At least one good thing has come out of the mess of Boris Johnson’s sacking and the Tory race to replace him.
It forced government to suspend his terrible Online security invoice†
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Like Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth, this Orwellian law would do the opposite of what it says on the tin.
In the name of security, it poses an immediate threat to freedom of expression online.
Who will win the Tory leadership contest should dump Online security invoice for good.
as the breakthrough contender Kemi Badenoch MP said this week, “We shouldn’t make laws for hurt feelings.”
That’s exactly what the Online Safety Bill would do: make it a possible criminal offense to hurt someone’s feelings on the Internet.
It marks a victory for waking madness and a big blow to freedom of opinion†
This is how it would work: The bill gives the ofcom quangothe UK broadcasting regulator, new powers to force Big Tech outfits like Facebook and Twitter to remove content deemed “legal but harmful”.
Words that are legal to speak can thus be banned from social media.
And what exactly is “legal but harmful” content? The bill only says it will likely cause someone “at least serious suffering.”
It would be left to Great technology‘s army of ‘fact-checkers’, ‘misinformation’ watchdogs and automated algorithms to act as the truth police and decide what we can say or see.
With the threat of ofcom fines hanging over them would ban them first and question them later.
This bill would be a charter for wake up censorship† The key is the new offense of “causing psychological harm”.
Anyone who, as Kemi says, complains about “hurt feelings” can demand that the offensive content be removed.
If you insist that my words cause you ‘psychological harm’, how can I prove otherwise? It’s subjective. Still, it could be used to limit public debate.
A footballer could claim that he was harmed by fans who called him “crap” online. Or one of us hypersensitive writers could complain about being hurt by a bad review.
The awake censors would have a field day. Trans activists are already campaigning to get gender-critical feminists, like the author of Harry Potter JK Rowling “cancelled” and sent to Coventry.
Under this bill, they would send her to solitary confinement.
Undoubtedly, the government has been cleaning up the internet with good intentions.
It can look like a sewer, and the most malodorous cesspools are on social media sites like Twitter†
The worst internet trolls are ruining lives.
threat to freedom of expression
But many of the nastiest things on social media – from threats to murder or rape to encouragement suicide – is already illegal.
It doesn’t take another clumsy law to bash some nasty trolls.
We may agree that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter should put their house in order. They seem more interested in ban Donald Trump then bring down IS terrorists†
But that is no reason to give Big Tech even more powers to the police what is allowed online.
Worse, the online safety law would give future culture secretaries extraordinary powers to change Ofcom’s code to “reflect government policy” and order the removal of content “for public policy reasons”.
Imagine that the power of political censorship is in the hands of a Labor minister.
We only need to look at the opposition politicians and left-wing campaigners complaining that the Tories’ censorship charter doesn’t go far enough!
A government amendment to the bill says Facebook and Twitter must inform news publishers and provide the right to appeal before censoring their content.
Campaigners clamor that this gives newspapers like The Sun a legal license to “spread hateful lies and misinformation” — otherwise known as reporting news stories and opinions they don’t want the public to see.
Legal but harmful
This bill is based on the false assumption that there is “too much” free speech online.
In reality, there is already too little of that precious freedom in society.
Whenever the authorities propose to draw a new line to limit free speech, the key question is always: who do you want to hold the censor’s blue pencil? Who will decide what “harmful” means, and which speech is considered too hurtful to hear?
We should be no more willing to entrust our freedoms to Big Tech billionaires than to faceless Ofcom bureaucrats, unaccountable judges, or passing culture secretaries.
Here’s the hard truth about free speech. Not everyone who chooses to post, pontify, rant or rant on Twitter or elsewhere will deny the piety of Prince Harrythe wisdom of Donald Trump or the purity of soul from a Love Island contestant†
They should still be given the same freedom of expression as everyone else.
In the name of child protection, this bill would treat us all like children in need of protection from naughty words. That risks a lot more damage than hurt feelings.
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