\n<\/p>\n
Speaking on a gov.sg podcast Let\u2019s Table It, which was posted on Tuesday, Mrs Teo said it was helpful to set the OSC in law to ensure that the commission has credibility and speaks with a voice of authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That’s why we passed the law, so they can refer back to the law and say that the law says that there are these categories of harms. This is how these categories of harms are defined,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Commissioner of Online Safety Francis Ng likened online harms to something “dark and nasty” that “gets the keys to your head” and moves in “rent-free”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before the commission was formed, victims had no direct means of being able to take down harmful content online, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think the OSC decisively changed that game by creating a statutory reporting mechanism. This allows us to then reach out to the platforms, to the communicators, to get the harm taken off the internet,” he added.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the podcast, Mrs Teo also told reporters that the initial progress suggests that there is a need to provide better support to victims of online harms.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery often when we speak to these victims, their immediate need is clear and straightforward. They really want the harmful content to be removed as soon as possible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe platforms remain the first port of call. They have a responsibility to act on reports of harmful content. But when the victims need more support, today they have the Online Safety Commission to turn to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
About 17 per cent \u2013 or nearly one in five \u2013 of eligible reports involved a victim under 18 years old, the commission said. The youngest victim was a seven-year-old in a case of doxxing.<\/p>\n
For young victims, online harassment made up more than half of reported cases, at 51 per cent.<\/p>\n
About 31 per cent of eligible cases reported involved doxxing, 11 per cent involved image-based child abuse, 3.5 per cent involved online stalking and 3.5 per cent involved intimate image abuse.<\/p>\n
The commission said men and women were impacted at nearly equal rates. The oldest victim was a 68-year-old who was subjected to online harassment.<\/p>\n
In one case, a victim was subjected to sustained online sexual harassment from 2022.<\/p>\n
The harasser sent the victim unsolicited explicit content and created AI-generated deepfake nude images and videos of her. In total, over 1,000 posts were posted across multiple platforms.<\/p>\n
The commission issued a direction and the harmful content was successfully removed.<\/p>\n
In another case, a victim was subjected to sustained online harassment and stalking over a prolonged period,<\/p>\n
His stalker had created multiple social media accounts targeting him and approached his friends directly.<\/p>\n
The stalker also impersonated the victim and people in his network to gather information. The harmful conduct extended to death threats and involved a parallel police investigation.<\/p>\n
The commission flagged the social media accounts, which were successfully removed for violating community guidelines, and the victim was referred to the support centre SHECARES for counselling and guidance.<\/p>\n
In a case of doxxing, a victim was targeted in a forum thread soliciting her details and negative information about her.<\/p>\n
The post contained negative allegations about her character and reputation, with multiple users leaving negative comments about her. One user identified the victim and her partner by name.<\/p>\n
In response, the commission issued an Access Disabling Direction to the forum to disable the original post and the identified comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Speaking on a gov.sg podcast Let\u2019s Table It, which was posted on Tuesday, Mrs Teo said it was helpful to set the OSC in law…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}