In my Spectator column this week I’ve written about the Online Safety Bill, the latest version of which was published today. For those not up to speed, the aim of the Bill (in the words of Nadine Dorries) is “to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online”, i.e., turn the internet into a safe space.
Should you be concerned about it? Yes, obviously, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. The real issue with the Bill is not that it will make the big social media companies remove posts that are currently permissible – although it will, since the Government is going to force them to take down what it calls “legal but harmful” content, so stuff you’re able to say offline will become prohibited online. No, the bigger problem is that it doesn’t do nearly enough to force YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the rest not to wield their red pens. It’s a missed opportunity.
Many of my fellow free speech warriors see this Bill as an attempt by po-faced Lord Chamberlain-types to rein in the libertarian excesses of the worldwide web – and Conservative MPs often frame it in this way, too, believing the public wants them to ‘get tough’ with out-of-control social media giants.
But the days when Twitter described itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party” are long gone. Facebook removed 26.9 million pieces of content for violating its “community standards” on “hate speech” in the last quarter of 2020, 17 times as many as the 1.6 million instances of ‘hate speech’ it deleted in the last quarter of 2017. The real problem with this bill is that it doesn’t do enough to check the already rampant censoriousness of Big Tech. Twitter is more like the authoritarian wing of the Democratic party.
The bill contains little to stop these companies pledging to remove scads of “legal but harmful” content in their terms and conditions – as they do at present – save for some wishy-washy provisions about the need to “take into account” freedom of expression when deciding whether to remove “content of democratic importance” and “journalistic content” and to “have regard” for free speech. To understand how ineffective these clauses are likely to be, think of the different legal duties included in the bill as being like football teams. The duty to remove “content that is harmful to adults” is Manchester City. The need to “take into account” and “have regard” for freedom of expression is Plymouth Argyle.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Jennifer Powers, the Legislative Affairs Director of the Free Speech Union, has written a good piece for UnHerd about the way the Online Safety Bill will be used to muzzle feminists defending sex-based women’s rights.
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Ep42. Trust In Justin
Back to normal this week:
Ukraine crisis (including UK and EU support)
The NHS
Justin Trudeau’s trip to the UK,
Sanctions and the UK’s energy contingency cock ups. Pick the bones out of that!
itunes | Spotify
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1268768/10263759-ep-42-trust-in-justin-and-other-rambles
Safe for the establishment…
Not for you.
It’s not safe for the establishment. Revolutions happen, they either happen peacefully through gradual incremental change … or if the establishment resist the change, they happen in massive bloody leaps, with the establishment lying headless wondering what hit them.
If only.
Need Guns for that!
“Keeping People Safe” is the new UK Stasi motto!
Oh what joy – the government will protect me and keep me safe. I haven’t enjoyed so much protection since the Krays were locked up.
http://www.libertarianprepper.com/taxation-is-a-protection-racket/
They’re from the government and they’re here to help keep you safe.
The government doesn’t care about the people … but they do care about getting more and more of the people’s money. The Powers that Be must have more money to achieve even greater control. They will confiscate this money via their “digital currency” schemes, fees, fines, licenses, etc, and they will also make sure nobody thinks that gold and silver are legitimate “safe havens.” So they will continue to denigrate “gold bugs” and rig the “markets” for gold and silver. This protects the (digital) fiat printing press – which is where all their money actually comes from. Without unlimited sources of money, Big Brother will struggle to get even bigger … and Big Brother (the State) knows it has to get much bigger.
Yes but at some point it will fall apart for them too. The state does not produce it only consumes. Throw in de-motivation of workers as per the Soviet Union and not much wealth will be generated. So how will they feed and keep the people from revolting … oh shit!
And that is why not everyone who isn’t enthusiastic about nation states is an internationalist, liberal shrill for the global corporate complex.
Some of us simply don’t like nation states because they are glorified protection rackets.
With covid and now this there us no doubt that the elites care for us little people like never before. What a great bunch!
Hopefully they’ll get rid of all those damaging green taxes because they give a toss about the serfs.
I love my country – at least the principle and the history (good, bad and indifferent). I love the greenery, the cliffs, the rolling hills, the hubbub of my city life. I hate the governance, the appeasers, the woke blob, the green zealots, the safe spacers and the tampon burning women deniers. Do I want to bring a child into this environment? I am really torn – for the first time, I hate where I live, what it stands for – is there hope? Yes, always, but is it clouded by the fog of reality, the absolute power the bankers hold over events, the WEF and their stooges in all ranks of the British government. I’m really utterly depressed about the state of play – and this site has helped me with sanity but also depressed me in equal measure – to lose it to the vagaries of online harm would put the nail in the coffin for my love of Britain.
Sorry it’s a ramble – I am really in the dumps.
Do they want YOU to have kids?
No they’d prefer to import one..
So knock out a load!
Before you knock one out, prove your age first with a digital I.D
There’s never going to be a good time to have children. Think of people in the seventeenth century in Europe when the thirty years war raged, or the second world war, which my parents experienced as children. Despite huge difficulties, why would we deny ourselves that supreme act of creation? I was conceived and born during the Cold War with nuclear annihilation threatening all around me. Yet at no time did I ever feel frightened or that life was pointless because my parents created a loving and incredibly secure environment for me and my brother, just as my grandparents had done for them and countless generations before. It’s up to you to create the life you want, so if it’s what you truly want, stuff the WEF. Life is too short for regrets.
This is true! Thanks
I think this site would be exempt under the bill as a “limited functionality service” meaning it’s not a social media company. I agree this site helps with sanity but is equally depressing.
Cheer up DB, take some time for yourself and your loved ones, get out into nature a bit, it’s much easier to forget all the BS in a rural setting, I couldn’t go back to an urban lifestyle now, it would kill me.
Spring is springing, buds are breaking, birds are nest building, and we’ve got ~a week of sunshine to look forward to.
I’ve just put new strings on my Spanish guitar, I’m off into the garden to sit under a tree in the sun and serenade the Red Kites nest building above.
Idyllic! I just spent a week up north in the countryside, spent a few days litter picking facemasks and McDonald’s packaging off the street my mother lives on.
Yup just watched two male Pigeons battling for domination of the garden, fuck me they were going hell for leather!
We’re quite lucky here, the pheasants fighting put on a great show, crows mobbing buzzards, Kites, sparrowhawks, grass snakes, had a Muntjack rutting with my wheelbarrow in the garden last week, Bats at night, I wish I could afford a really good camera I’d get some epic wildlife shots/film
But where else is safe or happier?
Hysteria feedback loops are created when you have a media like the internet and social media which amplifies hysteria … and you then repress the sceptics. The result is that there is no one allowed to ask the awkward questions like: “is there any proof humanity caused the 20th century warming” or “Is covid really killing more people or are there just more elderly alive today to die from just another flu”, or “why are the Russians saying there are US funded gain of function biolabs in Ukraine?”
Repress the sceptics … or as the Big Internet companies’ intention really is: repress those alternative outlets that don’t repress the sceptics, and the result is that hysteria grows and grows, the boundary of acceptability changes until you get Nazi/PolPot/USSR-five-year-plan scale atrocities
Social discourse needs sceptics to be stable and stop the exponential growth of hysteria. All this bill will do, is further repress the scepticism that is needed to stop the ever growing hysteria we are seeing. And, the result of this bill is that we will almost certainly see an appalling mass atrocity like the early 20th century. We must do something to stop this increasing inquisitorial like censorship and “book burning” of all who dare to have alternative views.
Excellent post.
It depends whether they can get to the ‘underground’ sites.
The state would be able to get to under ground sites as has been seen before, but I think they will leave them alone, tptb would be happy with a small percentage looking at “unauthorized opinions” as long as the majority are locked into the grid as it were,
They’ll let some sites flourish, but it’ll all be recorded, used to build a digital footprint/precrime style AI database, and used retroactivly should you step out of line.
True..a few undesirables shouting at each other in an echo chamber is no real threat..
It’s manufactured hysteria, designed to enable the technocrats’ nightmarish Great Reset.
’Missed opportunity’ my fragrant backside!!!
The idea that we are where we are as a result of misguided policy errors is simply risible. And rather dull, frankly.
if in any doubt with regards the origins of the Net, or Facebook, then you should read this:
https://off-guardian.org/2022/03/15/counterinsurgency-psyops-and-the-military-origins-of-the-internet/
And MSM have taken us so far down the ´Plucky Ukraine, Evil Russia’ rabbit hole, there is no turning back from that – similarly not the result of ‘policy errors’ but a very deliberate and long-term strategy, causing huge blowback and raising the stakes still higher. Oligarchs legging it to the Indian Ocean? Where will be safe once the fallout has fallen out?
Above all however…. It’s the Economy, stupid! Seen the numbers recently?
Be very afraid.
There was a good post by WeAreChange the other day, they had some photos of some western fat cats and said, now can we refer to these people as ‘Oligarchs’ now too.
What Fahrenheit does data burn at?
I don’t want to be protected from other people’s speech.
As Russell Brand put it….The people who say, ‘actually I don’t want this’ are the ones derided and silenced.
My final comment on this or any other site….
PROBLEM = Big government in all of it’s incarnations.
Self appointment neo-feudalist global organisations that intend too control us all.
Globocap and the military industrial complex.
REACTION = The growing realisation by a sizable minority that big government and it’s facilitating establishment are inherently Evil and self serving.
SOLUTION = Global insurrection against this cancerous, nascent totalitarianism.
A free anarchist future awaits mankind if enough people awaken from generations of subjugation…If the vast majority remain oblivious too the Evil that surrounds us, degradation, disease and death await the 99%.
“Live on your feet, don’t die on your knees”
I know it should not be but it feels a curse to be able to think for ones self when everywhere around you there are state programs designed to lock you into one point of view only. I don’t want censorship as I don’t want to be told what to think, it may get to the situation whereby using the Internet would be pointless as all it will be designed to do with bills like this is to lock you even more-so into one state approved opinion, and yet, the masses will eat it up while the minority are metaphorically suffocated, all for wanting to explore various view points.
Here’s the Future. Well… the Present, actually!
“We know what you did during lockdown”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WTpO9y2Dh4
Has it been confirmed yet that they’ll try to do away with anonymous dissent, like all great liberal democracies do?
Bear in mind that this Online “Harms” Bill (as originally named) was trumpeted while Sir David Amess’ blood wasn’t even congealed, because apparently online anonymous threats to MPs are the real harm.
Has it been confirmed yet that they’ll try to do away with anonymous dissent
I seem to remember there is a clause in the bill that mentions ID verification, as I remember its not yet if implemented to be made compulsory for social media but it will be on the road to eventually having everyone ID etc. I also seem to remember ID verification in the bill for adult sites which will be compulsory or sites that serve adult content. Then there is the catchphrase “duty of care” this may mean in order to avoid liability sites implement ID verification in order to get out of big fines etc, as youtube does presently with age gating videos for “over 18”
I suppose saying “f@scism” is banned; even if it isn’t it’s not too helpful. I offer a neologism for this sort of thing: Ballshevism.
Toby – you make some comvincing arguments here, but in reality you don’t appear to be fully practicing what you preach. Dr Sam Bailey has not been granted a right of reply via her own article in response to that from Dr Roger Watson last week.
I myself had my original comments on the article “The Morality of Supplying Arms to Ukraine” deleted by your ‘moderators’ even though they were moderate and fair, only for my complaint comment hours later itself (just as moderate but perhaps embarrassing to yourselves) to be deleted and the original miraculously reinstated by this morning.
This is NOT the actions of a free speech platform.
Anyone interested in seeing the “check mate” move in our geopolitical and economic game of chess should read this article by John Whitehead and his daughter (re-published today at Zero Hedge.)
The Whiteheads have connected the dots and tell readers what is being planned. This is what the Powers that Be want to happen and have been working towards this “end game” for years.
COVID and the Climate Change Agenda will – already have – accelerated these “reforms.” (Think “vaccine passports.”).
Per my observations, what the Powers that Be want …. they get.
Today, millions of people are being censored (and/or self censor) when they challenge the COVID narrative (or the Ukraine narrative). PREDICTION: In the future, people will be censored for challenging “digital currency” and a “cashless society.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/digital-tyranny-beware-governments-push-digital-currency
“At a minimum, before any kind of digital currency is adopted, we need stricter laws on data privacy and an Electronic Bill of Rights that protects “we the people” from predatory surveillance and data-mining business practices by the government and its corporate partners.”
wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for this to happen.
came across this substack on vaxxines and infertility last night.
I do not have time now to go into details but am just drawing attention to it.
It brings together a lot of disparate research to show how the effect on fertility could operate.
https://themariachiyears.substack.com/p/covid-vaccines-as-the-aschen-agenda?s=r
Hi, my name is Dr Janci Chunn Lindsay. I hold a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Texas and have over 30 years of scientific experience primarily in toxicology and mechanistic biology.
“In the mid 1990s, I aided in the development of a temporary human contraceptive vaccine, which ended up causing unintended autoimmune ovarian destruction and sterility in animal test models despite efforts against this and sequence analyses that did not predict this.
“I strongly feel that all the gene therapy vaccines must be halted immediately due to safety concerns on several fronts.
“First there is credible reason to believe that the GTs will cross react with … and reproductive proteins in sperm, ova and placenta and lead to impaired fertility and reproductive outcomes.
“Respected virologist Bill Gallaher made excellent arguments as to why you would expect cross reaction due to beta sheet confirmation similarities between spike protein and SIN-1 and -2.
“I have yet to see a single immunological study which disproves this despite the fact that it would literally take the manufacturers a single day to do these … studies to ascertain this. It’s been over a year since the assertions were first made that this could occur.
“We have seen 100 pregnancy losses reported in VAERS as of April 9th and there have been reports of impaired spermatogenesis and placental findings from both a natural infection, vaccinated, and … knock out animal models that have similar placental pathology implicating a … mediated role in these outcomes.
“Additionally, we have heard multiple reports of menses irregularities in those vaccinated. These must be investigated. We simply cannot put these GTs in our children who are at .002 risk for COVID mortality if infected or any more of the child-bearing age population without thoroughly investigating this matter, as we could potentially sterilize an entire generation.
“Speculation that this will not occur and a few anecdotal reports of pregnancies in the new trials are not sufficient proof that this is not impacting on a population-wide scale.
Both the information about syncitin as well as the LNP accumulation in animal models should clearly have caused medicines regulators to halt vaccination in women of childbearing potential early last year. But it didn’t.
Thanks for posting Kate – great information. This lends credence to the argument I was making yesterday about depopulation and the jabs having the direct potential to sterilise any young girls who receive them. In light of this information you are posting it is difficult not to see a depop agenda at play here.
wish I hadn’t read this Kate. They are talking about 8 shots and vials purchased up to 2025.
Dark Web it is then
I see that The Telegraph are once again censoring its own readership by completely deleting ALL the reader comments (and facility) for the (IMHO) hit piece by Charlotte Lytton:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/russell-brand-became-mad-hatter-conspiracy-theories/
No surprise, given their previous ‘form’, and, I suspect, because she and the paper got (rightly) absolutely ROASTED by those same commenting readers, who weren’t ‘ist’ or ‘phobic’ but just highly critical and showing up ever one of the flaws in her arguments and narratives.
When the BTL comments were still there this morning, several readers said they had since unsubbed in disgust, something that happens rather a lot nowadays, despite what the ‘Corporate Telegraph’ subsite says to the contrary. I was one of them back in 2020 after things there went from bad to worse in short order.
Please take note, Toby. Free speech means JUST THAT. Note ‘free speech lite’ as things have started to get a bit recently, in my view (see my comments about the lack of right of reply on this site via a rebuttal article to that from Dr Roger Watson about Dr Sam Bailey).
The Telegraph is now just a Gates organ. Forget it!
Free speech is a tremendously creative force. Just think how much we have all learnt from each other from posting here and reading others information. Much more informative and stimulating than anything in the mainstream.
This is what true information sharing among people can do…and this is why they want to shut it down.
Long term any society that achieved this level of control would whither and die from inanition.
I’m not a subscriber but I think they did an article about him in the Independent, they showed a 30 second video on him berating Trudeau, but I suppose that gives the false impression that the article will be fair and neutral.
I was deleted by the Telegraph for the appalling crime of expressing my hatred of Lewis Hamilton. You are not allowed to dislike someone who happens to be black for any reason at all.
Nadine Dorries is totally unfit to be a Minister of the Crown – she is too stupid.’
So those who expect a disastrous piece of legislation will not be disappointed.
As there will be no meaningful debate from Starmer Labour or 80% of Corporate Governance ‘Tory’ MPs there seems nothing we can do about it – just like everything else they are dumping on us.
There is one person they fear…Farage. I know some would say he’s establishment to some degree but notice how some celebs have sent him abusive tweets and in Parliament this week Chris Bryant was making unsubstantiated stuff up about him having connections to Russia. His Net Zero referendum could shake them to the core.
https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-online-safety-bill-censorship-parliament/
Just another step towards enslavement. Frankly, it seems deserved when I look at the mindless morons around me that question nothing and believe every lie the BBC & government tell them. How they managed to cast the spell I don’t know. I’m sure people used to be cynical about the papers and the government. TV though … must be true.
Suppression of free speech; the first step towards a totalitarian government.
Surely legislation of this sort must be to protect what we CAN do and say, not try and prevent what we can’t do and say. No law in the world can make a judgement on everything that’s written or said. You also cannot legislate against what people ‘feel’ is offensive to them, as it will not be to the vast majority of others.
Are there enough resources available to fund a genuine on line free speech discussion vehicle? Would enough people use it to make it viable? Would it be abused by people abusing others or spreading false information about people they don’t like? There are issues about on line free speech where, if it can’t be controlled at all, people wouldn’t use a completely uncontrolled forum for the risks they might be exposed to.
Underneath my comment input, the instuction to me make it clear that even this project established by champions of free speech limits what people can say probably necessarily..
“UK Online Safety Bill, that will censor some “legal but harmful” content, presented to Parliament”
https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-online-safety-bill-censorship-parliament/
The bill needs to be opposed in its entirety.