Defending the UK Online Safety Act
The UK’s Online Safety Act continues to be in the news, this time via a Congressional hearing across the Atlantic. With wild accusations flying between London and Washington, this blog sets out the facts about online safety regulation in the UK and how we should be working to strengthen, not scrap, the Online Safety Act.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee convened a hearing in early September on “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation”. Witnesses included Nigel Farage, a Member of the UK Parliament, who attacked the UK’s Online Safety Act as censorship.
In his testimony, Farage compared the UK to North Korea, equating a democratically-enacted online safety law with a dictatorship that executes dissidents. To support this claim, he cited criminal prosecutions that had nothing to do with the Online Safety Act.
These claims are false, misleading, and ignore the evidence of online harms which organisations like CCDH have spent years uncovering.
The Online Safety Act is a vital, evidence-based law designed to hold tech companies accountable for the harms on their platforms, especially harms to children.
An evidence-based law to reduce online harm
The OSA was passed in 2023 with backing from all major political parties in Parliament. It creates a regulatory regime aimed at reducing the online harms that CCDH research has evidenced, including:
- Suicide-related content, which platforms have failed to address despite user fatalities.
- Algorithmic promotion of harmful content to children, like eating disorders and self-harm.
- Extremist content and hate, which spreads unchecked and fuels real-world violence.
Parliament acted with courage in response to these harms, legislating to require tech platforms to take responsibility for the safety of their systems. The OSA is not a partisan project, but a democratic, fact-based response to real dangers. You can read more about the OSA here.
Safeguarding, not censorship
Contrary to Mr Farage’s claims, the OSA is not censorship.
The Act requires social media companies to put in place effective systems and processes to address illegal content and content that poses clearly defined risks to children, while ensuring users’ freedom of speech. It does not give the regulator Ofcom the power to decide what people can or can’t see online.
The examples cited by Nigel Farage during the hearing (such as arrests under the UK’s Public Order Act and Communications Act) had nothing to do with the OSA. Misrepresenting unrelated prosecutions is not just misleading, it undermines public understanding of how the law actually works to protect them.
Britain showed global leadership
The UK is leading the world in addressing online safety. By holding trillion-dollar companies accountable for the safety of their platforms, Britain has set a global standard for protecting children and communities online.
CCDH knows that the Online Safety Act is not perfect. But unlike Nigel Farage, CCDH has been working to strengthen, not scrap, the Online Safety Act. Our campaign to strengthen the OSA resulted in amendments that unlocked data access for independent researchers. Read more about that campaign and our recommendations for building on the OSA here.
Unlike CCDH, Nigel Farage chose to disparage Britain’s achievement abroad rather than engage in debate at home. The proper forum to raise concerns about British law is the UK Parliament, not a staged hearing in Washington, D.C. Farage missed his opportunity to question the Prime Minister directly, preferring instead to travel overseas to criticise his own country.
As Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, said:
“Instead of travelling to Washington to disparage Britain, Mr Farage should have raised his concerns directly with the Parliament which acted on the overwhelming evidence of online harms. Protecting children online should be a source of pride, not something to undermine abroad.”
Protecting rights, not curtailing them
Just as with Europe’s Digital Services Act, critics are attempting to portray the OSA as censorship. This cynical mischaracterization is wrong. The OSA is not a threat to free speech or innovation; it is a necessary, proportionate, and democratic move to keep children safe and ensure megacorporations have sensible processes in place to prevent illegal behavior, such as fraud, illegal harassment and cyberflashing.
CCDH will continue to expose the real-world harms caused by social media platforms and defend laws that ensure those companies are held responsible. For more, watch our CEO Imran Ahmed respond to the hearing on LBC here.
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