The Online Safety Act: Going too far, or not far enough?
Image courtesy of Ilya Pavlov, Unsplash
Political courage seems especially rare in today’s world, and the UK’s Online Safety Act, passed in 2023, stands as a testament to the well-intentioned yet gutless politics of our time.
Its origins can be traced back to the Cameron years, when legislators began to discuss online regulation and the growing power of Big Tech. These discussions continued into the May years, with the government publishing the Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper, outlining the novel threats an unregulated internet poses to the UK’s young people. However, it was not until Boris Johnson’s premiership that the Online Safety Act was drawn up. Introducing a duty of care for tech companies, lending the regulator (Ofcom) more bite in its punishment of non-compliance, and implementing a particularly controversial requirement for online platforms to censor ‘legal but harmful’ content, the original version of the act was lauded and lambasted in equal measure.
This 2020-2021 draft bill should certainly be recognised for its ambition, with its publication marking the first time the UK has attempted to grapple with online safety through comprehensive regulation. Inevitably, and perhaps necessarily, this iteration of the bill had its critics, with some arguing it amounted to authoritarian censorship through its impulse to moderate technically legal content. This strand of opposition does raise valid questions concerning the balancing act government must perform between liberty and protection, though when the ‘free speech’ under assault includes content glorifying suicide, misogyny, and eating disorders, it becomes difficult to be sympathetic.
The original bill represented a pioneering effort in the fight against misinformation and the insidious, unchecked power of tech companies. However, its heft was rapidly abandoned to appease the plutocrats benefiting from the absence of robust regulation, with the bill being gradually defanged as it moved through Parliament. Under Rishi Sunak, the polemic ‘legal but harmful’ clause, intended to force platforms to remove disinformation, self-harm material, and other forms of pernicious content, was removed for adults. This was not the only element of the bill to be watered down, with the original threat of criminal charges for tech executives who failed to comply with the legislation also blunted. Under the version of the act that passed into law, such criminal liability is delayed and will only be enforced in instances of repeated disregard for child safety. Hardly a compelling deterrent for billionaires now holding court in the White House.
This is not to say the final act is unwelcome. It is still a step forward in the fight for online safety - introducing new protections for media, explicit requirements for age verification, and enhanced safeguards against online fraud - but it is difficult not to feel the chance for real accountability was lost.
Ultimately, it seems as though lobbying from major tech companies, some of whom threatened to leave the UK if the strictest measures were introduced, proclaimed ‘free speech’ activists, and wider political pressure forced legislators to buckle. With such pressure only ramping up, it seems hard to imagine such an opportunity will present itself again. It was only last week, after all, that Vice President JD Vance pontificated on Europe’s ‘excessive’ regulation, declaring that “in Britain, and across Europe, free speech I fear is in retreat".
In a world increasingly dominated by tech oligarchs and sympathetic autocrats, we need brave, liberal leaders to speak out against the unrestrained power of digital conglomerates. If the final version of the Online Safety Act is anything to go by, it seems that such leaders are tragically absent in this era of our politics.