In the basic sense of things, free speech can be defined as the right to express ideas and opinions without the fear of punishment or government censorship. In some international documents it has been recognized as a human right. Within some countries, it is also protected by law. In the UK specifically, under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 10), it guarantees the right to freedom of expression, this includes freedom of speech. On US soil, the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits Congress from making any laws that abridges freedom of speech.
A new day with a controversial new law
Britain’s online safety law risks suppressing free speech due to its heavy-handed enforcement, social media site X said on Friday, adding that significant changes were needed. The Online Safety Act, which is being rolled out this year, sets tough new requirements on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X, as well as sites hosting pornography, to protect children and remove illegal content.
But it has attracted criticism from politicians, free-speech campaigners and content creators, who have complained that the rules had been implemented too broadly, resulting in the censorship of legal content. Users have complained about age checks that require personal data to be uploaded to access sites that show pornography, and more than 468,000 people have signed an online petition calling for the act to be repealed.
Safety as defined by the individual
The government said on Monday it had no plans to do so, and it was working with regulator Ofcom to implement the act as quickly as possible. Ofcom (Office of Communications) is the UK’s government-approved competition and regulatory authority. The focus areas are telecommunications, broadcasting, the internet as well as the postal industry. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said on Tuesday that those who wanted to overturn it were “on the side of predators”.
Elon Musk’s X, which has implemented age verification, said the law’s laudable intentions were at risk of being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach. It said in a statement:
“When lawmakers approved these measures, they made a conscientious decision to increase censorship in the name of ‘online safety’,”
“It is fair to ask if UK citizens were equally aware of the trade-off being made.”
Protective measures from the UK
Age verification systems or sometimes called is a technical system with the ability to externally verify an individual’s age. The purpose of this is usually to restrict access to certain content that has been classified as inappropriate for that particular age group. This classification will either be made voluntarily or set down by local laws. X said the timetable for meeting mandatory measures had been unnecessarily tight, and despite being in compliance, platforms still faced threats of enforcement and fines, encouraging over-censorship.
It said a balanced approach was the only way to protect liberty, encourage innovation and safeguard children. “It’s safe to say that significant changes must take place to achieve these objectives in the UK,” it said. Ofcom said on Thursday it had launched investigations into the compliance of four companies, which collectively run 34 pornography sites.
UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 is legislation set in place to protect adults and children in the online environment. A lot of responsibility is placed on social media companies as well as services to ensure the safety of their users on their specific platforms. Certain systems and processes need to be put into place to ensure that there is a reduced risk that the services can be utilized for illegal activity. A distinct requirement of this law is also that illegal content has to be removed from the site as soon as it appears. Understandably so, it seems the biggest focus of this Act is to protect children. Preventing them from accessing age inappropriate as well as harmful content. It also provides relevant methods to report related problems.
GCN.com/Reuters