The Northern Ireland Secretary has said ‘false information’ online will be clamped down on by Ofcom as part of new powers Labour is handing the internet regulator. All for dealing with “times of crisis“…
Hilary Benn criticised a second night of protest in Belfast last night: “If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin, how else can you describe them? That is racist thuggery. There’s no question about it at all.”
Ofcom said it had contacted X and other social media platforms because Labour ministers claimed violence “appears to have been incited online.” When asked what a “time of crisis” is on Times Radio, Benn said “that will be set out in due course” and confirmed that events in Belfast fall under the definition. He said people who put out “false information” will be targeted by new powers:
“If people are putting online false information – we have seen the chief constable spoke about this yesterday. We have seen people putting online addresses and the clear incitement is ‘that is an address you should go to because ethnic minority people live there’ and we have seen that in the past people being burned out of their homes because of the color of their skin. Now, it is not acceptable and it may well be a criminal offence depending on the circumstances as the chief constable made clear yesterday. It is not acceptable for that to be done.”
This is teeing up the government to take harsh action against ‘legal but harmful’ content online. Emergency brakes on free exchange of information and views when something out of the ordinary takes place…
Tech Secretary Liz Kendall said this afternoon:
“Those who use social media to incite violence and disorder are breaking the law. Next week we will lay in Parliament an update to the Online Safety Act requiring services to take quicker action to remove illegal content circulating during times of crisis.”
Team Burnham is even more keen on regulating information online. Lucy Powell is pushing for direct control over social media algorithms…
Labour Deputy Leader Lucy “oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we” Powell has proposed the state takes control of social media algorithms. This is one of the people running Burnham’s journey to No10…
Powell said in comments over the weekend:
“It’s not just a young person’s problem. The echo chambers, the rabbit holes that people can go down and you get that on the doorstep, suddenly there can be something that comes up on the doorstep quite a lot and you’re like, where the hell’s that come from? It’s not in the mainstream media at all. And it’s gone absolutely viral on social media….
We need to do more to regulate the algorithms and what drives contention and controversy and the business models of big, big tech as well. And we need to look at where politics and how politics is funded from abroad and from wealthy individuals and things like that and the power that that can bring you in the kind of social media age.”
The Burnham organiser claimed Reform uses “exploitation of online algorithms on social media sites” as well as “bots and troll farms to amplify support.” Unhappy about your low viewer counts, Lucy?
The Online Safety Act currently puts legal duties on platforms to manage to manage illegal content, which includes through algorithms. If enacted, Powell’s proposals could revive a push to force controls on “legal but harmful” content which includes “viral misinformation” according to the Deputy Leader. In practice the government could force “brakes” on social media algorithms for topics or during certain periods in order to suppress sharing of information. If you thought Keir Starmer was bad on social media controls…
Preston Byrne, known to co-conspirators as the 4chan lawyer who last week trolled Ofcom with a picture of a giant hamster, has co-authored a model ‘Free Speech Bill’ that would function as a British First Amendment.
Published by the Adam Smith Institute, the bill would repeal the Online Safety Act, Public Order Acts, and Malicious Communications Act in their entirety. In their place, it would establish a broad statutory right to expression including speech that is “offensive, grossly offensive, insulting, abusive, shocking, blasphemous, indecent, or otherwise objectionable”. It would also gut Ofcom’s content regulatory powers. Basic protections you’d expect in a free society…
Byrne has published an overview of the bill here. The key lines:
“In a free society, fools, bigots, and assholes get to speak and remain free men. That is not the price of liberty. It is liberty, and the rest of us get it too. The Model Bill’s authors are aware that this Model Bill, if enacted, would decriminalise expression that we find morally repugnant.
We accept and embrace that consequence. But we ask the reader to consider who these laws actually catch. Overwhelmingly, victims of the UK’s censorship state are not hardened extremists, who operate in encrypted channels beyond the reach of any statute, but ordinary people. The present state of the UK, where expressing an opinion that gives rise to even mild offence may result in arrest, and does result in arrest, for tens of thousands of people per year, is a heavy price that this country has been paying for two decades.”
Spot on. Good luck convincing Labour to listen…
Read the full bill below…
Continue reading “ASI Publishes First Amendment-Style British Free Speech Bill”
The tin-pot internet police at Ofcom have fined US-based platform 4chan an unbelievable £520,000 (plus daily penalties of around £800) for repeatedly violating the Online Safety Act. They claim the site failed the OSA’s risk assessment duty, its illegal content safety duty, and its children’s safety duties. That’s half-a-million quid, please…
Below is 4chan lawyer Preston Byrne’s response email, which contains a picture of a giant hamster dressed as Godzilla:
Ofcom,
Thanks. As has been explained to your agency, ad nauseam, the United Kingdom lost the American Revolutionary War. We are not in the mood to discuss the matter further, and have not been in the mood for 250 years.
I note for the record that, last time your agency sent my client a censorship fine, we responded with a hamster joke. Since you have now sent my client a giant fine, a fine so large that Mr. Whiskers’ enclosure is not big enough to contain it, we will need to send the fine to Mr. Whiskers’ giant hamster cousin, Nigel J. Whiskerford. Unfortunately, Nigel is out of the country this week, touring in Japan. Here’s a picture of Nigel in Tokyo, dressed up as Godzilla and holding an equally giant peanut.
Isn’t he just the cutest?
My client reserves all rights and waives none. Reserved rights include the right to sue you again and/or to respond to future correspondence with an even larger rodent, such as a marmot.
Or, maybe, you could just stop sending Americans stupid letters and acknowledge the sovereignty of the United States.
Byrne & Storm
Doesn’t look like 4chan is playing ball…
UPDATE: 4Chan’s lawyer Preston Byrne tells Guido:
“Dame Melanie says that getting sued in the United States is a sign Ofcom is ‘having the impact it wants.’ If Ofcom’s desired impact was to inspire the first foreign censorship shield bill in American history, and a 46-12 supermajority vote to pass such a law the first time one was ever voted on by a sovereign American legislative body, then yes, Ofcom is having exactly the impact it wants.
American free speech activists will be back with more shield bills, in Wyoming and elsewhere, in 2027, if not sooner. Filing windows for numerous state legislatures are coming up in the autumn.
In the meantime, we await Ofcom’s fine with relish. Last time Ofcom fined 4chan, we replied with a hamster joke. Ofcom has advised us that it provisionally intends to issue a giant fine to 4chan. Accordingly, this time, we are planning to send Ofcom a joke about a giant hamster.
Increasing the size of an unconstitutional fine does not cure its legal invalidity in the United States. We can only suggest that Ofcom pare back its ambitions to UK-nexus targets, as it appears to be doing now, and as it should have been doing all along.”
Ofcom Chief Executive Melanie Dawes has inflamed the rhetorical (and legal) war against social media firms. Asked on the Today programme about ongoing legal action from US platform 4Chan – the first firm fined by Ofcom under the OSA – Dawes said legal action against the regulator is a good thing:
“We’ve seen quite a lot of pushback, but we expected that and we will use all the tools at our disposal to keep forcing through that change. I mean, it’s very difficult for me to talk about individual investigations. That one remains live… we’ve got significant legal pushback in the US, but I see that as a sign that we’re having the impact we want.”
In November Ofcom declared ‘sovereign immunity‘ in proceedings from 4Chan and has moved to dismiss the case. Dawes is clearly gearing up for legal clashes with more firms…
Ofcom wrote a threatening letter overnight to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Roblox, and X, telling them that they aren’t doing enough to protect children online with checks. Dawes boasted about that too:
“I think they’re quite uncomfortable about this. We’ve given them a deadline of the end of April to come back to us. We’re strongly encouraging them to publish those letters when they come back to us. And whether they do or not, we will publish the responses in May. It’ll be a report card on the industry, on those six companies, and we will then follow up with enforcement action where we need to.”
The platforms themselves are bemused that Ofcom is going after them instead of so-called ‘higher risk’ platforms which veer much closer to illegal activity in the corners of the internet. Dawes is ploughing ahead anyway – it’s all-out war…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”
