The United Kingdom has become the first Western nation to move ahead with large-scale censorship of the internet, effectively creating regulation that will limit freedom on the last frontier of digital liberty. In a move that has the nation reeling, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has unveiled rules that will punish internet companies with fines, and even imprisonment, if they fail to protect users from “harmful and illegal content.”
Couched in language that suggests this is being done to protect children from pedophiles and vulnerable people from cyberbullying, the proposals will place a massive burden on small companies. Further, they will ultimately make it impossible for those not of the pervasive politically correct ideology to produce and share content.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes
The new guardian of the internet will be the Office of Communications (known as Ofcom), a government-approved body that already regulates television, radio, broadcasting, and even the postal service. This group has been accused on many occasions of “acting as the moral arbiter” for the nation, and perhaps unsurprisingly, tends towards a very left-leaning position.
Speaking to Order-Order.com, Matthew Lesh, the head of research at The Adam Smith Institute, warned:
“Make no mistake: free speech is under threat. The Government is proposing the most censorious online speech regime in the Western world. We must not be fooled by platitudes about freedom of expression. The inevitably woke bureaucrats in Ofcom will be deciding what sort of speech is and is not allowed across much of the internet. They will have extraordinary discretion to decide who to target and what is harmful.
This is a recipe for disaster for anyone that thinks differently to the Notting Hill set — any correct but unpopular opinions will not just come under attack from the Twitterati, but the law itself.”
Ofcom has a new boss in place to go along with the new powers: Dame Melanie Dawes. Dawes has been a career civil servant for her entire working life and was most recently the Civil Service Gender and Diversity Champion from 2015 to 2019.
The Rules
Among the sweeping and censorious powers awarded to Ofcom are:
- The ability to create guidelines that instruct content-hosting companies (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) on how to manage online censorship of “user-generated content.”
- Create rules for content that is “not illegal but has the potential to cause harm.”
- To have the remit for deciding, writing up, and adapting rules on how internet regulation works.
Was Trudeau’s – now retracted – plan to require news publishers be certified by the Canadian Government due to a fore knowledge of Boris’s plan?
Hitler, despite his faults, was the Last Man Standing against Communism. The Jewish International Bankers destroyed Hitler and indeed Germany itself by their lackeys, the U.S. and England. Now the West is Communist.
They want a CHINA like authoritarian state.
Thats amusing since i live in the UK and i use virgin media broadband internet which is the 2nd most popular internet provider in the UK and redpilluniversity.org was blocked by virgin media so i had to use a VPN.