The Times view on social media safety and free speech: Legal but Harmful – The Times

The Online Safety Bill will attempt to protect users from content that while legal would be harmful

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Next month the government is to present to parliament the Online Safety Bill, which ministers claim will bring a new age of accountability for tech and make Britain one of the safest countries in the world for online and social media communication. So far so good, but the boasts may be premature. In the attempt to tackle pornography, criminality, the promotion of suicide and other obvious obscenities rampant on social media, the bill invents a new category titled legal but harmful. The implications, which even a former journalist such as the prime minister appears not to have seen, are worrying. Could they give the censors in Silicon Valley power to remove anything that might land them with a massive fine? That would enshrine the

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The Times view on social media safety and free speech: Legal but Harmful - The Times