Internet Censorship Beckons as UK Online Safety Bill Hits Parliament

The UK Government’s controversial Online Safety Bill, which will task Ofcom with clamping down on “harmful” online content (hate speech, bullying, terrorism, conspiracy theories etc.) by threatening such providers with web-blocks, fines and possibly even jail – if they don’t enforce the rules, has today been introduced to parliament.

At present much of the internet content that you see is governed by a self-regulatory approach, which has struggled to keep pace with rapid online changes. Various examples exist for “harmful” content, such as the rise of the ISIS terrorist group, child abuse, as well as state sponsored propaganda from hostile countries, online bullying, racism and the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories etc. Some of this is already illegal, but others will now fall into the opaque “legal but still harmful” category.

The big social media firms (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc.) are often slow to tackle these issues, while other websites seem to exist solely to promote the worst of humanity. The OSB, which is targetted at everything from big social media firms to small blogs – albeit with softer rules for the latter, aims to tackle this by imposing a new legal duty on internet content providers to act.

Ofcom will gain the power to fine companies that fail to comply with the laws (up to 10% of their annual global turnover), force them to improve their practices or block non-compliant sites at the broadband ISP and mobile operator level (easy to circumvent). In addition, executives whose companies fail to cooperate with Ofcom’s information requests could now face prosecution or jail time within 2 months of the Bill becoming law.

In addition, the Government will have another go at introducing an internet Age Verification system, which will target “all websites” that contain pornographic content (here). This is despite concerns over user-privacy and the difficulty of actually being able to create and effectively enforce a workable solution. Most of the main UK ISPs and mobile providers already enable network-level Parental Controls by default, which can optionally be disabled (it is trivial to circumvent web blocks).

Finally, the OSB will also crackdown on the anonymous online abuse that occurs on the largest social networks, albeit with various caveats and without outright banning anonymous comments as that could be counter-productive (here).

A Nightmare to Regulate and Enforce

Naturally, trying to strike the right balance between Freedom of Speech and outright Censorship is difficult, which is what happens when you attempt to police the common and highly subjective public displays of negative human expression and thought. Balancing this against complex issues of context (e.g. people joking about blowing up a city in a video game vs actual terrorists), parody, the application of such rules to non-UK sites and political speech is a monumentally difficult task.

Faced with such a heavy risk of liability, most sites are likely to become overzealous when filtering user-generated content or may prevent people from speaking at all. The result could be an increase in automated filtering systems (these are terrible at understanding complex issues of context), since manually moderating all content on major platforms would be economically impossible (i.e. sites run off a shoestring budget by a handful of people can be read by millions).

However, today’s announcement confirms that social media platforms will now only be required to tackle “legal but harmful” content, such as exposure to self-harm, harassment and eating disorders, as set by the government and approved by Parliament. Previously, they would have had to consider whether additional content on their sites met the definition of legal but harmful material. The Government claims this will remove the “incentives or pressure for platforms to over-remove legal content or controversial comments,” but we aren’t at all convinced that it completely removes such pressures.

Suffice to say that many people in the industry are concerned that, in practice, big parts of the new bill may be unworkable in the real-world, at least not without causing significant problems (e.g. too many legitimate pieces of content being removed and Ofcom being swamped with requests – without enough resources to cope).

Digital Secretary, Nadine Dorries MP, said:

“The internet has transformed our lives for the better. It’s connected us and empowered us. But on the other side, tech firms haven’t been held to account when harm, abuse and criminal behaviour have run riot on their platforms. Instead they have been left to mark their own homework.

We don’t give it a second’s thought when we buckle our seat belts to protect ourselves when driving. Given all the risks online, it’s only sensible we ensure similar basic protections for the digital age. If we fail to act, we risk sacrificing the wellbeing and innocence of countless generations of children to the power of unchecked algorithms.

Since taking on the job I have listened to people in politics, wider society and industry and strengthened the Bill, so that we can achieve our central aim: to make the UK the safest place to go online.”

At the time of writing, we haven’t yet seen the full technical detail for this bill, which tends to follow later (e.g. Ofcom’s related Codes of Practice). As such, it remains unclear how all the different categories will be defined and how long will such platforms be given to remove “harmful” content. But we do know that the strictest measures will only be applied to Category 1 companies (i.e. the largest online platforms with the widest reach)

Previously, there was a suggestion of needing to remove content within 1 hour of being notified, but that would be unworkable on smaller sites (i.e. humans need to sleep, travel, shop and take breaks) and, on bigger sites, it would encourage expensive and unreliable automated filtering systems – although the OSB does encourage platforms to adopt “tools for content moderation, user profiling and behaviour identification to protect their users” (Ofcom will not be able to recommend these tools are applied on private messaging).

The agreed categories of legal but harmful content will be set out in secondary legislation and subject to approval by both Houses of Parliament. Just a reminder – Social media platforms will only be required to act on the priority legal harms set out in that secondary legislation, meaning decisions on what types of content are harmful are not delegated to private companies or at the whim of internet executives.

Finally, we should add that news content will be “completely exempt from any regulation under the Bill.” The OSB will also put requirements on social media firms to protect journalism and democratic political debate on their platforms, which is easier said than done – one man’s fact is another man’s conspiracy theory or propaganda.

No doubt many people will see plenty of positives in the OSB, but at the same time its attempts to micromanage free speech, which seem to have more in common with the laws found in China and Russia than Western Europe, look set to make it harder to speak freely in the first place.

As it stands, the Government faces an incredibly difficult balancing act. On the one hand they need to do more to tackle harmful online content, but on the other they have to avoid the risk of creating a Draconian censorship regime and harming free speech, even though that might not be their intention.

UPDATE 17th March 2022 @ 7:35am

Some comments have come in.

Matthew Fell, CBI Chief Policy Director, said:

“This landmark legislation is important and necessary to keep people safe online – business wholeheartedly back this ambition. The goal should be to make the UK an international leader, not an outlier, in shaping the future of the internet.

However, the Bill in its current form raises some red flags, including extending the scope to legal but harmful content. Not only will this deter investment at a time when our country needs it most but will fail to deliver on the aims of this legislation.

This is an incredibly complex set of regulations and businesses will be combing through the detail over the coming days. Ensuring the Bill is feasible for companies to implement is essential – they will work with policymakers to make that happen as the Bill moves through Parliament.”

Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, said:

“The fact that the Bill keeps changing its content after four years of debate should tell everyone that it is a mess, and likely to be a bitter disappointment in practice.

Dropping powers to ban encryption would be a major step forward, if confirmed in the Bill. Ukrainians and Russian dissidents today are relying on encryption to protect themselves from real world harm.

We have repeatedly warned the Government that attacks on encryption would only help blackmailers, scammers and other criminals.

The Bill still contains powers for Ministers to decide what legal content platforms must try to remove. Parliamentary rubber stamps for Ministerial say-so’s will still compromise the independence of the regulator. It would mean state sanctioned censorship of legal content.

DCMS have not explained their position on age verification for Google Search and Reddit, nor on limiting anonymity, which is relied on by many vulnerable people to express themselves online, such as LGBTIQ+ people and victims of domestic abuse. Ministers were demanding these measures only a few weeks ago, but are now silent on these topics.

Powers to imprison social media executives should be compared with Putin’s similar threats a matter of weeks ago.

The Government should be ensuring that police investigate and criminals are prosecuted, rather than chasing takedown procedures and content moderation policies.”