I’ve written the cover story for the June issue of the Critic setting out my concerns about the Online Safety Bill. In essence, it’s a gold-embossed invitation to woke activists to censor the speech of their political opponents in the name of protecting vulnerable people from ‘harm’. Why a Conservative Government with an 80-seat majority is handing this weapon to its enemies is a mystery. Here is an extract:
The Bill will empower Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, to fine social media companies up to 10% of their global turnover if they fail to remove harmful content — and not just harmful to children, which is hard to argue with, but to adults as well.
What does the Government mean by ‘harmful’? The only definition the Bill offers is in clause 150, where it sets out the details of a new Harmful Communications Offence, punishable by up to two years in jail: “‘harm’ means psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress.”
But, confusingly, it won’t just be harmful content that meets this definition that the bill will force social media companies to remove. After all, this relates to a new criminal offence — and content that meets the threshold for prosecution under this new law will, by definition, be illegal. Notoriously, the Bill will also force social media companies to remove ‘legal but harmful’ content — and exactly what that is, is anyone’s guess. I’m sure political activists and lobby groups claiming to speak on behalf of various victim groups will have a lot to say about it.
The bottom line is that stuff it is perfectly legal to say and write offline will be prohibited online. And not just mildly prohibited — YouTube or Twitter or Facebook could be fined of up to 10 per cent of their annual global turnover for a transgression — so in Facebook’s case $11.7 billion, based on its 2021 revenue.
That’s a powerful incentive for social media companies to remove anything remotely contentious — and they hardly need much encouragement. Facebook deleted 26.9 million pieces of content for violating its Community Standards on ‘hate speech’ in the first quarter of 2020, 17 times as many as the 1.6 million instances of deleted ‘hate speech’ in the last quarter of 2017.
More than 97% of Facebook’s purged ‘hate speech’ in the last three months of 2020 was identified by an algorithm and removed automatically. It’s a safe bet that the sensitivity dials on the algorithms social media companies use to censor questionable content will be turned up to 11 if this Bill ever becomes law.
Worth reading in full.
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We are all utter hypocrties. Sometimes its just wallowing in masturbatory self-satisfaction and sometimes it is simply lack of consideration of facts and circumstances. Can we not come together as a group defined as hypocrites? That’s the real test – if you are able to laugh at yourself. Lets face it in your worst moments you were far worse than the people you are criticising and singling out. And if you do that then it it usually to massage your ego one way or another. This is a teaching in spiritual science, avoiding the tendency to do this. It is even spoken about in the gospels.
Speak for yourself
I disagree. You will inevitably be a hypocrite if you have no principles, but merely base your opinions on whatever is the current fashion.
Statements exists independently of the people who made them and conjectures about the hidden motivations why they were made. They stand or fall on their content. People openly speculating about other people’s hidden failings are either trolling or engaging in disinformation tactics. And they usually only communicate information about the one person they’re really intimately familiar with — themselves.
Here’s the shorthand…
The idle (get it?) wokeys are definitely, definitely in favour of illegal immigrants coming to our shores, breaching our borders, helping themselves to state benefits and firmly believe they should be welcomed with open arms.
The idle wokeys are definitely, definitely NOT in favour of illegal queue jumpers coming to their weekend party, breaching the security border to gain entrance and then disrupting said party because its overcrowded, while paying naff all for the experience. They expect the organisers to ensure this never happens again.
What am I missing?
Nothing, I think. It’s always a big difference if they’re gatecrashing your party or the party of someone else. To these guys, Britain is the party of someone else and particularly, of someone elses they don’t particularly like and who wouldn’t ever come to their concerts.
Exactly
Well put
Thanks
Here is an even better acid test. —-If families of migrants covered in headscarves move next door to these people let’s see what happens to their placards with “Refugees Welcome Here” on them
Brilliant comparison by Michael Deacon exposing the middle-class Leftist hypocrisy on immigration! And it has all been done deliberately, forced upon every western nation by the Globalist subversives.
Here are two photos showing the shocking result of the invasion, the Canadian football team in 2000 vs. 2024:
Keith Woods on X: “https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f1e8-1f1e6.svg Canadian football team in 2000 vs. 2024. So tragic. Few countries are undergoing population replacement as rapidly as Canada. https://t.co/YIIJv9qjIO” / X
You know what they say, people become culture warriors because they are too pussy ass to be real warriors. And most of the culture warriors don’t actually do anything. Just wait and see where your types end up when things get really bad. You will be discarded like rubbish. From a survival perspective the first thing to do is disgard toxic rubbish like you.
They beat you and yes now this is an open door country and will contnue to be so. A million new people every year. Get to know them. To love them. Because their sons and daughters will own this land long after you are extinct.
Talk about reading with eyes shut – or trying to.
There are very few if any posting on DS who agree with you and most will fight to stop the immigrants. We don’t want them.
Like when? This has been an ongoing agenda since the 1950s. You wanted cheap labour okay I can understand that. Surely there comes a point where the costs outweigh the benefits? No even cheaper labour. Eastern european labour wasn’t cheap enough lets go for sub-Saharan Africa. Okay you made your money was it really worth it?
No….Rivers of Blood come to mind.
We were never asked. I observe that more and more people are waking up to what is happening so there will be NO ‘getting used to it’.
I think it was Glastonbury 1999 when they were licensed for 105,000 and reckoned they had 250,000 on site. Nearly got closed down by the environmentalists complaining about too much urine in the streams.
In the years after that they built big fences. A bit of an arms race since then.
Yup first Metal Fence was in 2002.
You threw it down the toilet thirty years ago and now you’re all hot an bothered. It is gone forever. All I ask is that you understand that the meaning of Islam is submission. Submisson to what? That is where you as a human being are supposed to pick up on the truth vibrations.
Do you think the band misspelled their name? Because what a totally dumbass name to call yourselves. And their ‘music’s the pits! Still, at least the attendees at this particular music festival weren’t in any danger of getting killed, injured or kidnapped from these ”illegal entrants”, so there is that, what with the amount of Palestinian support evident that weekend;
”The two most bourgeois events in the social calendar — London’s Pride parade and Glastonbury — often coincide. This at least gets them both over and done with tout suite, and removes a small but very disproportionately vocal and culturally powerful layer of the upper-middle-class, away from the rest of us for one blissful weekend.
There is always some defining, desperately cringe, spectacle to emerge from these events. It looked like Glastonbury’s entry this year was to be its inauguration of a “lesbian tent” that was actually full of delusional straight blokes. But that, incredible thought it was, was swiftly superseded by Banksy’s boat.
This was an inflatable model of the kind of inflatable dinghy that regularly crosses the English Channel, complete with inflatable kiddies aboard. It was released onto the crowd, which were appreciating the performance by pop group Idles of their song “Danny Nedelko”, a hymn to open borders which contains the lyrics “My blood brother is an immigrant, a beautiful immigrant” and “He’s made of bones, he’s made of blood/He’s made of flesh, he’s made of love/He’s made of you, he’s made of me/Unity!” Stand back, T.S. Eliot.
Banksy fits in with Idles nicely. For those of us of a certain age, the name is forever connected with Banksy, the love rival of Zammo in mid-Eighties Grange Hill, a youth with a face that you could politely describe as characterful. The actual Banksy is an ex-public schoolboy called Robin Gunningham, a fact which everybody has to pretend they have forgotten. The posh art world values his gruesome “that’ll show Thatcher!” novelty graffiti, because of course it would, and his works have become bankable assets.”
https://unherd.com/newsroom/banksys-glastonbury-stunt-is-the-height-of-phoney-rebellion/
https://x.com/arcticmatt/status/1808161825713705152
“And their ‘music’s the pits!”
I couldn’t agree more and I have very eclectic tastes.
What current pop music do you like, that’s much good? I’m out of touch with current pop music. I think I might like Richard Hawley if I listened to him more. All the other music I listen to is old, the most recent is Adele.
Richard Hawley is a favourite. A brilliant musician and singer songwriter. His music goes up another notch when you see him live but his shows sell out in minutes. He is a ‘must see.’
Favourite band – Editors. I love their music and live they enter another division. My brother didn’t really ‘get’ Editors until he saw them live. He went to Barcelona to see them last year and tells me it was one of the best gigs evah.
Joy Division / New Order – their music will last to eternity. Love ’em.
Listening to “Love will Tear us Apart” as the finale to a gig really does make the hairs on the back of the head stand up. Life confirming.
Radiohead, Talking Heads, Arcade Fire, David Bowie – genius, The Smile, Thom Yorke’s Radiohead offshoot, The Stranglers – great live, Public Service Broadcasting, phenomenal, Public Image Ltd – absolutely incredible live. John Lydon is a star. Portishead – three beautiful albums. Please come back. A bit of Oasis or High Flying Birds, Mumford and Sons, (I know), The Lottery Winners, Skinny Lister – one of the best live bands out there. Fat White Family.
Leonard Cohen, his last four albums, much like Johnny Cash (
) would define a lifetime of achievement for many artists, so heart rendingly beautiful they hurt.
Keane if only for the timeless and beautiful ‘Hopes and Fears’ album.
Kraftwerk – they re-wrote the rules for modern music.
Joan Amatrading – soulful.
Hot Chip, Goat Girl, Gorillaz, Fun Boy Three, Fleetwood Mac, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Doors, of course. Dionne Warwicke.
The Colourfield and the sadly missed melancholic genius of Terry Hall. Check out ‘Virgins and Philistines.’
The Clash, Chris Rea, Altered Images, Alabama 3 – brilliant live when not pissed.
Steely Dan, the fabulous, luscious Stylistics.
Van Morrison.
Wolf Alice.
The sublime XX.
A selection from my Ipod.
Hope that helps. I would think most of these can be found on YouTube.
I would throw in Metallica, Judas Priest, Motor Head (Ace of Spades) Venom (first British Black Metal band) Don’t mind some nineties dance tracks too. As for Electro, try Scratch Massive (French band).
Some good news – UK Column News are back on YouTube, full programmes and subjects by blocs.
Brilliant.
Here’s a taster:
https://youtu.be/6CqF_of48FQ?si=fbQlqBUNWp-bWoEk
How long will they be back on there and is there any point when Russell Brand does all his tasty stull on Rumble.
Ron, I am a UK Column subscriber and they helped massively when this shit show started. Proper journalism.
I pay the fiver subscription too but never seem to be able to view ‘Extra Time’. Not sure why they do extra time anyway, they can just stay there. It does piss me off if the subject is of interest and they say they’ll save it for extra.
https://youtu.be/iFpSmbkWWNs?si=dsbMa50KJ4NKSA_i
Elcom and Ofcom combining to keep Independents out of the elections.
No…surely not.
Actually yes as I know only too well.
“My blood brother is an immigrant”…..He just raped my sister, oh well!
I did security there beck in 2002 and that was the year they put this metal fence around the perimeter. It was boring in the day, had some old woman coming to me asking is anybody has seen her Gate that was obviously used as a makeshift ladder. Night time was manic and my mate, I quote ‘shit himself’ when approached by around 10 guys from Liverpool. Remember on the CB someone asking fir assistance because a cow was giving birth, and someone told him; watch very carefully, it will change your life!
“In fact, the people who have bought tickets should be made to pay out of their own pockets to feed and accommodate all the people who got in without tickets. It’s only fair.”
Reparations?