00:00The government says the new Online Safety Act will make the internet a safer place, cracking down on harmful and illegal content.
00:06But critics warn it could open the door to overreach, with legitimate speech removed and platforms under pressure to censor.
00:13As the rules begin to take effect, we're asking what this really means for online freedom in the UK.
00:18Well, the Human Rights Organisation Article 19, which tracks global freedom of expression around the world,
00:26has recorded that the UK freedom of expression in the UK has declined in the last 10 years.
00:33There are a number of factors behind that, but one of the main ones in the last couple of years has been the introduction of the Online Safety Act.
00:45The Online Safety Act is a very broad and complex piece of legislation.
00:50It was brought in with very good intentions to keep children safe online.
00:57But unfortunately, the way that the Act was drafted and the way that it has been implemented means that there are threats to the privacy and freedom of expression of both adults and children.
01:09The Online Safety Act introduces duties to tech platforms on people who provide internet services to protect children from harmful content online.
01:24And what we've seen is that there has been some content that's been age-gated that really would actually be quite important for children and teenagers to be able to access.
01:35One of the dilemmas that adults in the UK are facing is that in order to be able to access certain kinds of content,
01:46they have to verify their age with an unregulated age verification provider.
01:53Some of the platforms have chosen providers who are not based in the UK,
02:00and some of them have sort of slightly dubious privacy policies.
02:03Are we perhaps also handing too much power to tech companies to decide what we can or can't see?
02:10Well, and that's, yes, one of the real issues with the Online Safety Act is that, yes,
02:15it's down to tech companies to determine what it is that they, how they interpret the law, what it is they decide to remove.
02:22And they are really incentivised to remove content more than they are incentivised to protect our freedom of expression.
02:29How is it that we can actually protect children online without building an infrastructure that limits freedom of speech?
02:35What amendments could be made to current legislation to achieve that?
02:39Limit the scope of the Act so that it's not quite as broad,
02:43and so it's much more specific about what content actually does need to be age-gated so that children can't access it.
02:50The age verification industry will want that to be regulated so that people know that when they're verifying their age,
02:59their data will be, you know, treated with the utmost privacy and security.
03:04Pam, thank you very much for your time.
03:07Great. Thank you.
03:08The government says it has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act,
03:12insisting it strikes the right balance between protecting children and upholding legal free speech.
03:17Ministers have strongly rejected censorship claims, with Peter Kyle accusing critics of siding with predators.
03:23Ofcom and the ICO say enforcement will remain focused on criminal content and child safety,
03:27with clear privacy safeguards.
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