We commend rewriting of Online Safety Bill – but how long before social media decides Conservative views are ‘harmful’?
Harmful effects
PROTECTING kids from harm online is of huge and unarguable importance.
Drafting a law to do it has proved fiendishly hard.
So we commend the Government for rewriting its proposed Online Safety Bill in order to safeguard free speech.
We are just not sure they have yet got the balance right.
The original Bill would have obliged social media giants to remove legal but “harmful” content.
That could have opened the floodgates to spurious claims from users that innocuous posts they disagreed with politically were harmful — with tech giants then censoring them to avoid fines.
Free speech online would have died.
Labour does not seem to recognise that as a problem.
After all, many on the Left would frankly prefer it if disagreeable opinions were outlawed.
The Bill’s biggest flaw now is that a version of this clause still exists for under-18s.
How will tech firms censor content for kids alone when so many lie about their age?
How long before they outlaw vast swathes of material to avoid it being seen by teenagers posing as adults?
How long, too, before the Californian liberals staffing most social media outfits decide that any Conservative views are “harmful” to children?
It is a minefield. The Tories are not through it yet.
Law & disorder
NOTHING fuels the sense of chaos gripping Britain more than migrants, now packed in 60 to a boat, triumphantly landing on our beaches never to be deported.
We are sick of chancers illegally jumping the queue, sick of being a soft touch, sick of Home Secretaries rendered powerless by our misguided liberal laws.
Our hopes now rest on Rishi Sunak’s deal with the French. They are not high.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has a decent idea, though:
To reject almost automatically all asylum claims from a list of safe countries, including Albania . . . with no appeals.
It has a no-nonsense logic and would deter others. So it won’t happen.
First, those migrants will abuse our flawed Modern Slavery Act and pretend to be victims.
Failing that, our Human Rights Act will keep them here.
Thanks to the idiocy of both Labour and Tory Governments, our borders are wide open and we cannot close them.
Top job, boys
THREE Lions, three fantastic goals . . . top of the group: What a sublime performance by England’s heroes, right back on form.
Our commiserations to Wales. The mountain proved too high.
But they did themselves proud just being in Qatar.
As for England, do we dare now to dream?
First up: Sunday, and Senegal.
Come on, lads!