Think of the children: can we have online safety without censorship?

Recently, the US government has raised diplomatic concerns about the state of free speech in Britain, citing as evidence the Online Safety Act. However, the legislation’s supporters, both in the current Labour government and its Conservative predecessor, have doubled down on the importance of the law. They claim it is essential for protecting children and young people from online harmful content. Worse, those who have raised concerns about the censorious nature of the legislation have even been accused of being apologists for Jimmy Savile-like child sexual abusers.

No one wants kids to consume a diet of pornography, violent material or sites that encourage suicide, self-harm or eating disorders. But critics note that the vast majority of the law’s 353 pages and Ofcom’s 2,000-plus pages of guidance and codes of practice (with much more still to come) will impact on adults’ freedom.

There are also fears of unintended consequences, as events since the child-safety duties came into effect over the summer have confirmed. Because platforms can face fines of up to 10 per cent of global revenue – billions of pounds for the largest companies – for failure to comply, tech firms have become risk averse about what they remove. Users of platforms like X or Reddit have noted that access to all sorts of content has been restricted by default, hiding descriptions of everything from rape-gang trials to graphic imagery of the Gaza and Ukraine wars.

Adults will also be affected by age-verification measures (for example, showing passports, credit cards or uploading selfies) to prove that they are not children. Free speech and privacy campaigners complain that this creates an unnecessary surveillance infrastructure that will link individuals to their most intimate habits and force users to hand over vast amounts of sensitive data to thousands of private companies, exposing them to data breaches, hacking and scams.

Meanwhile, many adult sites have stated that they will refuse to comply, cutting off all access for British users. And what are the free-speech implications of wider provisions in the legislation that mandate the automated removal of content for all users at a much lower than usual legal threshold, weaken end-to-end encryption, and grant sweeping new powers to ministers and Ofcom?

Will the law even work within its own terms? Tech-savvy teenagers are likely to use workarounds like virtual private networks (downloads of which are up 1,400 per cent since the duties came into force, surging to the top of the app-store charts), borrowed payment cards and alternative platforms.

Yet despite this, is it worth trying any and every measure to detoxify social media and to protect the young from exposure to vile, hateful and harmful material? For those who insist that choice and individual freedom should trump any regulatory interventions, is a libertarian ‘anything goes’ approach just an irresponsible, complacent disregard for children’s access to an online sewer of disgusting material?