A carelessly-written bill. Sweeping government censorship powers. Big Tech speech police. And more.
Few things ring quite as Orwellian as saying something is “legal but harmful” – and for that reason, needs to be censored, by law.
And if he were around, George Orwell might have been mortified that it is his own country that is enshrining this particular policy into legal practice – specifically, through the upcoming Online Safety Bill.
On March 17, the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that the bill was introduced in parliament in order to approve what kinds of speech are “legal but harmful” and that online platforms will be forced to “tackle” – i.e., censor.
No assault on online speech is complete without attempts to undermine privacy and this one is no different.
While the UK government claims that the 225 page Online Safety Bill will “make the UK the safest place to go online,” the means to achieve this so-called safety include granting the government unprecedented censorship powers, deputizing Big Tech companies to carry out this censorship, requiring these tech companies to collect even more user data, and giving large media outlets special exemptions that aren’t afforded to regular UK citizens.
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