The Online Safety Bill was approved by the House of Lords on the 19th of September but still needs royal assent which is official approval from the King before it can become law. The Bill is a piece of legislation that comes under the guise of being predominantly for the safety of children in an attempt to protect them from online grooming and abuse and also to limit the reach of terrorist propaganda.
This, however, is a propaganda technique known as card-stacking. The government has presented something everyone can agree upon—child abuse is evil and children need protecting—in order to induce people, including our representatives in Parliament, to believe that the legislation is necessary.
This is not the real objective of the bill, this is simply a tactic used to deter people from fighting against the bill which really has the primary focus of narrative control. The bill is essentially, a direct attack on social media platforms, or more specifically the content that can be seen and shared on them and will enable the government to blackmail social media companies to reduce their reach, de-platform, and criminalise views that disagree with the government narrative.
If this bill receives royal assent from King Charles, which of course it is likely to, this is the end of democracy, we are now in a dictatorship courtesy of the New World Order.
OfCom
The OSB came from the government’s Online Harms White Paper which stated that an independent regulator would be appointed. Britain’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom was subsequently appointed as the Online Safety Regulator, but Ofcom is in no way independent from the government, nor from a plethora of commercial interests. Ofcom is “directly accountable” to the UK Parliament, and funded by many of the broadcasters it currently regulates.
Additionally, it is “sponsored” by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), among other government agencies and departments. Ofcom board’s declared register of interests shows that of the 40 board members in all (spread between Ofcom’s executive, content, and advisory boards), eleven have financial ties to the BBC and 26 are either currently, or were formerly, in government roles.”
Other interests represented by Ofcom board members include Google, GlaxoSmithKline (via the Wellcome Trust), Akamai (the global cybersecurity and content hosting giant), numerous media consultancies, and other commercial enterprises that stand to profit from Ofcom “regulations”.
The only people Ofcom appears to be independent from are the public and despite alleging that the bill will impose a duty on the tech giants to operate safely, it is actually about taking down individual pieces of content posted by ordinary users.
The Bill
The bill aims to set tougher standards for social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok and the government has no doubt it will soon become law.
Although Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan said on Tuesday that the bill was a “game-changing” piece of legislation and that “this government is taking an enormous step forward in our mission to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online.” This is simply untrue.
Paedophiles
The OSB will not assist in this effort to protect children from paedophiles, according to Iain Davis at UKColumn, who argue that “paedophiles already have been and are being prosecuted for online abuses in increasing numbers. Law enforcement already has the legal power and technological capability to detect and arrest online paedophiles. Resource shortages are the problem, and the approaching Act does not address them.”
The UK Government admits that online child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSEA) overwhelmingly occurs on the dark web, yet they are placing the responsibility on the media giants on the surface web which is unhidden to police everyone’s social media activity. A more sensible way to start tackling the problem would be for it to insist that Facebook—by far the biggest platform—remove its dark website as long as it remains online, child predators will continue to access Facebook via the dark web route. This makes catching them much harder for law enforcement (source)
Again, the OSB offers nothing on this front to address something that genuinely is an unacceptable risk.
Terrorism
Another assertion is that the OSB is designed to tackle terrorist propaganda and so-called online radicalisation, but “to date, the British state has shown little interest in removing real terrorist propaganda, which has been widely circulated online for nearly two decades.” says UKColumn, and it is “YouTube (owned by Google) who is among the many platforms that openly host terrorist-related material.”
Ofcom is currently the regulator for the video-sharing platforms (VSPs) where terrorist-related material is openly hosted. The OSB is to receive additional counter-terrorism powers, but, since it hasn’t shown any inclination to use those it already possesses why would we believe they will use some new ones? It is just not credible, the Government and its agencies have long had both the authority and the ability to remove online terrorist incitement, but haven’t.
(source)
Clearly, this is just another sales technique to promote the legislation.
The Issues with The OSB
The bill has hidden references to claimed “disinformation” and “misinformation” inside the broader notion of “content that is harmful to adults.” Nonetheless, the primary focus of the Bill is on social media platforms and online services with significant user bases to censor the views that disagree with their own.
Once the OSB has been accepted as law, the Secretary of State or Ofcom can, at their discretion, label the types of content they don’t like as “content that is harmful to adults.” Category 1 providers will then have a duty to establish systems to take down such content.
(source)
This in itself will also drive other issues, such as:
Lack of Privacy: There is obviously the likelihood that there will need to be increased monitoring and reporting for online platforms, which could raise concerns about user privacy. Additionally the monitoring of content and reporting of “illegal activities” could lead to more extensive data collection, potentially compromising privacy rights.
Data protection – The bill may require online platforms to share data with law enforcement agencies to combat illegal activities. While this is aimed at improving online safety, it raises concerns about how data is handled, stored, and protected, potentially impacting individuals’ data protection rights.
Impact on Marginalized Communities: There is a risk that overzealous content removal or censorship could disproportionately affect marginalized communities, including minority groups. This could hinder their ability to express themselves online and engage in meaningful discussions. This would include those of us who do not agree with government policies and agendas.
Freedom of Expression
Freedom of Expression: One of the primary concerns related to the bill is its potential impact on freedom of expression. The bill requires online platforms to remove or limit access to illegal and harmful content, which can include what the government may deem “hate speech, terrorist content,” and more.
The Online Safety Bill, therefore is similar to many pieces of legislation that aim to regulate online content and is trampling all over our human rights by impacting freedom of expression. So while the bill claims to protect individuals from harmful content, there are particular concerns about the potential overreach and censorship which leaves the people with just one point of view, that of the tyrannical government.
Failure to comply could limit the social media giants’ ability to reach and engage with their audience or even de-platform them altogether.
Several sections of the bill have been subject to scrutiny and debate regarding their potential impact on freedom of expression. Some of these sections include:
1. Duty of Care: The bill imposes a duty of care on online platforms to protect users from illegal and harmful content. This could potentially lead to over-censorship if platforms err on the side of caution and remove content that may be controversial but not illegal. Let’s face it, everything is controversial to someone, somewhere these days.
2. Regulatory Powers: The bill grants regulatory powers to the Online Safety Regulator, which can set rules and standards for content removal, these may be overly broad or vague.
3. User Reporting: Platforms are required to have mechanisms for users to report harmful content and while this is supposed to make the users feel empowered, as we have seen with the Rona times, we now have witnessed those who will feel they have a moral duty to report content that disagrees with them or the government, which will lead to the removal of content without a thorough assessment.
4. Blocking and Removal of Content: The bill allows the regulator to issue notices to block or remove content deemed harmful. again the criteria for assessing harm and the process for issuing notices is subjective and often biased.
5. Enforcement of Age Restrictions: Platforms are required to enforce age limits and age- checking measures, and while this is aimed at protecting children, it may also restrict access to content for adults.
From analysis of the Online Safety Bill
What is most concerning is platform owners will likely be over-cautious about what content is safe to stay on their site mainly because if they do not comply with the bill, the media regulator Ofcom will be able to issue fines of up to 18 million pounds ($22.3 million) or 10% of their annual global turnover. (Reuters)
This can only result in over-censorship and huge limitations on freedom of expression.
Health-Related Content
We have seen the effects of health-related content that does not agree with the government’s “science” Experts, have very often seen their content banned, from social media, and often good scientists and doctors have been de-platformed.
Misinformation
The OSB will directly censor those of us who were against the COVID hoax and relentlessly share our truth concerning the plandemic and warnings of the needless risks associated with government interventions.
Points that were raised in the House of Lords when debating the bill on Thursday 11 May 2023 would suggest that these are exactly the voices and views they want to censor. Baroness Merron for example made a few utterly ridiculous, biased points to support this idea. Here are two of them and an excerpt of her offerings to the Bill debate below.
“We all remember the absolute horror of seeing false theories being spread quickly online, threatening to undermine the life-saving vaccine rollout.”
“In 2020, an estimated 5,800 people globally were admitted to hospital because of false information online relating to Covid-19, with at least 800 people believed to have died because they followed this misinformation or disinformation.”
This is Tyranny
What hope do we have when our freedoms are in the hands of such docile people as this Baroness? We also have a government that has shown it cannot be trusted through the multitude of lies in the Covid era and we are now being lied to yet again with their claims that the bill is intended to tackle online CSEA.
They have used our love and feelings of responsibility for all children in order to sell us this new bill, a bill that they felt the need to undemocratically sneak in under another guise knowing that many could not oppose it. They offered child protection but what they are really giving us is censorship a restriction on our freedom of speech that will impose on us like we have never known before. As Robert Kennedy Jr. says, “No Time in History When Censors Were the Good Guys“
What we are witnessing now is unjust, oppressive governmental power, – this is tyranny – brought to you by the New World Order.
The speech by Jacob Rees Mogg before the treasonous ‘Online Safety Bill’ went through is an appropriate way to conclude.
Comments