The philosopher Kathleen Stock has produced a corker of a first column for UnHerd about the Online Safety Bill. As she points out in the opening paragraph, she’s one of the people whom the Bill will supposedly protect, but she thinks any attempt by the state to protect people from psychological distress is completely misguided and will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech.
In virtue of my heretically archaic views about biology and the importance of women’s rights, I’m the target of quite a lot of rude online behaviour. The other day, for instance, I learnt I was lucky I hadn’t been hanged yet. So you might expect me to be emphatically in favour of attempts to remove what the Online Safety Bill calls “harmful communications” from the internet.
This isn’t the case. In fact, I think the Bill’s proposals on this kind of internet content are a dog’s dinner. If implemented, they will undoubtedly suppress desirable levels of freedom of expression on the internet, and cause more problems than they resolve.
Following scrutiny from the Joint Committee, the Bill — which received its second reading in the Commons yesterday — takes recent Law Commission proposals to introduce a “harm-based” communications offence, and places a duty of care on internet providers and websites to restrict content which meets the definition of this proposed offence, give or take a few tweaks. Specifically, they will be required to restrict any content where there’s a “real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience”, the sender “intended to cause harm to a likely audience”, and the sender has “no reasonable excuse for sending the message”. Harm is defined as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”. What counts as a “likely audience” comprises whichever individual is reasonably foreseen as encountering that content.
The flaws here were also present within the Law Commission proposals that inspired the Bill. Take the criterion of “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”. As many have noted — though apparently not in Westminster — concepts such as “psychological harm” and “distress” are moving targets, semantically speaking, in the sense that the sort of thing they refer to changes over time. For instance, in a society whose primary concern is with the alleviation of negative experience, concepts associated with negative experiences tend to expand their semantic range and become increasingly diluted. So for instance, over time, the category of “abuse” has moved beyond physical events to include emotional ones as well; and the category of “trauma” has extended from atypically catastrophic life events to relatively common happenings like childbirth and bereavement.
At first glance, “experts discover new form of trauma!” looks reassuringly scientific, a bit like “experts discover new kind of dinosaur!”. But whereas the existence of a dinosaur is completely independent of the activities of the experts who discover it, this is not the case with trauma. The more generous experts are willing to be in their definitions, the more people will then count as traumatised; the more people who count as traumatised, the more people will define themselves in terms of membership of that group, and so become more able to exert political pressure on others — including upon the experts themselves, of course — to recognise the precise nuances of their suffering.
This is one of what philosopher Ian Hacking has called the “feedback loops” within psychological classification. Of course, this trajectory towards dilution is not inevitable, and partly depends on wider political sensibilities within a given society. In a culture which prioritises personal resilience towards negative experiences rather than their automatic accommodation, the sphere of traumatic events might ultimately contract rather than expand. But we don’t live in this kind of a place.
As with trauma, so with psychological distress. Things that were felt as minor ripples centuries ago, if at all — misgendering, for instance, or cultural appropriation, or the mere mention of a slur in quotation marks, or even just free speech arguments themselves — are now crushing blows for many. This isn’t to deny that strongly unpleasant feelings are generated, even as the category of distressing events and experiences expands. Feelings have a habit of rushing in to fill whatever gap has been culturally opened for them.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Read the Free Speech Union’s press release setting out its concerns with the Bill and how it thinks it could be improved.
Stop Press 2: Read Daily Sceptic contributor Dr Frederick Attenborough’s paper for the Free Speech Union about the Online Safety Bill here.
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Harm is defined as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”.
My understanding of Extinction Rebellion’s beliefs is that any attempt by citizens of this country to live a normal life causes them serious distress. This seems to be generally accepted by the judiciary.
…which would make all normal life illegal…?
It would be nice to think we were causing them some harm. Alas it seems to be the other way around.
Maybe there needs to be a group that tracks and disrupts these groups. It is a must since the Police only seem to offer them Tea and Biscuits.
I’m surprised if they eat those biscuits…
As they appear to have the establishment seal of approval, any attempt at tracking and/or disrupting these groups is likely to be deemed illegal.
I’d offer them tea. Lots and lots of tea, but only after they were firmly glued to the road first.
What goes in must come out….
Good question, that… how do these people that glue and chain themselves to things go to the toilet?
Well, through 2020 and most of 2021, normal life was illegal.
And that caused me at least serious distress…
Maybe all the collaborators will be persecuted one day.
Under Johnson’s “Emergency Powers” it still can be whenever he chooses!
It’s Full Ahead to Prison Island and keep your mouth shut!” should be his next election slogan ( Oh, and meat and chickens will soon be banned to ‘Save the Planet’ and please Mr Gates )
Easily countered with: “Your definition of harm is causing me psychological harm and serious distress.” Whose harm is more harmful? How do we measure psychological harm?
whoever is less woke is more harmful. See if I’m wrong…
It would, at the very least, make everyone’s positions clear. They wouldn’t be able to claim that they’re doing this for everyone’s good. They would have to admit to taking sides.
And therein lies another huge mischief. The more people who feel aggrieved, traumatised or otherwise “harmed” by increasing numbers of things that the law allows them to feel aggrieved etc about, the more false “perpetrators” will be created; simply by virtue of the increasing sensibilities of self-identified “victims”. Untold numbers of innocents can be converted into the guilty, effectively out of thin air.
What a crock.
This type of twaddle opens the doors for special interest groups to use legal force again those who hold a different opinion. The definitions are so vague, so open to interpretation, that such a law becomes a danger to the vast majority of people. The whole concept is untenable, there is no definable measure by which any level of “harm” can be determined. It is a charter for bullies, fraudsters, liars and cheats. It brings “the law” into disrepute.
I suspect it is a charter for those in power to selectively use it when they need to. Good law is universal and as far as possible unambiguous. Thou shalt not kill being the famous example.
Though shalt not harm whilst surfing the interwebs fails as it is subjective. Valid observations cause distress to others while still being entirely valid. Here is a soon to be illegal example – prior to Europeans discovering Africa, the Africans didn’t invent the wheel, develop writing systems or build a structure greater than one storey.
Is that hateful, or well established observation? If you were of African descent would you be offended? Perhaps. It may cause you distress. I’d need to argue my intent was not distress but historical facts, and I’d maybe get away with it if I was an anthropologist, for example. But if I’m considered a white supremacist then what?
‘I’d need to argue my intent was not distress but historical facts’
You would of course need to argue this in court.
You would have no legal representation unless you are very wealthy as legal aid is now gone.
At the very least your life would be made a living hell bythe process even if they let you go at the end.
I see an objection here as Egypt is in Africa and those pyramids didn’t build themselves. Sub Saharan Africa maybe?
I bet they rolled logs as well.
My main concern is that people should talk about the likes of Sir Cloudesley Shovell freeing the English slaves in Africa if they want to talk about slavery. There must be balance, otherwise it is just propaganda.
Law used to be based on something independently and objectively measurable, not based on perceptions and opinions.
Egypt is in Africa, and the extensive African alphabet they developed was the basis of the Sinatic alphabet, the Greek and Latin alphabets.
Not sure about the wheel, but African-Egyptians invented the mathematics, geometry, architecture, city and military organisation, that, combined with Mesopotamian contributions, was the starting point for all Mediterranean culture.
(Sub-sahara… you have Tifinagh and Meroitic likely developed by contact with the Egyptians, far older than any Western alphabet…)
I agree with the point you were making about the legislation though!!! No hatred at all in exploring and speculating about history. The idea that it might lead to supression or prosecution is lunacy.
So beat them at their own game. Don’t let them report you. Report them first. Normally it’s better to not lower yourself to the level of your opponent, but that’s only because there is an authority higher than both of you presiding over the fight. But in this case, the authority has already lowered itself to their level, and the only thing nobility is going to do is make one a noble loser. This is a dirty fight, so we have to get dirty. Report them that their agendas are causing you harm. If enough of us do it, then the authorities will either have to openly admit that they only care about certain people, or they’ll have to abandon the whole thing.
But Nadine Dorries has assured us that only personal attacks will be listed in secondary legislation, not the expression of political opinions. We can all trust that both she and future ministers will be sensible enough to stick to that. And the fact that Melanie Dawes at Ofcom has been visibly chomping at the bit to use her new censorship powers, hiring a big new team to do so, should not concern us in the slightest. She is a senior civil servant, one whose wisdom far exceeds that of the plebs, and we can trust that her successors will be equally wise.
Ah, isn’t that the woke idiot?
Maybe we can have a Eurosceptic, lockdown sceptic, “antivaxxer” climate denier in that role some time? Can’t we?
There is no such thing as a climate denier since no one denies there is a climate. Your claim is exceptionally pretentious gibberish.
I remember listening to Five Live, must’ve been around 2008 when I was a bit more green regarding the MSM. They were talking about fingerprinting of kids in a mass database and one guy argued, ‘We don’t know what they will do with that data, what if a future fascist government gets in’….Ahead of his time that guy.
Did we ever find out what those “covid” testing companies do with people’s DNA (or ancestry tracing companies for that matter)?
Wasn’t the 2016 pro-Brussels case based on fascists never getting to choose those five presidents? I wonder how that will work out?
“In 1992, Melanie Dawes married Benedict Brogan.Together they have a daughter.”
Define ‘daughter’.
As soon as I see the word psychology the cold shiver from the spectre of the behavioural insights team runs down my spine.
Q
How can we make a law to optimise effects of nudging by creating legal consequences for those who won’t be nudged?
A
Prevent dissemination of unapproved views, thoughts and opinions by claiming readers of these arguments are distressed.
Unprovable, and reduces intellectual debate to kindergarten level.
And how long before such distressing behaviour is pathologized? And how long after that before such a pathology is then classed as mental illness?
We can imagine a Catholic priest or conservative Anglican calmly stating they believe homosexual acts are sinful, for example. If this distresses a gay man are they guilty of a crime? And how long after that before the young are taught members of the clergy and some of their congregation are mentally ill? We are on a slippery slope.
I think we all know that the people who try and enforce such nonsense are the crazy ones. They won’t win in the end (and would be foolish to try in Tower Hamlets).
Psyops now permanent tool of Government – will Michie be invited by Johnson to join the Cabinet? ( Gates could surely be made an ‘Honorary Member’ too, to update the Vegetables on the Mass Vax and latest new “Pandemic” progress ?)
The sequel to covid 1984?
Make Orwell fiction Again!
We will now be moving more towards “Brave New World” when the drugs and their next “Gene Therapies” take hold!
Van Halen’s version is much better…..
We are already at Kindergarten level -looked at ‘Twitter’ lately?
twitbook?
I see Sky Sports has a number of videos on YouTube today showing yesterday’s Liverpool v Man Utd game. Well they’re causing me severe psychological distress, so my question is would Sky Sports be committing an offence under the proposed legislation? I do hope so.
I feel your pain. You must phone the police.
I have and they gave me a crime number, 4-0, which didn’t help.
If they can be spared from going after children playing football across a (quiet residential) street…
Crime number, tea and sympathy all at the end of a Mobile!
Job done!
Bootle v. Stretford.
Whoops, I’ve done it too. They really will have to make sport illegal, won’t they?
At the rate Sports personnel are dropping in the field, there will soon not be enough to make up the teams
I do hope it will drop off as !00% safe and effective” uptake falls. Is it one year or two that it takes for the effects to wear off?
If Tory politicians are a ‘likely audience’ and people expressing displeasure at their endless criminality and incompetence would cause them distress does this mean that being critical of Tories and their crime is to be illegal?
Careful
On that note, I’d just like to say that Peking Piffle can go and have a very nice cake. And not that sort of cake…
Yet another thing to file under “There is no problem which cannot be made worse by Govt Interference”
I feel both distressed and harmed by your callousness. Please hand yourself in to the nearest readjustment facility for reorientation
Not reeducation centre?! You have just caused psychological harm amounting to serious distress!
Now your distress has caused me distress.
Worse that just interference- they now want you as their creature!
Harm is defined as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”.
The inherent problem with this is that it’s not measurable. Ultimatively, this depends on someone making a value judgement. And this, in turn, will mean it’s going to be based on personal sympathy and antipathy, as people cannot make objective value judgements. It’s also wide open to political abuse: Not that long ago, there were certainly people who acted as if other people’s vaccination status (or lack thereof) would cause them serious distress.
That lovely woman Yasmin Alibhai Brown comes to mind. She was also supposed to leave after Brexit.
You cannot measure the harm of ultimatively? Do you know nothing about pedants?! Our outrage is real!
Outrage seriously distresses me!
Check this out from Yahoo Mail. It was regarding the effigy of Grenfell Tower. This is a free speech issue I was thinking of doing myself at one point. This reminds me of the Nazi pug where the judge said that context is not important for some strange reason/
“Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting”
I’m surprised they were still allowed to still commemorate Guy Fawkes night…
Commemorating it was supposed to be ‘giving thanks’ for the saving of Parliament and the King by burning the attempted assassin’s effigy ( in fact they just hijacked the Autumn burning season!)
Didn’t Guido suffer serious distress?
“Setting out its concerns with the Bill and how it thinks it could be improved.”
Just get rid of it!
Of course we all know what to do if it turns out to affect this site, don’t we?
Sack Dorries as being incapable of intelligent thought.
Providing online platforms and blogs provide a block button, what’s the harm in everybody just saying what they want and those who don’t want to read it use said buttons?
As with BBC Radio 4 briefly at its peak of free speech which was probably ~30 years ago. Some debates about programmes went roughly …
BBC presenter: ‘Some listeners have contacted us and they are a bit upset. That was very strong language’.
Producer: ‘Well, as you know, R4 in daytime hours is aimed at adults. We took the view that a warning at the start plus the ‘Off’ button would be sufficient to prevent distress’.
I’ve never understood how the successors to Mary Whitehouse get to dictate to all of us what we may and may not watch or listen to.
Good observation, especially in light of the revisionism of some, trying to paint Mary Whitehouse as something other than a totalitarian nanny who thought she knew what was best for everyone and the entire population, except for her, had no brain at all.
By the same token, one can see the untrammeled use of smartarse phones to produce DIY obscene publications (and within certain institutions where they absolutely should not exist) as the direct successors of some of the stuff she objected to. Or perhaps one can’t. You people really ought to understand that this works both ways.
No, she was a censor who believed everyone except her had no brain at all.
Your ‘both ways’ doesn’t exist, she was a totalitarian.
From the person who said that this site having rules doesn’t curtail freedom of speech?
I hadn’t heard that she was in favour of banning opinions. Merely upholding parts of the Obscene Publications act that she considered important. Why shouldn’t people object to swearing on tv before the watershed (for example)?
She tried to have Alice Cooper banned from Britain.
She tried to have people prosecuted for blasphemy.
Of course she was a totalitarian.
As for this site, the owners set the rules so, according to you, the puritan nanny owned the country.
Your trolling is truly illiterate.
That is what they call common sense.
Oh, it’ll be fine. I’m sure that Parliament will set up an arm’s-length quango full of independent Experts who will tell us exactly what really distresses the feelings of the correct sort of people, and declare that to be verboten.
The Experts will be drawn from all walks of life, with a wide gamut running from 99 Gender Studies professors all the way to Post Colonial Racial Injustice professors.
Can it be random people, like with juries?
Juries will soon be scrapped.
To be replaced by a Fixed Penalty Notice from your local thought police. Juries and judges are so inconvenient.
And they’ll use mathematical modelling to ‘prove’ the distress caused
Does this mean that the budget cannot be broadcast? PMQs? In fact nothing can be streamed as someone somewhere will have psychological distress.
It means that this is a generic internet censorship bill which means to circumnavigate existing protection for free speech by redefining speaking as act committed with the intent of causing some metapysically defined harm in order to ban it.
But think of the children! is usually an indicator of foul play. It’s ok to be opposed to Nadines Dorries opinion on any particular topic. But in this case, it ain’t about her opinions, it’s about protecting children! Surely, no one can legitimately be opposed to that!
OTOH, did someone name Nadine “Rt Hon I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!” Dorries the nation’s chief protector of children?
The bill can be improved by attaching it to a rocket and firing it into the sun.
So what can we do about it when our MPs are happy to just nod it all through?
Make sure that more than 10 million of us vote against the corrupt establishment at the next general elections (if we have them) instead of just 4 million. We’ll be up against all manner of dirty tricks though – totally unintentionally of course. But what’s the alternative? We fight on.
Which OTHER corrupt establishment would you like us to vote for? You won’t be given the chance of voting for anyone who is not corrupt.
besides, the power resides in the activists and civil servants. No one can vote them out…
Can’t we just have a whip round and have one of us stand?
How will this work in reality with content which comes from abroad. Surely ofcom will be the Jackie Weaver of the internet. Take Gettr, the only social media app i use which is based im sure solely in the states. Why would they ever have to comply with ofcom rules? Is it only the uk registered arm of a platform/website that could be fined? Can a website in some way register outside the uk and not be subject to any rulings? Is it down to ip address and search engines to limit to what ofcom rule harmful, in which case surely a vpn will get around the problem for websites registered outside the uk.
Anyone have any clue?
wrt daily sceptic, the ‘likely audience’ are sceptics so anyone offended can bugger off. If you had a website called http://www.reallyoffensivematerial.com surely anything goes.
It’s not been thought through. Apart from anything else we will soon discover that the politicians promoting it will fall foul of it. They don’t think it applies to them. (Rather like partygate!)
No doubt Ofcom will put in a place a Chinese-style “Great Firewall” to block content that is deemed “harmful” and that they cannot regulate.
Of course it will suppress freedom of expression: that’s its purpose. It’s not about what they say it’s about.
A lot of people here seem to be arguing about the sheer impracticality and illogicality of these measures – and how they will have negative side effects without addressing any perceived problem.
These are pointless issues to raise. The aim of these measures is NOT to address any particular issue. It is to give the woke activists something to do, and to oppress the general population.
We all know how this legislation will be applied. Any left wing insults and intentional offence will be ignored, while any incautions comedian or football supporter will be visited with the full might of the Law. The legislation is simply an easy way for the establishment to punish anyone they do not like.
And so complaining that it will not work is pointless. The fact that it can be randomly applied to any person or any kind of behaviour is exactly how it is meant to work….
Correct. It is a solution in search of a problem. As such, it can be used in ways that are as yet undefined. Expect some controversial cases to follow.
Harm is defined as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”.
That’s a meaningless criterion when there are so many people who will freak out over nothing, e.g. the young woman who was in hysterics on YouTube/tiktok because there were crickets in her house, one of which was near her kitchen toaster and, sob, sob, all she wanted to do was make some toast, but, sob, sob, it was sooo unlucky to get rid of the crickets, more tears and sobbing.
In the face of immature, hysterical, self-centred, cry-bully narcissists with the emotional development of a three year-old on social media, this legislation will destroy debate, argument, opinion, etc. It will destroy the purpose of the internet.
Hey, don’t insult my grandson. He’s three years old and his emotional development is way more advanced than that of the twats you are referring to.
As they tip their hand and show the citizenry who they really are, it now comes down to a race. But can patriotic, freedom-loving national democrats crush the tyrannical globalist totalitarians before they crush us?
A terrible Bill that will not protect children, it’s original aim, but will suppress free speech. Stress and anxiety are not harmful, they make people stronger and unless someone is inciting violence they should be allowed to say what they want. Without freedom of speech, there will be little debate.
This is not about protecting people, but shutting them down. It’s a terrible Bill from an ever-increasing authoritarian government.
”…….and will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech.”
Just as planned, then.