by Michael Gove, Spectator
The Online Safety Act is an abomination. It is a licence to crush free speech. And we make clear our opposition to this wretched law, and the whole cult of ‘safety’, in our leader. In our cover story, John Power examines the effect we are already seeing as a result of the legislation, which came into force last Friday. Social media posts considered unsettling for the government have been suppressed; citizens who expressed concern about sexual attacks on women and girls have had their posts automatically flagged as pornographic. An act that was intended to protect children now allows the government to control the channels through which dissent is organised. The deliberate conflation of privacy concerns with child protection is a sinister form of emotional blackmail. No academic recapitulation of Britain’s constitutional history can capture the importance of its liberty better than Wordsworth: ‘We must be free or die, who speak the tongue/ That Shakespeare spake.’ Once we no longer believe that, then Britain as our forebears would have understood it will cease to exist.
Read also: The road to online Hell is paved with good intentions by Melisa Tourt, The Critic