Last week the Online Safety Act came into effect, posing the most radical step towards protecting our youth in the modern, technological age.
The legislation provides regulation upon platforms which have gone unrestricted for far too long. In principle, it is hard not to agree that some sort of legal obligation had to be required upon such sites which posed a threat to the upbringing of our children.
It is absolutely crucial to recognise the unlimited dangers an unregulated digital landscape brings about; exposure to pornography, content promoting extremist views, as well as threats from online grooming and child exploitation schemes.
Protections against suicidal and self- harm content is also a major focus of the legislation, with algorithms amplifying and glamorising such content to show vulnerable users being heavily targeted. A study by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate found that body image content was shown to TikTok users as young as 13, with the Act now imposing a legal duty on such sites to ensure that this is no longer the case.
The Act goes a long way in aiming to remedy this with an array of measures, such as age verification for adult sites. The underlying premise of the legislation is to ensure a safe and prosperous environment for our children to grow up in as society shifts increasingly towards digital integration.
Whilst the Act is well intentioned, government figures and parliamentarians must proceed with caution if they are genuine in wanting to achieve the aim of a society their children can prosper growing up in, with the threat of government overreach.
The main danger is this well meaning legislation being misinterpreted as permission for increasingly authoritarian governance.
There is legitimate reason for concern that this legislation could set precedent for censorship at levels that this country has never seen before. The danger is that the government may not see this legislation as an endpoint, but as a stepping stone to further regulation.
Digital platforms are already much more susceptible to over- restriction when governments get involved in regulating them, as they are easier to suppress in many ways, as well as being an unknown entity leading to over regulation in the name of safeguarding or threat prevention.
We must be cautious to not become a society which enforces disproportionate censorship under the claim that it is for online safety, nor can we disregard the dangers of the online world.
This goes to say there is a fine line for policy makers and legislators to tread.
With additional powers being granted to Ofcom this is a very real concern, and transparency must be at the forefront of all decisions made by such non- elected government arms.
In recent years, countries such as Australia and Germany have introduced similar laws relating to online safety which has also faced criticism for being overly cautious and enabling potentially disproportionate censorship powers.
Now putting this into the context of the new legislation in Britain, additional powers to Ofcom are of course necessary in many areas and is in the spirit of the Act, yet there is now an outlet for overreach from an unelected body which must be considered a very real risk. This is just one of the issues the United Kingdom must stay vigilant about to not encroach and lean too far into the liberty of its citizens.
Ultimately, the danger lies not in the intentions of the legislation in its current form, but in the precedent it sets.
Once a government starts to regulate online material they can become rapidly more authoritarian, something which I believe a Labour government is more prone to enable over a Conservative one, as liberty is at the heart of British Conservative political philosophy.
Today the Act covers age verification and harmful content. Tomorrow it could be political speech and censorship, something which should not be government policy of a free country.
The Online Safety Act must not act as a catalyst for state- led censorship on a disproportionate level. Whilst we must protect the children within our society from harmful content, we must also protect the principles of a free society.
Featured image via Michael Traitov / Shutterstock.
