The Online Safety Bill is an assault on free speech
by Radomir Tylecote, spiked:
The government has no place policing ‘legal but harmful’ online content.
The government plans to put its Online Safety Bill before parliament in the Queen’s Speech later this spring. The bill describes some genuine harms, like distributing sexual images of children and information on how to make a suicide bomb. But it also seeks to prohibit a wide range of ‘harms’ which would otherwise be legal.
The Free Speech Union has been monitoring the progress of the bill since it was first run up the flagpole and we are glad to see some recent improvements to it. Nonetheless, without major changes, it will still mean lawful online speech will end up being censored.
The government plans to censor what it calls ‘offensive material’, as if giving offence is a harm from which a fragile public needs protection by the state. The ‘duty of care’ for online companies proposed by the bill covers tackling content that could produce an ‘adverse… psychological impact on individuals’. This ‘psychological impact’ could mean almost anything. Under the proposals, Ofcom will enforce this ‘duty of care’, threatening internet companies with swingeing fines if they don’t remove material.
Ofcom has already exhibited a dangerous attitude when it comes to free speech. In January, it extended its definition of ‘hate speech’ so that it now includes: ‘All forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance on the grounds of disability, ethnicity, social origin, sex, gender, gender reassignment, nationality, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, colour, genetic features, language, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth or age.’
Read also: Cancel culture is real — and it’s getting worse by Noah Carl, UnHerd
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