Online Safety Bill makes 'legal but harmful' ideas crimes

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

[21:53, 22/03/2022] Tony Gosling, Journalist: We can expect much more eradication of controversial speech under Dorries’ Bill. The new law creates a whole new category of speech – “legal but harmful” – to be surveilled by tech companies and regulated by the state. Dorries expects us to be reassured that the types of speech that will qualify as “legal but harmful” will be set out in statutory instruments – but that’s unlikely to reassure anyone who has paid attention to the avalanche of authoritarian statutory instruments flying through parliament with little scrutiny over the past two years. https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/2022/03/the-telegraph-the-online-safety -bill-makes-a-mockery-of-free-speech/

[21:57, 22/03/2022] Tony Gosling, Journalist: the Bill’s provisions to block websites, apps, or services which refuse to cooperate with the speech regulator’s orders could put household names like Wikipedia, Reddit and Tumblr in the crosshairs. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaign/stop-state-censorship-of-onli ne-speech/

[22:08, 22/03/2022] Tony Gosling, Journalist: The report’s findings were met with agreement from the Society of Editors who said that the government’s proposals failed to account for the “fast nature of today’s news process”. One of the concerns shared by the committee, the Society and others is that the bill creates a duty of care for tech giants that could see them put in place new algorithms to remove harmful content from their platforms. The worry is that those algorithms could inadvertently remove journalistic reporting and content alongside actually harmful posts, unless specific rules are included in the bill to prevent this. https://pressgazette.co.uk/online-safety-bill-freedom-of-speech/