By the time you read this the new draft of the Online Safety Bill should be on the DCMS website. I haven’t seen it yet, but I have a pretty good idea of what’s in it because I’m one of dozens who’ve been urging ministers and officials behind the scenes to strengthen the free speech protections in the bill. For those not up to speed, the aim of the bill (in the words of Nadine Dorries, the Secretary of State at DCMS) is ‘to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online’, i.e., turn the internet into a safe space.
The white paper that preceded the bill was a nightmare from a freedom-of-expression point of view. It put forward a plan to force social media companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to remove not just illegal material – which is fine, obviously – but ‘legal but harmful’ content as well.
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