Updated Online Safety Bill still risks ‘chilling’ impact on free expression, say think tank

Right-leaning think tank the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) has suggested the government’s updated Online Safety Bill could still have “chilling” impacts on free speech.

The government has aimed to abate concerns over freedom of expression concerns regarding plans to force tech firms to curb “harmful”-but not criminal- content.

The updated bill proposes that tech companies define what qualifies as “harmful” content on their own platform, however the government is set to outline specific criteria for what constitutes “harmful” content.

Robert Colvile, director of the CPS, said: “he latest formulation of the Online Safety Bill makes welcome steps towards restricting the scope of the ‘legal but harmful’ aspect of the Bill, and a strengthened role for parliament is a necessary development.

“However, we remain deeply concerned about central aspects of the Bill. The use of the ‘legal but harmful’ definition will have chilling effects on freedom of speech online, even with parliamentary oversight. By placing the burden on businesses to regulate what is shared on their platforms, we will see more and more content removed from public discourse.

“The incentives for platforms to be biased in favour of free expression will be severely limited, with potentially disastrous consequences for our public debate as legal content is censored just for being potentially ‘harmful’ in the eyes of the platforms.

“The scope of the Bill remains unwieldy. This regulation will affect thousands of small businesses and ask them to comply with a burden of regulation that will be overly onerous for many.

“Parliament must seriously consider all of the impacts of this regulation. There is a way of reaching online safety without censorship, by giving parliament the responsibility for defining what is lawful and leaving the police with the responsibility for enforcing those laws. But under the current proposals, businesses and their executives are expected to define harm, at great cost both to them and to our public discourse.”

Tech minister Chris Philp defended the bill in an article for the Daily Mail newspaper yesterday, saying that: “The case for regulation couldn’t be clearer: We have a moral duty to make big tech take action and clean up the internet once and for all. As a father, nothing could be more important to me.”