In this engaging Triggernometry interview, Lord Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, discusses the UK’s Online Safety Act and its implications for free speech.
He traces the Act’s origins to a moral panic over children’s exposure to harmful online content like self-harm sites and pornography, initially introduced under Theresa May’s government and expanded under Boris Johnson.
Young criticizes it as overly broad, leading to excessive content removal by platforms fearing massive fines or jail time for executives. He highlights how it has resulted in age-gating innocuous material, such as speeches on grooming gangs or historical blog posts, under the guise of child protection, while failing to include robust free speech safeguards.
Young argues this creates a chilling effect, with companies over-censoring to comply, and expresses concern that the Labour government, under figures like Peter Kyle, will strengthen it further rather than repeal it.
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It is all well and good using phrases such as ’30 daily arrests’ and ‘quarter of a million’ but if you are not going to quote examples whose ’cause’ are you really serving? I ask this as someone who loves my country and am horrified at the increasing governmental control it is exercising. Those of us who oppose this need to be very careful in what we say otherwise we are no better.