(National File) The UK government has introduced a draft “Online Safety Bill” which would force websites to clamp down on legal speech, and even block them if they don’t comply.
The Online Safety Bill, which was confirmed to be part of the UK government’s legislative agenda in this week’s Queen’s Speech, was released in draft form on Wednesday. Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, said that the bill would “protect children on the internet, crack down on racist abuse on social media and through new measures to safeguard our liberties, create a truly democratic digital age.”
While the words of government ministers claimed that the bill would protect free speech and liberties, while only ensuring a saver internet for all, free speech campaigners have raised alarm bells that this couldn’t be further from the case.
The bill creates a “duty of care” on websites to ensure that explicitly legal speech which has an “adverse psychological impact” is clamped down upon. This means that if the bill is passed, not only would there be a greater standard of what speech is acceptable online and offline, but the government themselves would pass the buck to that decision down initially to the Big Tech companies.
The regulatory powers for the bill have been granted to Ofcom, the body that handles broadcast media and other communications in the UK. If a website is deemed by Ofcom to have not clamped down on legal speech, including “misinformation” as the bill requests, then they could be fined up to £18 million, or even have access blocked to them entirely.
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