Online Safety?

Only for the normies!

Adapted from French caricature of members of the Committee of Public Safety: understood to be Public Domain

The text of a proposed Online Safety Bill is now public. Ignore the cheery rhetoric that position this as doing great things to make the online world safer for all. It won’t. Worse, if history is any indicator of what happens next, the outcome of this legislation is likely to be seriously bad for members of marginalised and minority communities.

Now read on.

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Last week, Government published the long-awaited Online Safety Bill. I use that term with a certain delicacy.

For it is “long-awaited” in much the same sense that a death row prisoner might be a long time sat waiting to find out whether they are to be executed by lethal injection or electrocution. Either way they end up dead. Under one scenario only, they have a reasonable chance of departing this earthly sphere with underwear unsoiled.

Following several years of “consultation” and teasing, of an obscene and coquettish nature that, in other circumstances, we can be sure this government would reject, we were treated to an announcement that this proposed legislation

“…will protect children from harmful content such as pornography and limit people’s exposure to illegal content, while protecting freedom of speech.”