Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Online safety bill ‘a recipe for censorship’, say campaigners

Online safety bill ‘a recipe for censorship’, say campaigners

Proposals hand Ofcom the power to identify ‘lawful but harmful’ content and punish social networks that fail to remove it
Long-awaited proposals to regulate social media are a “recipe for censorship”, campaigners have said, and fly in the face of the government’s attempts to strengthen free speech elsewhere in Britain.

The online safety bill, introduced to parliament on Wednesday, hands Ofcom the power to punish social networks that fail to remove “lawful but harmful” content. The proposals were welcomed by children’s safety campaigns, but have come under fire from civil liberties organisations.

“Applying a health and safety approach to everybody’s online speech combined with the threat of massive fines against the platforms is a recipe for censorship and removal of legal content,” said Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group. “Facebook does not operate prisons and is not the police. Trying to make platforms do the job of law enforcement through technical means is a recipe for failure.”

The centre-right CPS thinktank was similarly critical. “It is for parliament to determine what is sufficiently harmful that it should not be allowed, not for Ofcom or individual platforms to guess,” it said.

“If something is legal to say, it should be legal to type,” CPS’s director, Robert Colvile, added.

In its update to the bill from the white paper first drafted by Theresa May’s government in 2019, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport added sections intended to prevent harm to free expression. Social networks will now need to perform and publish “assessments of their impact on freedom of expression”.

But the proposed legislation, published on the same day as a bill forcing universities in England to promote free speech, is largely concerned with pushing social networks to take down more content, not less.

One exception is another new section, which would make the UK one of the first nations in the west to require social networks to take active steps to moderate their impact on the democratic process. There are fears, however, that the requirement could lead them to refuse to take action against harmful content in case it was deemed democratically important.

Under the measures, “category 1” services – the largest and most popular social networks – will need to implement rules that protect “democratically important” content such as posts promoting or opposing government policy or a political party before a vote in parliament, an election or a referendum, or campaigning on a live political issue.

They will also be banned from discriminating against particular political viewpoints and will need to apply protection equally across political opinions.

As an example, the government said a company’s rules against content depicting graphic violence could include exceptions to allow campaign groups to raise awareness about the issue, “but it would need to be upfront about the policy and ensure it is applied consistently”.

Such a requirement has been regularly proposed in the US, where accusations of moderation bias against the Republican party have become more frequent than ever since Donald Trump was barred from most major social networks. If the online safety bill passes this year, the UK will be the first country to actively impose such a restriction on social networks.

The latest version of the bill also includes tighter protections for journalism. News websites were already explicitly exempt from much of the law’s remit, assuaging concerns that publications could be censored if they failed to adequately moderate the comments under their articles.

Now the draft bill includes additional protections for journalistic content posted to social networks, including from “citizen journalists”. Social networks will need to have “a fast-track appeals process” for journalists, and “will be held to account by Ofcom for the arbitrary removal of journalistic content”.

The bill also contains new requirements on platforms to act against online fraud, expanding the scope of the harms covered by the legislation. They will be required to take responsibility for scams perpetrated by their users, such as romance scams and fake investment opportunities.

Melanie Dawes, the chief executive of Ofcom, which will be in charge of enforcing the new regulations, welcomed the legislation.

“Today’s bill takes us a step closer to a world where the benefits of being online, for children and adults, are no longer undermined by harmful content,” she said. “We’ll support parliament’s scrutiny of the draft bill, and soon say more about how we think this new regime could work in practice – including the approach we’ll take to secure greater accountability from tech platforms.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×