Ben Bradley MP for Mansfield and Warsop has welcomed the now improved Online Safety Bill that will both safeguard children from harmful content, whilst also ensuring that freedom of speech is not just maintained at the current level but protected in law.
The Online Safety Bill will now return to Parliament with measures focussed on protecting vulnerable users, such as criminalising the encouraging of self-harm.
The Bill also requires internet companies to offer adults tools to help them avoid content that does not meet the criminal threshold, and requires firms to show how they enforce age limits on their content in order to ensure children can not circumvent authentication methods.
The Bill also prohibits platforms from banning users where they neither breach their terms of service or the law, strengthening user’s free speech and preventing companies from censoring users with legitimate views.
The changes to the Online Safety Bill have been welcomed by the Children’s Commissioner For England, the charity Kick It Out which opposes racism, sexism, homophobia in football and organisations such as the Antisemitism Policy Trust.
Commenting, Ben Bradley MP said:
“I’m glad to see the new improved Online Safety Bill return to Parliament with a better emphasis on protecting free speech as well as taking appropriate action on harmful content. I know these changes will be welcomed by people across Mansfield and Warsop with many of them having contacted me with their concerns on free speech.”
“I was concerned about the ‘legal but harmful’ aspect of the bill which I feared would give too much scope for tech companies to censor those with legitimate political opinions which they find disagreeable. This has now been dropped from the bill, which in turn allows us to focus on the important and necessary aspects that will put a legal obligation on online companies to protect children and other vulnerable internet users.”
“I look forward to the Bill’s reintroduction to Parliament in the hope we can have a more pro-active debate on the aspects that will strengthen protections for children and give adults more control over the kinds of content they wish to see.”
Commenting, Digital Secretary Michelle Donelan MP said:
“Unregulated social media has damaged our children for too long and it must end.”
“I will bring a strengthened Online Safety Bill back to Parliament which will allow parents to see and act on the dangers sites pose to young people. It is also freed from any threat that tech firms or future governments could use the laws as a licence to censor legitimate views.”
“Young people will be safeguarded, criminality stamped out and adults given control over what they see and engage with online. We now have a binary choice: to get these measures into law and improve things or squabble in the status quo and leave more young lives at risk.”
