Declares War on Online Misogyny with Strict Tech Regulations
In a powerful intervention addressing what he terms a national emergency, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced sweeping new measures to combat the proliferation of nonconsensual intimate imagery online. The government will mandate that technology companies must remove revenge porn and deepfake nudes within a strict 48-hour window or face severe consequences, including multi-million-pound fines and potential service blocks within the United Kingdom.
New Powers for Ofcom and Strict Timelines
Writing exclusively for the Guardian, Starmer emphasized that the burden of tackling abuse must no longer fall on victims. He argued that institutional misogyny woven into societal structures has allowed the problem to be minimized and ignored for too long. The forthcoming amendments to the crime and policing bill will grant Ofcom, the media regulator, new enforcement powers expected to be operational by summer.
Companies will be legally required to take down flagged content within two days. Failure to comply could result in penalties of up to 10% of their qualifying global revenue or having their platforms blocked for UK users. This policy also extends to regulating AI chatbots, specifically targeting tools like X's Grok, which recently generated nonconsensual sexualized images until government intervention.
A Systemic Approach to a Digital Crisis
The Prime Minister outlined a comprehensive strategy to shift responsibility from victims to perpetrators and enabling platforms. Too often, those victims have been left to fight alone—chasing action site to site, reporting the same material again and again, only to see it reappear elsewhere hours later, Starmer wrote. He described stories of women and girls having intimate images spread online as the type of story that, as a parent, makes your heart drop to your stomach.
Key components of the plan include:
- Empowering victims to report images directly to tech firms or to Ofcom, triggering cross-platform alerts.
- Exploring digital watermarking technology to automatically flag revenge porn images when reposted.
- Issuing new guidance to internet providers on blocking rogue sites specializing in nonconsensual content.
- Elevating the creation or sharing of nonconsensual intimate images to a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, equating it with child abuse imagery and terrorism.
Technological Challenges and Industry Response
While platforms like Google, Meta, and X already use hash matching—a digital fingerprinting technique—to combat child sexual abuse material, experts note significant hurdles. Anne Craanen of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue acknowledged that a 48-hour removal timeframe is feasible but may not incentivize faster corporate action. She highlighted that terrorist content in the EU faces even shorter deadlines.
Craanen warned that hash matching is imperfect and can be circumvented by minor alterations to media. The rise of AI tools exacerbates this issue, allowing abusive content to be quickly modified and spread, evading detection. The Grok nudification tool crisis in January, with thousands of bikini-image requests per hour, illustrated how rapidly such abuse can escalate.
Broader Cultural and Political Implications
Starmer's announcement comes amid broader scrutiny of misogyny within government and politics. The Prime Minister stated his determination to transform the culture of government: to challenge the structures that still marginalise women's voices. He emphasized that merely counting women in senior roles is insufficient; what matters is whether their perspectives drive tangible change.
This policy shift responds to a alarming trend where nonconsensual real or deepfake images are used for blackmail, linked by charities to several tragic suicides. By placing the onus on tech giants and establishing clear, enforceable standards, the UK government aims to dismantle the digital ecosystems that treat women and girls as a commodity to be used and shared.
