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The Hidden Harms of the Online Safety Bill

by Jonathan Barr
18 August 2022 10:28 AM

Former Supreme Court Judge Lord Jonathan Sumption has written a splendid piece for the Spectator, explaining exactly what’s wrong with the Online Safety Bill and its creation of a new category of speech which is ‘legal but harmful’. Here are the opening paragraphs.

Weighing in at 218 pages, with 197 sections and 15 schedules, the Online Safety Bill is a clunking attempt to regulate content on the internet. Its internal contradictions and exceptions, its complex paper chase of definitions, its weasel language suggesting more than it says, all positively invite misunderstanding. Parts of it are so obscure that its promoters and critics cannot even agree on what it does.

Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, says that it is all about protecting children and vulnerable adults. She claims it does nothing to limit free speech. Technically, she is right: her bill does not directly censor the internet. It instead seeks to impose on media companies an opaque and intrusive culture of self-censorship – which will have the same effect.

As things stand, the law distinguishes between online publishers (like The Spectator) that generate content and can be held responsible for it; and online intermediaries (Google, Facebook, etc) that merely provide online facilities and have no significant editorial function. Mere intermediaries have no obligation to monitor content and are only required to take down illegal material of which they are aware.

The Online Safety Bill will change all this. The basic idea is that editorial responsibility for material generated by internet users will be imposed on all online platforms: social media and search engines. They will have a duty to ‘mitigate and manage the risks of harm to individuals’ arising from internet use.

A small proportion of the material available on the internet is truly nasty stuff. There is a strong case for carefully targeted rules requiring the moderation or removal of the worst examples. The difficulty is to devise a way of doing this without accidentally suppressing swaths of other material. So the material targeted must be precisely defined and identifiable. This is where the Online Safety Bill falls down. …

The real vice of the bill is that its provisions are not limited to material capable of being defined and identified. It creates a new category of speech which is legal but ‘harmful’. The range of material covered is almost infinite, the only limitation being that it must be liable to cause ‘harm’ to some people. Unfortunately, that is not much of a limitation. Harm is defined in the bill in circular language of stratospheric vagueness. It means any ‘physical or psychological harm’. As if that were not general enough, ‘harm’ also extends to anything that may increase the likelihood of someone acting in a way that is harmful to themselves, either because they have encountered it on the internet or because someone has told them about it.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Legal But HarmfulLord Jonathan SumptionOnline Safety Bill

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10 Comments
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David101
David101
2 years ago

If and when this bill passes, then in any realm outside the world of entertainment (and perhaps not even there) I can’t see there remaining any point in having an internet. All it will serve to accomplish is a regression to an unenlightened age when our locus of attention was myopically centred on the content of the news-stand on the street.

The internet has been a blessing because it has allowed people to explore topics and current affairs from many different angles, but the Online Safety Bill, with it’s exclusion of legal but “harmful” content, will hobble this freedom to explore and research and restrict us to a small coterie of self-appointed “truth-providers”.

55
-1
amanuensis
amanuensis
2 years ago

The government naming of these types of programmes/laws is always suspicious.

Eg, the USA put into law the Inflation Reduction Act earlier in the week. This is likely to increase inflationary risks.

In the case of the Online Safety Bill it is most likely that this won’t increase anyone’s safety and will have consequences that reach beyond only the online space (probably a significant reduction in freedom of speech and of criticism of government).

38
0
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
2 years ago

“…it is all about protecting children and vulnerable adults. ” If they cared about children and vulnerable adults they would never have had lockdowns.

MPs of all parties have been nothing but ‘harmful’ since 2020. They must all know about the thousands being killed an injured by the Covid jabs but they do nothing.

What are doing nothing about trans Queens in children’s libraries. Applauding it or turning a blind eye.

Doctor Warns of Suspicious Pattern Behind Monkeypox Outbreak 
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This could be used to take away our freedoms’
By Patricia Tolson

 Yellow Boards By The Road 

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22
-3
RW
RW
2 years ago

There’s still no way an online service providers can relibably identify children and vulnerable adults over the internet. Hence, the only way to implement Dorries’ intention is to limit everyone’s access to material she disapproves of on the grounds that children and vulnerable adults are a proper subset of everyone. This is nothing but a universal censorship law using a hackneyed pretext (But think of the children!).

German censorship laws have been working in this way ever since general censorship was reintroduced into German law in the 1920. Supposedly, they exist to protect the youth (Jugendschutz). In practice, while it’s technically legal to sell something declared to be dangerous to the youth, its availbility must not be advertised in any form, including putting it on display, and it may only be sold to adults who specifically ask for it. This amounts to a general sales ban for all practical purposes, more so in the age of online selling: As an affected product must not be display in any form, it can’t be sold via a conventional web shop.

10
0
David101
David101
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

I don’t know how anybody can take this bill seriously. With provisions whose aim is to limit exposure to content that will lead to one harming themselves or others, for example: It is not a symptom of exposure to the wrong kind of internet material that causes harm to an individual, or leads them to a propensity to harm. If a person falls into the category of those easily offended or liable to cause harm to themselves or others, these things will find a way of happening, “harmful” internet or no.

13
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  David101

That’s a very good tangential point: Healthy people don’t desire to harm themselves. Seeking out such content is a sign of an already existing problem.

9
0
NeilParkin
NeilParkin
2 years ago

Now that it is plain that Google, Facebook and Twitter censor content and providers, how long can they maintain that they are simply an online intermediary with not editorial function. It just isn’t true.

15
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
2 years ago

Good luck trying to enforce nonsense. Why is this gov’t so desparately trying to censor people? Good question.

7
0
Epi
Epi
2 years ago

“We have to accept the implications of human curiosity. Some of what people say will be wrong. Some of it may even be harmful. But we cannot discover truth without accommodating error. It is the price that we pay for allowing knowledge and understanding to develop and human civilisation to progress.”

Absolutely nails it. Once again Lord Sumption gosh I wish I had a quarter of your brain power.

3
0
DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
2 years ago

What a shame that Lord Sumption is not our Prime Minister. He and David Frost have more intellect and common sense than all of the current (and any future) government.

4
0

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