An Unsafe Bill: How the Online Safety Bill threatens free speech, innovation and privacy
27 June 2022
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19 November 2024
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/AN-UNSAFE-BILL.pdf
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Freedom of expression
Innovation
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Summary
- The Online Safety Bill establishes a new regulatory regime for digital platforms intended to improve online safety.
- The Bill raises significant issues for freedom of expression, privacy and innovation.
- There is a lack of evidence to justify the legislation, with respect to both the alleged prevalence of what the Bill treats as ‘harm’ and the link between the proposed measures and the desired objectives.
Freedom of expression
- The duties in the Bill, in respect of illegal content and legal content that is harmful to adults, combined with the threat of large fines and criminal liability, risks platforms using automated tools in a precautionary and censorious manner.
- The Bill appears designed to discourage platforms from hosting speech that the Secretary of State considers to be harmful, even if that speech is legal. The Bill allows for the expansion of the category of ‘legal but harmful’ content with limited parliamentary scrutiny.
- The Secretary of State and Ofcom will have unprecedented powers to define and limit speech, with limited parliamentary or judicial oversight.
- The introduction of age assurance requirements will force search engines and social media to withhold potentially harmful information by default, making it difficult for adults to access information without logging into services, and entirely forbidding children from content even if it could be educationally valuable.
- Some small to mid-sized overseas platforms could block access for UK users to limit their regulatory costs and risks, thereby reducing British users’ access to online content.
- Safeguards designed to protect free expression are comparatively weak and could backfire by requiring application in a ‘consistent’ manner, leading to the removal of more content.Privacy
- The safety duties will lead platforms to profile users and monitor their content and interactions including by using technologies mandated by Ofcom.
- The inclusion of private messaging in the duties risks undermining encryption.
- The child safety duties will infringe the privacy of adult users by requiring them to verify their age, through an identity verification or age assurance process, to access content that is judged unsuitable for children.
- The user empowerment duties will further necessitate many users verifying their identities to platforms.
Innovation
- The Bill imposes byzantine requirements on businesses of all sizes. Platforms face large regulatory costs and criminal liability for violations, which could discourage investment and research and development in the United Kingdom.
- The Bill’s regulatory costs will be more burdensome for start-ups and small and medium-sized businesses, which lack the resources to invest in legal and regulatory compliance and automated systems, and therefore the Bill could entrench the market position of ‘Big Tech’ companies.
- The likely result of the additional regulatory and cost burdens on digital businesses will be the slower and more cautious introduction of new innovative products or features, and fewer companies entering the sector.
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4 thoughts on “An Unsafe Bill: How the Online Safety Bill threatens free speech, innovation and privacy”
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Honestly? I don’t think the government has thought it through entirely with regards to age verification. I’m sure they envision a YouTube like system with certain videos or content being placed behind age walls. In reality a lot more content then they probably think will end up either behind said age walls or taken down. A disaster for free expression and privacy either way.
In the end the bill will end up a mess the courts or Ofcom will have to sort out, likely both.
And here we are, just another obstacle that we will be able to weave. What level of naivety, do the cretins in parliament have? You don’t honestly believe that programs won’t be built, to end such censorship do you? Even the great firewall of China cannot put a stop to its own people. This is how you end up with ghost nets.
We need to think back to how the Internet was in 2007-2008 socially when we didn’t have all these sorts of issues.
Sure, it changes technically, but 2007-2009 was a boom time for the Internet.
WickedWeasel have ALREADY criticized the Online Safety Bill, calling it a dictatorial effort that’s not good for the UK.
The rush to bring in this overarching state interference is not to protect Children
the rush is to censor dissenting voices,we see the same attack on online freedoms
Being brought in by the EU and also in the USA.
The private jet flying carbon offsetting global billionaires are centralizing
Health policy with the communistic Pandemic Treaty and they want
One version off the truth only allowed on the internet.
The Trusted News Initiative was not enough to enforce their health prison
last time around now they want to censor and stop other views that
talk too much sense and rationality.
They had a self-righteous member of the house of Lords on TalkTV
who said “We are entering a ‘age of pandemics’ ”
so they are clearly planning for more of the same but next time
you won’t be able to listen to scientists who tell you about man made
lab leaks, everything must be said to be a result of Zoonotic transmission
or you will find your accounts censored or shutdown.
The bat theory was nonsense the pangolin theory was nonsense
but thankfully enough good scientist’s exposed this, and yes
there was indeed gain of function research going on.
The Leveson inquiry sought to clip the wings of the free press
and the online harms Bill is a Trojan horse to clip the wings
of citizen journalists,independent experts and real activists.