– Patrick Wood, Director
Google has become the latest US tech giant to accuse the UK government of stifling freedom of speech online.
The company’s criticism adds to growing US opposition to the Online Safety Act, which includes American businesses and politicians such as the owner of X, Elon Musk, and Vice President JD Vance. Speaking about the Online Safety Act earlier this year, the Vice President claimed that the UK was on a “dark path”.
The Online Safety Act’s regulator, Ofcom, is planning to prevent posts that include “potentially illegal material” from going viral.
The US multinational has issued a warning, saying that the proposals put forward by Ofcom — which would require tech companies to detect and remove “potentially illegal” posts — risk “undermining users’ rights to freedom of expression”.
Under current guidance, Ofcom can fine a company up to £18m or 10 per cent of annual global turnover — whichever is greater — should it fail to comply with requirements to remove illegal material from its platform.
US messaging platform 4chan was fined £20,000 by Ofcom for failing to hand over information about the risk of illegal content on its platform — a fine the company is refusing to pay.
This row followed a legal challenge from Kiwi Farms — another US social media platform — which filed a lawsuit against Ofcom in an attempt to prevent the British regulator from enforcing the Online Safety Act on American firms.
The controversial Online Safety Act — introduced by the previous Conservative government and implemented under the current Labour administration — has already attracted significant criticism. Shadow Home Office Minister Katie Lam MP saw a clip of her graphic and powerful speech on the grooming gangs scandal, delivered in Parliament, censored under the Act on the social media platform X. Ironically, Spiked’s new documentary on online censorship was itself censored online.
Google has added that the measures would “necessarily result in legal content being made less likely to be encountered by users, impacting users’ freedom of expression, beyond what the [Online Safety] Act intended”.
The Online Safety Act was promised as domestic legislation but now appears to carry a very real risk of infringing on the constitutional right to free speech — under the First Amendment — of US citizens.
Google has also said that Ofcom’s new proposal “appears to introduce a new category of ‘potentially’ illegal content that was not intended by Parliament to be captured”.
Earlier this year, Vice President JD Vance took aim at Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the Oval Office, saying: “There have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British — of course, what the British do in their own country is up to them — but also affect American technology companies.”
The draconian Online Safety Act is setting the UK on a course for conflict with its closest ally, the United States of America.”
I think this may be a WWF staged fight designed to distract the customers from how they are being ripped off on both sides of the Atlantic in a million other ways. Has the feel of a spy-op to me.
I am speechless, desperately embarrassed by the country where I was born and lived the first 69 years of my life – I used to be proud to be English. Thank God He called us to go and live in another country but, I fear the EU is likely to have something similar in due course.
By the way who decides what is ‘potentially illegal material’?