Over 500 cases of online harms reported to S’pore agency in first two months; youngest victim aged 7

SINGAPORE - The newly-minted Online Safety Commission (OSC) received more than 500 reports of online harm within two months of its launch.

Close to one-fifth of eligible reports involved victims aged 18 and below, with the youngest being a seven-year-old victim of doxing, said the OSC on Sept 22.

The commission declined to specify how many of the over 500 reports were deemed eligible.

The agency began operations on June 29 to address victims’ frustrations with slow platform responses, by granting the agency legal authority to force entities such as platforms and group administrators to remove harmful content quickly through takedown orders.

For a start, the 40 employee-strong OSC is tackling five of the most prevalent and serious online harms: intimate image abuse, image-based child abuse, doxing, online harassment, and online stalking.

Doxing and online harassment made up the bulk of eligible reports submitted to the OSC, which received an equal number of complaints from both men and women.

Ineligible reports include those involving online harms that the OSC plans to deal with at a later date. These include online impersonation, inauthentic material or deepfake abuse, online instigation of disproportionate harm, incitement of violence and enmity, non-consensual disclosure of private information, as well as publication of false material or reputationally harmful statements.

Over 90 per cent of reports deemed eligible were resolved by the OSC. Unresolved cases typically involved unresponsive platforms, websites, or communicators, which the OSC will investigate.

The OSC is backed by the newly-enacted Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act, or OSRAA, allowing it to impose penalties if its directions to content creators, forum administrators and platforms for content takedowns or account restrictions are not followed.

These platforms include Facebook, HardwareZone Forums, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.

Flouting OSC directions can lead to fines of up to $20,000 and jail terms of up to 12 months for individuals, or fines up to $500,000 for entities. A further fine of up to $50,000 for each day the offence continues may be imposed after conviction.

“The OSC will also consider other options in its toolkit, such as to issue an access blocking order to block a website that failed to comply with a direction issued by the Commissioner,” said OSC.

One of the resolved cases involved a victim of online sexual harassment. Since 2022, she had received unsolicited explicit content.

More than 1,000 AI-generated deepfake nude images and videos of her were also posted across multiple platforms. These were taken down after the OSC issued a direction to the platforms.

Another victim had been harassed, stalked and sent death threats on social media. The OSC directed the platforms to take down the offending accounts, and referred the victim to independent non-profit SHECARES for counselling and guidance.