We love our children.
In fact, we love them so much that we rarely hesitate to weaponsize them, either literally by thrusting an AK47 into their arms and sending them off to fight the good fight, or by filling their heads with eco-anxiety and sending them out onto the streets to wave their ‘No Planet B’ placards. To paraphrase what my old boss would love to say in moments of corporate tenderness, they are our only asset. They are a precious commodity deserving of our finest nurturing – that is if we want them to do what is best for us. Which is why it is so important that they are not exposed to harmful pressures, by which I mean pressures harmful to the cause.
In a recent BBC article bemoaning the failure of TikTok to remove conspiracist material from its platform, the thoughts of Paul Scully MP, the minister for technology and the digital economy, were thrown into the ring, by dint of him mentioning the forthcoming Online Safety Bill. Just to remind you, this is a bill that was inspired by a number of tragic incidents in which minors came to harm as a direct result of dangerous online material to which they had been exposed. The bill is therefore very much focussed upon the protection of children and other vulnerable members of society. As such, its scope is very specific. According to the UK government’s guidelines it covers the following illegal material:
- child sexual abuse
- controlling or coercive behaviour
- extreme sexual violence
- fraud
- hate crime
- inciting violence
- illegal immigration and people smuggling
- promoting or facilitating suicide
- promoting self harm
- revenge porn
- selling illegal drugs or weapons
- sexual exploitation
- terrorism
In addition, the following legal but harmful material will be covered:
- pornographic content
- online abuse, cyberbullying or online harassment
- content that does not meet a criminal level but which promotes or glorifies suicide, self-harm or eating disorders
So what did Paul Scully say?
[He] told the BBC that the government’s proposed Online Safety Bill would guarantee that the responsibility of social media platforms to tackle disinformation was ‘taken seriously’.
Which causes me to ask in what way mere disinformation falls within the scope of anything I have just listed. It strikes me that what Paul Scully appears to be advocating would be nothing less than a blatant abuse of legislation. And the fact that the BBC was happy to quote Scully without challenging the obvious inappropriateness of his statement only adds to my concerns. Such concerns are also heightened when one considers the context in which the Paul Scully quote appeared. The TikTok video that had attracted the BBC’s ire featured a certain Dan Peña, referred to by the BBC as a “self-styled ‘business success coach’ with thousands of followers on social media”. Upon being interviewed by the BBC he supposedly doubled down on his ‘climate denial’ by making three statements:
- A changing climate is nothing new
- Climate change may not be the threat that scientists claim
- There is little to be achieved by the UK’s plans for Net Zero if nothing is done to reduce China’s emissions
Presumably, these are the sort of statements that the BBC categorises as disinformation, and it is why they thought it so appropriate to quote Paul Scully and his mentioning of the safeguards that the Online Safety Bill will introduce. Presumably, also, Dan Peña’s views are the sort of material that the BBC equates to child sexual abuse, inciting violence, terrorism or promoting and glorifying suicide, otherwise why invoke the Online Safety Bill as one of the legal instruments they expect to be called into play?
I have often said that the major threat posed by climate change may be the growing intolerance shown towards sceptical thinkers once such scepticism has been branded as unsupportable and dangerous. Indeed, I do think that we live in very worrying times in which dissidence is branded a health and safety issue befitting the application of duty of care legislation. And, as far as I can see, the only justification given for this is the simple introduction of the concept of ‘dangerous misinformation’.
We can all talk about dangerous misinformation and how it may impact the safety and welfare of our children. We could talk, for example, about the UK government’s initial insistence that the AstraZenica vaccine was perfectly safe and that claims of blood clots in young adults were being pushed by ‘ridiculous’ conspiracy theorists. We can talk about the encouragement to vaccinate children as young as five, even though there was no scientific justification other than it might better protect the adult population. And we can talk about the fact that the media and our education system have traumatised our children to the point that medical practitioners are now complaining of a significant increase in the numbers of children presenting with emotional and psychological disorders associated with eco-anxiety. I’m not sure about promoting or glorifying suicide, but I’m sure that online material that leads children to believe that they will not survive to adulthood cannot be helping. So why isn’t Paul Scully invoking the Online Safety Bill in that context? And where is the BBC in striving to take such material down from TikTok? It strikes me that they are far too busy helping stoke childhood fears.
The only reassurance that I can take away from any of this is that, despite the risk of unintended consequences, it should become immediately apparent to any court that the Online Safety Bill does not apply to the likes of Dan Peña. However, the fact that the UK’s minister for technology and the digital economy could entertain the idea that it does apply is a matter for grave concern. It is even more concerning that the UK Council for Internet Safety, in its practical guide for parents and carers, chooses to include ‘inaccurate or false information’ on its list of risks children may be exposed to. It is no wonder Scully is confused.
I asked above, where is the harm? Well, I certainly don’t see it in the freedom to challenge government policy, no matter how much we love our children. The internet is a dangerous place for them, as is the real world. But this is mainly because it is full of adults who seem to have forgotten how vulnerable and impressionable they were when they were growing up, or, if they do remember, now see such vulnerability as an opportunity. But abuse takes many forms, and I just wonder if the next generation will grow up to realise just how much freedom of thought had been taken away from them.
Postscript:
Upon reading this article, Mark Hodgson searched the Online Safety Bill, as currently drafted, and discovered within it Clause 141. This clause obligates Ofcom, an unelected body, to produce guidelines that will in effect determine the application of the Bill with respect to misinformation and disinformation. The Online Safety Bill does not identify misinformation and disinformation as harms to children, but then it doesn’t have to. The authority to make that call has been legally bestowed upon Ofcom. I don’t think this is an unintended consequence. I think the government knows exactly what it is doing.
Climate Scepticism 
Paul Scully MP, the minister for technology and the digital economy, told the BBC that the government’s proposed Online Safety Bill would guarantee that the responsibility of social media platforms to tackle disinformation was “taken seriously”.
This certainly sounds like the BBC approached Scully, in the context of their investigation into TikTok’s refusal to take down ‘climate denial’ videos, and this was his reply. I would like to try to confirm this by looking at Paul Scully’s Twitter account (if he has one), but Elon Musk has now made it impossible to view even public tweets without first logging into Twitter, so effectively he has closed the “public square” to casual onlookers and those who have been banned. Perhaps somebody else could take a look.
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Jaime,
I’m afraid I can’t help you there. I had made the same assumptions.
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“[Paul Scully] told the BBC that the government’s proposed Online Safety Bill would guarantee that the responsibility of social media platforms to tackle disinformation was ‘taken seriously’.”
About time!
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The Online Safety Bill currently runs to 216 sections and to 17 schedules.
Clause 141 is the only part of the Bill where I have found explicit reference to misinformation or disinformation:
Make of that what you will. So far as I can see, despite the contents of clause 141, the Bill nowhere seems to define “misinformation” or “disinformation”, which strikes me as a worrying lacuna.
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Well dug out there, Mark. It makes you wonder why there should be a clause to specify the reporting of something that isn’t listed as a harm. As for the lack of definition, perhaps these terms are defined in the Communications Act, in which case they should say so. None of this inspires confidence.
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John,
I took a quick look at the Communications Act, here:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/contents
I don’t think the missing definitions are to be found there…
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Mark,
As an afterthought, it occurs to me that clause 141 betrays an intent to apply the Act in ways that are deliberately evaded in the government’s guidelines that were written for public consumption. I still need to ask the question, where’s the harm to the child?
This is beginning to look ever more like a move for further censorship introduced through stealth. Watch this space.
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If they can shut down Nigel Farage’s bank accounts then they can certainly use the Online Safety Bill to surreptitiously introduce censorship of anti-Establishment narratives.
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Mark,
I think the RCP article I linked to as ‘unintended consequences’ provides the answer to the definition conundrum we have been discussing. In it there is a passage that says:
“In many ways, this Parliament has saved itself from the difficult questions by kicking the can down the road, requiring Ofcom to produce ‘codes of practice’ which will fundamentally shape what content can be shown on social media and what people can be shown when they look for content on search engines. This in itself is problematic. First, it means that Parliament is introducing legislation without themselves having gone through and debated the implications of what they are mandating at a high level. Second, is the democratic deficit in expecting an unelected regulator more practiced in dealing with linear broadcasting complaints to draw the boundaries in British society around what information and speech is permitted online and how content is moderated. So, despite good intentions, the legislation in its current form leaves many open questions and has the potential to lead to unintended and damaging outcomes.”
Clause 141 is ‘kicking the can down the road’ with respect to the issue of misinformation and disinformation. The Online Safety Bill does not identify misinformation and disinformation as harms to children, but then it doesn’t have to. The authority to make that call has been legally bestowed upon Ofcom. I don’t think this is an unintended consequence. I think the government knows exactly what it is doing.
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Mark,
I have now added a postscript making this important clarification.
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John,
That is indeed a very important postscript. Parliament seems increasingly keen to abdicate responsibility, by passing the buck to unelected “experts”. It’s almost reaching the stage where we need to question what is the point of Parliament.
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Mark,
Yes, and as your scare quotes imply, Ofcom will not have the expertise to judge. Their approach will likely follow that used when investigating TV complaints. Some degree of appeal to consensus will be employed. The rest will be down to algorithms searching for key words. It’s not just free-thinkng that is under threat — it’s thinking.
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The Online Safety Bill, as initially proposed and (as far as I am aware) as it still stands, is concerned with harm to the individual and not societal harm. That is the main reason why it would be difficult to make the concept of ‘dangerous misinformation’ fall within its remit. That hasn’t stopped lobbyists from trying, however. Take, for example, the Carnegie UK Trust:
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/41498/html/
“As we set out below in relation to climate change disinformation, we strongly believe that the Online Safety Bill needs to be both simplified and strengthened if it is to be effective, with its scope widened by a new definition of harm that will capture not just harms to individuals but to society as a whole. Climate change disinformation is one such societal harm that, at present, would not be captured by the scope of the Bill. We set out below how we think the Government should rectify this and hope that this proposal, and the analysis that informs it, is helpful to the Committee as they continue their deliberations on this important topic.”
How they expected a simpler form of the Bill to result from widening its scope to cover societal harm, is not clear to me. I would be interested to know how the Carnegie submission was received. Favourably, judging by Paul Scully’s recently reported views.
I suspect that the Online Safety Bill is destined to become the most pernicous legislation in the history of UK law. Wake up everyone.
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The same submission can be found on the Carnegie UK Trust website:
https://carnegieuktrust.org.uk/blog-posts/an-inconvenient-truth-radical-change-needed-to-online-safety-bill-to-tackle-climate-disinformation/
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The irony is that they perceive only one form of climate misinformation. We see it every day, but they wouldn’t agree with my idea of what constitutes such misinformation.
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Is there any sign others have picked this up? This appears to be a complete negation of the principle of free speech and even the right to think freely. Are there any MPs who might respond if this is put before them?
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Heriotjohn,
I’ve only just latched onto this one myself, so I am unfamiliar with the gestation of the bill. I understand that many inputs have been entertained and the result may already be unworkable. We also have to worry about the many guidelines and codes of practice that will no doubt follow. I think it is an unholy mess that is in danger of getting out of control. From hereon I will be taking a lot more interest.
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I confess I have been aware of concerns about the Bill for some time, but haven’t interested myself in them so much as I should. Concerns were expressed 17 months ago here:
https://iea.org.uk/media/online-safety-bill-needs-independent-scrutiny-to-protect-free-speech-warns-new-paper/
Meanwhile, perhaps inevitably, the Guardian’s concerns seem to be in the other direction:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/19/online-safety-bill-changes-urged-to-allow-access-to-social-media-data
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Mark,
On the subject of how Ofcom will decide what constitutes misinformation, it will go down something like this:
Sceptic says: I think the Royal Society has got their projections of future warming wrong because they are basing them on models that may be running hot.
Ofcom says: That sounds like climate misinformation. We must consult the experts to help us decide. Hello, is that the Royal Society?
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There was a time when Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, Darwin’s theory
of evolution or Hutton’s theory of cyclical formation of land were considered misinformation.
Luckily ‘expert’ opinion did not prevail.
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Beth,
Of course, people of alarm would scoff at such comparisons. They don’t like sceptics quoting Feynman either, even though they do it themselves all the time. Here is a Feynman quote that seems to suit the occasion:
“No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.”
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“People of alarm” would appear to be a very gentle way of describing those whose views are not sceptical. Most deserve harsher treatment. The name implies their concerns are not of their own making.
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Alan,
It is my newly favoured epithet for the climate concerned. I’m sure they would hate to be called alarmed people. 😉
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For those interested in learning more about the machinations behind the development of the Online Safety Bill, there is this rather good article from Politico:
“How UK’s Online Safety Bill fell victim to never-ending political crisis”
https://www.politico.eu/article/online-safety-bill-uk-westminster-politics/
It tells a tale of endless meddling by various groups trying to subvert what should have been relatively straightforward duty of care legislation, aimed at protecting individuals, into something that would support their pet ideologies. The most worrying part, as far as I am concerned is this:
“That coincided with recommendations from a joint committee of politicians from both the House of Commons and House of Lords that suggested boosting protections for children online and forcing social media companies to be responsible for how their platforms affect society. Several of those additions found their way into the legislation.”
I’d love to know what those additions were. Moreover, I’d like to know why those wanting to introduce “how their platforms affect society” into duty of care legislation designed to protect the individual were not just told by the civil service lawyers to piss off. This would seem to be symptomatic of the weakness and chaos existing within the government of the day.
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Spread the word, there is help for climate alarmists, people of alarm, whatever
Fortunately, there is help for climate alarmists. They can join or start a chapter of Alarmists Anonymous. By following the Twelve Step Program, it is possible to recover and unite in service to the real world and humanity.
Step One: Fully concede (admit) to our innermost selves that we were addicted to climate fear mongering.
Step Two: Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves causes weather and climate, restoring us to sanity.
Step Three: Make a decision to study and understand how the natural world works.
Step Four: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, our need to frighten others and how we have personally benefited by expressing alarms about the climate.
Step Five: Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our exaggerations and false claims.
Step Six: Become ready to set aside these notions and actions we now recognize as objectionable and groundless.
Step Seven: Seek help to remove every single defect of character that produced fear in us and led us to make others afraid.
Step Eight: Make a list of all persons we have harmed and called “deniers”, and become willing to make amends to them all.
Step Nine: Apologize to people we have frightened or denigrated and explain the errors of our ways.
Step Ten: Continue to take personal inventory and when new illusions creep into our thinking, promptly renounce them.
Step Eleven: Dedicate ourselves to gain knowledge of natural climate factors and to deepen our understanding of nature’s powers and ways of working.
Step Twelve: Having awakened to our delusion of climate alarm, we try to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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The more I look into the Online Safety Bill, the more it looks like a complete omnishambles. Here is another analysis that points out its many profound flaws:
“UK: Online Safety Bill is a serious threat to human rights online”
https://www.article19.org/resources/uk-online-safety-bill-serious-threat-to-human-rights-online/
In particularly, there is this to consider regarding its inadequate safeguards for freedom of expression:
“First, all services have a duty to ‘have regard to the importance’ of protecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy rights (Sections 19 and 29) when deciding on, and implementing, safety measures and policies. When contrasted with the more robust safety duties established in the Bill (and the heavy sanctions regime enforcing its compliance), this wording will be insufficient to offer meaningful protection and only seemingly creates the appearance of a balance being struck in the Bill. In fact, the Bill goes on to specify that if service providers adopt the ‘relevant recommended measures’ to comply with their safety duties (as recommended by Ofcom), they are also considered to have complied with their freedom of expression and privacy duties. This removes any incentive for a company to duly consider the impact of its safety measures on freedom of expression and privacy and will likely reduce this duty to a box-ticking exercise.”
The problem is that having a duty to ‘have regard to the importance’ of protecting freedom of expression means nothing given that:
“The Bill, like its draft version, seeks to impose an obligation on large platforms to take down and restrict access to content that is entirely legal, but considered ‘harmful’.”
And what will be taking this content down?
“In addition to the legitimacy concerns of outsourcing decisions on the legality of users’ speech to private actors, we note that in the majority of cases, these assessments are extremely complex and context-dependant [sic] and should therefore be made by trained individuals. The reality is, however, that online platforms deploy algorithmic moderation systems, such as automated hash-matching and predictive machine learning tools, to conduct content moderation.”
What could possibly go wrong?
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John, the attack on free speech is not restricted to the UK of course; it is globally coordinated. In the US though, the First Amendment is proving to be a thorn in the side of those who wish to silence wrongspeak online:
“This case is about the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues— this is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech. Although the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech, the issues raised herein go beyond party lines. The right to free speech is not a member of any political party and does not hold any political ideology.
The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants. Therefore, a preliminary injunction should issue immediately against the Defendants . . . .”
“A federal court in Louisiana on Tuesday barred parts of the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.
In the ruling, Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana said that parts of the government, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
Judge Doughty said in granting a preliminary injunction that the agencies could not flag specific posts to the social media platforms or request reports about their efforts to take down content. The ruling said that the government could still notify the platforms about posts detailing crimes, national security threats or foreign attempts to influence elections.”
https://merylnass.substack.com/p/judge-doughty-issued-an-important
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There is a delicious irony to all of this that I should be making more of.
To ensure I had an accurate understanding of the Bill, I consulted the government’s own online guidelines. They betray not the slightest hint that the legislation will cover anything like ‘societal harm’ or ‘harmful misinformation’. In fact, my article’s list of the issues to be addressed is a direct quote from the guidelines. That was the basis upon which I confidently stated that the courts would not uphold the censorship of your average climate sceptic. It seemed clear to me that Paul Scully was attempting to subvert the legislation. Little did I appreciate that such subversion had been underway basically since the Bill was first drafted. Therefore, I have to say that, if ‘harmful misinformation’ and ‘societal harm’ are to be covered by the Bill, then the very first thing that needs taking offline would be the government’s own highly misleading guidelines.
And on a technical point, are the government’s guidelines misinformation or disinformation? I strongly suspect the latter.
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I think we can all guess what sort of “misinformation” and “disinformation” is at risk here. Not this sort of thing, I’m sure:
“Why are people dying at sea? They are fleeing disasters that we once called ‘biblical’, and now call normal
Fatima Bhutto”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/07/climate-crisis-migration-pakistan-greek-shipwreck
Nobody denies that Pakistan suffered dreadful flooding last year, but I believe the “one-third” claim has been comprehensively disproved. Yet it is still repeated, again and again.
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It is ironic that Fatima should make so much of the oil company profiteering and then end the article with a plug for her masterclasses in writing about climate change:
https://www.theshipmanagency.com/classes/uj154m2baly1u9nwmg539xt694ovuu
Yes, for just $50 a session, you too can learn how to write an article any sixth former would be proud of.
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“Most of the 750 people on board the trawler were Pakistani. They were migrants, fleeing poverty and lack of opportunity but also the ravages of the climate emergency, which is felt acutely in Pakistan. The men and women who risked their lives on the Mediterranean were escaping floods, droughts, glacial melt, crop damage and locust plagues, all of which Pakistan has suffered in recent years. It is a cruel fate to endure disaster after disaster; they were once described as “biblical” but have since become mundane, everyday occurrences.”
Language is everything. It’s abuse is rife, especially among those on the Left promoting a mythical ‘climate crisis’ as the excuse for mass social change and upheaval and the dissolution of international borders.
I can translate that paragraph from Guardian Wokenglish into plain English:
“Most of the 750 people on board the trawler were Pakistani economic migrants in pursuit of opportunity and wealth and a better life in the West. You don’t flee from poverty, from lack of opportunity or from bad weather which happened years ago and which climate catastrophists tell you is happening now and will happen, with increasing severity and frequency, in the near future. You ‘flee’ only in the event that your life or livelihood, or your freedom is in imminent peril. You make the conscious, deliberate decision to emigrate when you perceive that the benefits on offer are significantly greater than the potential risks and especially when it seems you are actively encouraged to do so (illegally) by the corrupt government and corrupt, infiltrated institutions of the host nation who guarantee a generous and warm welcome at the expense of the indigenous population.”
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I note that there has been little discussion of what might happen if the law were to be passed and was used to bring down a sceptical site. Surely such a ruling would be immediately challenged ruthlessly and could not prevail for reasons already discussed?
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Alan,
I would hesitate to speculate as to what would or would not prevail nowadays. It does feel like a new era of state control may be emerging in response to the internet revolution. How it pans out, and what it might mean for the likes of Cliscep may be anyone’s guess. Time to dust off our business continuity plan, maybe.
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Alan,
It depends on how deep are the pockets of the person(s) behind the website. Going to the High Court isn’t cheap, and it’s stressful. And if the site has been closed down in accordance with the law, even if it’s a bad law, then going to Court won’t help.
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My thought has been that bad laws will be opposed by those who recognise them as such, not just by those immediately affected by the laws. The reason being that bad laws eventually will affect more than those originally targeted, so it’s in the interest of many to oppose the bad law as early as possible. I think this has been the case in the past.
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It looks like we will have more difficulty than usual opposing this law:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/07/the-european-unions-global-mass-censorship-regime-will-soon-be-fully-operationalthe-natu.html
It seems the body deciding what is allowed to be disseminated is the High Commission in Brussels Prime.
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Thanks for nothing, Bill. Now I really am depressed.
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Alan, I hope you are right, but to bring a case the Courts have to accept that you have locus standi. That said, it’s seems to be a low bar these days, judging by all the climate cases that are allowed to proceed.
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Will these things come down to an appeal to the courts or an appeal to Ofcom?
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Good question, John, and I don’t know, though the ultimate arbiters will be the Courts.
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“Who Fact Checks the Fact-Checkers?”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/08/17/who-fact-checks-the-fact-checkers/
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It seems that the EU is beginning to flex its newly acquired muscles:
“EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/26/eu-warns-elon-musk-that-twitter-x-must-comply-with-fake-news-laws
According to the Guardian article:
“The war in Ukraine was the most frequent topic for propaganda but the platforms also reported hate speech in relation to migration, LBGTQ+ communities and the climate crisis.”
What does hate speech in relation to the climate crisis even mean? Does it mean that they will all be forced to stop calling us deniers? Somehow I think not. I suspect instead that the Guardian has in mind the obvious hatefulness of fearing a loss of freedom of speech on such issues.
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I ask where the harm is.
Here it is:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67126236
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Well spotted John. Will the powers that be join the dots? I doubt it.
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Mark,
From what I can see, no one is joining the dots. Of course, anyone who has looked into the Online Safety Bill in any detail, and discovered the role that the legislation gives to Ofcom in defining the bases for discerning misinformation and hate-speech, would surely recognise how the Ofcom director’s own online hate-speech utterly undermines the whole enterprise. But what is more shocking is not the fact that she had to be suspended, but the fact that someone with her overtly politicised background had been appointed in the first place. In what way did they think that the top appointment of a black, feminist, BLM advocate with pronounced anti-Zionist viewpoints could possibly not bring into disrepute Ofcom’s ability to act with impartiality? The whole thing is a farce. It just makes one wonder what sort of culture exists within Ofcom. In fearing the worst, I still suspect I am being optimistic.
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Maybe the Ofcom director’s outburst can be placed into context by the following article that has just appeared in a mainstream newspaper:
“Standing up for Palestine is also standing up to save the west from the worst of itself”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/17/israel-palestine-hamas-gaza-west-leader-view
The piece is entirely focussed upon the ongoing tragedy that is now falling upon the Palestinian civilians, and it makes a moral case for standing up for Palestine. Fair enough, but nowhere in the article is a single mention of the atrocities that led to this situation. And nowhere does it mention that crowds outside the Sydney Opera House were chanting ‘Gas the Jews’ long before the Israelis had chance to formulate their military plans for invasion of the Gaza Strip. Were these protestors trying to save the west from the worst of itself? And do we really want Ofcom to have the final arbitration on such matters?
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Of some relevance, I think:
“Social Media Censors Are Using ‘Disinformation’ Claims to Silence Free Speech, Sunak Told by Over 100 Academics, Historians and Journalists”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/18/social-media-censors-are-using-disinformation-claims-to-silence-free-speech-sunak-told-by-over-100-academics-historians-and-journalists/
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Would anyone like my signature? 🙂
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“Ofcom cannot be trusted to regulate our speech
The suspension of its online-safety director over an Israelophobic rant needs to be a big wake-up call.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/18/ofcom-cannot-be-trusted-to-regulate-our-speech/
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Mark,
The significance of the Ofcom director’s rant and subsequent suspension is self-evident and far-reaching. So it should not be left to the likes of Spiked to raise the alarm. How can the world of mainstream journalism be so feckless and indifferent?
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Those of us who have been labouring for so long under the epithet ‘denier’ will understand how important labels are as a shortcut method for expressing an editorial position. You may also have been pondering why news outlets such as the BBC have been so reluctant to appropriately label the overtly terrorist nature of the Hamas attacks that have led to the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip. This reluctance has been sold as a necessary component of journalistic independence, a claim that looks rather flimsy in the light of the Guardian article I referred to earlier on this thread. Interestingly, such faux deference to impartiality has also been evident in the Australian press, as recently highlighted by our colleague Tony Thomas at Quadrant:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/media/2023/10/in-abcspeak-terrorists-are-mostly-just-fighters/
On a similar theme, the Guardian is particularly concerned that we all use what it sees as the ‘scientifically accurate’ language when describing climate change and, as a consequence, has decreed an approved lexicon chosen from the various unscientific alternatives that are available. George Orwell certainly knew what he was talking about.
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Thanks for the link, John.
I concur with Sagen’s final thought on the subject-
“The End
is not in sight…”
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Our government seems to be less than convinced of the so-called impartiality of the BBC when reporting upon the tragedy unfolding in the Middle East. In particular, the fact that the BBC’s initial reporting of the hospital attack placed the blame squarely upon Israel, even before the facts were known, has not gone unnoticed:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1825222/Rishi-Sunak-BBC-PMQs-Hamas-hospital
Of course, BBC Verify is on the case now, so, despite its own transgression, the BBC obviously still expects everyone to treat it as the goto source of reliable information:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67144061
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On a different thread today, Jaime Jessop provided a link to a John Campbell interview of MP Andrew Bridgen in which mention was made of the 2023 amendments to the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR). The development of various regulations covering so-called online safety has already shown that there are serious concerns regarding sovereignty and democratic accountability wherever international regulations are concerned. There is a potential for severely important amendments being introduced ‘under the radar’ as far as the vast majority of affected citizens are concerned. The IHR amendments are particularly important in this respect and it also seems they are being introduced with an undue haste, and with less scrutiny than desired. Professors of Law from Opinio Juris have offered the following detailed analysis:
One particular alarm bell raised is the amendment that redefines and extends what constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Given that this amendment significantly strengthens and widens the scope of authority of the World Health Organisation’s Director General (DG), it is quite alarming to discover that:
“The absence of a clear ‘severe’ or ‘life-threating’ disease benchmark defining a PHEIC to ensure that PHEIC declarations are only issued if we are indeed facing a severe health hazard deserving the highest level of alert justifying the far-reaching legal and practical consequences such a declaration can have on a global scale, are not addressed in any of the proposals for amendments.”
Even more concerning is the news that the amendments will give the DG powers to set up Emergency Committees (ECs) that have the authority “to issue legally binding instructions to states’” regarding “medical and/or non-medical countermeasures to address a PHEIC”. This will transform the WHO into a ‘global health emergency legislator’. The implications of this should be obvious.
There is much more to the amendments but I will leave you to read the Opinio Juris analysis yourself, should you be so interested. And why should you be interested? Well, I’ll let Opinio Juris explain:
“Given that the IHR amendments aim to further increase the emergency powers of the WHO, and given the WHO’s history of ties to the pharmaceutical industry, which is likely to benefit from every new PHEIC, and is (indirectly) involved in many of the WHO’s public-private partnerships, further thought should be given of how to ensure full accountability of the WHO and its public-private partners during a PHEIC.”
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I see that the BBC’s Mariana Spring has been advising the world on how to identify online disinformation in relationship to the Israeli-Gaza conflict:
“Israel-Gaza war: How to spot disinformation on social media”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-67177744
That the BBC should choose this moment to reassert its expert authority on such matters seems odd, given that the Israeli government is currently considering banning the BBC from reporting from the frontline because the BBC cannot be trusted to use the correct terminology when referring to the Hamas terrorists:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12652533/israel-threatens-ban-bbc-refusal-call-hamas-terrorists-gaza-hospital-explosion.html
Perhaps Spring simply forgot to mention in her little piece that a sure sign that you are being misinformed is when incorrect terminology is being used. Of course, another good way of misinforming is to lie about yourself on your CV. This is another thing that Spring is an expert on:
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/how-the-bbcs-disinformation-correspondent-lied-on-her-cv/
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Well, it has now happened, and the BBC has reported upon it:
“Online Safety Bill: divisive internet rules become law”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67221691
So, according to the BBC, what is it all about? Well, it’s just about protecting children from illegal and harmful content. That’s all.
And, according to the BBC, why is it supposed to be divisive? Because some people say it will not do enough to prevent online misinformation and disinformation. No mention of the dangers to freedom of speech if it were to be used for such a purpose.
Since the BBC supposes itself incapable of misinforming, but is forever complaining about those that they think do misinform, I’m not surprised to see the concern they chose to report. And I’m not surprised to see the concern that they chose not to report.
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Here’s a little gem of post-prandial digital hate to help you digest your Sunday lunch. I share it with you because it is the produce of a climate scientist who, no doubt, would be the first to call upon the Online Safety Act to stop the ‘evil’ of climate change denial. Her name is Dr Mica Tosca, and this is what she had to say online in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack:
“Israelis are pigs. Savages. Very bad people. Irredeemable excrement. The propaganda has been downright evil. After the past week, if your eyes aren’t open to the crimes against humanity that Israel is committing and has committed for decades, and will continue to commit, then I suggest you open them. It’s disgusting and grotesque. May they all rot in hell.”
Fortunately, as a climate scientist, she is an expert in identifying hate speech and was immediately able to see it in her own statement — the very moment her university launched an investigation:
“I allowed my reaction to the violence in Israel and Palestine to take an inappropriate and offensive form, and I am taking proactive steps to learn how I can do better and be better.”
Yes, Mica, do try to do better in the future, and keep up the good work rooting out the evil of climate change denial.
https://nypost.com/2023/10/19/dr-mika-tosca-chicago-professor-apologizes-for-calling-israelis-pigs-and-very-bad-people/
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John, if only she had replaced the word ‘Israelis’ with ‘climate deniers’, then she would have been fine, nay, even lauded by the academic establishment for so bravely, stridently and aggressively calling out the very real harms of science denial and shilling for Big Oil. You see, it’s perfectly OK in Left Wing La La Cloud Cuckoo Woke Land to directly compare climate denial with Holocaust denial, but insulting Israelis IS Holocaust denial which is the yardstick via which the radical Left have chosen to measure all ‘far right conspiracy theorists’ by – which they must be regretting recently as most leftists have allied themselves with the Palestinian cause. Hence people like Tosca, despite basking in the warm glow of her climate scientist lefty street cred, are tripping themselves up.
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Jaime,
I don’t think that what Tosca said amounts to Holocaust denial but she did commit something that is the modern-day equivalent when she referred to the Israeli’s ‘evil propaganda’. There appears to be a view prevalent within the woke, Far Left academia that the Hamas atrocities did not take place and that it is all part of the Zionist propaganda that they did.
Tosca was born a man but joined the other side. She trained as a scientist but now prefers to teach in an arts department explaining where the scientific method fails. She’s an anti-Semite but woke up the morning after the kickback professing her love for all things Israeli. Unfortunately, the one transformation Tosca will never be able to make is from a person with a mouth into a person having an opinion worth investing in.
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Ye Gods, I just read the NY Post article you linked to. It’s more screwed up and convoluted than I could have imagined. A man who now identifies as a woman and an art professor who is also a climate scientist! Who calls Israelis “pigs, savages and irredeemable excrement” (Israeli citizens, not Zionists, not the abhorrent government which signed the entire populace up to a lethal secret medical experiment without their consent, coercing them to take part by withdrawing their civil liberties). Would those be the same Israelis who were slaughtered, raped and tortured by Hamas, with the apparent blessings of many ‘ordinary’ Gazans on October 7th, a massacre that was “like the fucking Vikings showed up at Burning Man and butchered everyone in sight”?
https://www.thefp.com/p/sam-harris-honestly-good-and-evil
Then we have the ‘nice’ Israeli government clamping down on the freedoms and civil rights of those “pigs” (yeah, guinea pigs for Pfizer maybe) under the guise of emergency war policies, especially those “savages” who might question how the “fucking Vikings” could have shown up at the Burning Man in the first place, given the sophistication and reach of the Israeli security services. Wow. There is NO bright line between good and evil, that’s all I can say.
https://efrat.substack.com/p/under-the-guise-of-war-israel-government
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“How the Online Safety Act shut down a hamster forum
This terrible law is already making the internet a lot less free.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/04/how-the-online-safety-act-shut-down-a-hamster-forum/
…Small, community-led sites have been announcing to users that they will either restrict access, introduce sweeping rules or even go offline entirely – all because of the regulations imposed by the new law. Smaller forums, many of which have been around since the early days of the web in the 1990s and early 2000s, have been particularly badly hit. Victims include a group for locals of a small town in Oxfordshire and a cycling forum. One site, a link-sharing forum hosted in Finland, has blocked access for UK visitors, blaming Britain’s ‘Great Firewall’.
A particularly galling example is the Hamster Forum. Describing itself as ‘the home of all things hamstery’, it is the last place you’d expect to feel ‘unsafe’ online. Still, it too has posted a farewell notice to its users, announcing that it is shutting down. ‘While this forum has always been perfectly safe’, the administrator wrote, ‘we were unable to meet’ the compliance requirements of the Online Safety Act. The administrator of the Charlbury in the Cotswolds forum similarly wrote that the law was ‘a huge issue for small sites, both in terms of the hoops that site admins have to jump through, and potential liability’. As a result of the new rules, the forum was being forced to more strictly moderate its content.
Ofcom handwaved the costs of these risk assessments as ‘likely to be negligible or in the small thousands at most’. But ‘small thousands’ is still a monumental amount for people who are running these sites either mostly or completely for free. Besides, it is an unfathomable waste to spend any amount of money on assessing whether people might come across illegal or harmful content on sites dedicated to sharing hamster-rearing tips or asking when the next bin collection is….
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The UK has become a very dark place under this government – who are implementing with unbridled fascistic enthusiasm the worst excesses of previous Conservative governments – and then some. There doesn’t seem to be much of a future for freedom and prosperity in these islands. And those thinking they can vote their way out of this mess have left it far too late. Mass civil disobedience and non-compliance or violent revolution appear to be the only two dangerous and fraught options open to the British now.
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Back in May last year, the WHO International Health Regulation (IHR) amendments were finally agreed and it looks like the move to give the Director General sweeping new emergency powers was successfully fought off. However, the amendments did set in motion the development of a new ‘pandemic treaty’, which was agreed yesterday. The WHO seems to have learnt its lesson and has not attempted to use the new treaty to usurp national authorities. According to the WHO press release:
Instead, the emphasis of the treaty seems to be on a legally binding obligation for knowledge, technologies and resources to be equitably shared between nations in times of pandemic. There is also a lot of boasting about international cooperation being alive and well, which may be a bit of an overstatement given that the treaty’s agreement was only possible due to America pulling out of the WHO.
https://www.who.int/news/item/16-04-2025-who-member-states-conclude-negotiations-and-make-significant-progress-on-draft-pandemic-agreement
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“The proposal affirms the sovereignty of countries to address public health matters within their borders”
Does that mean China will shut down any Covid source enquires?
Seems WHO is another waste of space, defund if we fund them.
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This draft statutory instrument is so wrapped up in jargon, with the necessity to cross-check definitions against the Online Safety Act, that it is difficult to make sense of it, but it sounds worrying:
“The Online Safety Super-Complaints (Eligibility and Procedural Matters) Regulations 2025”
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348272567/contents
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Mark,
I found this to be useful:
New online super-complaint regime due in force from 31 December 2025 under the Online Safety Act
It looks like they are just making sure that the full arsenal of the complaints industry is primed and ready to deal with systemic online safety issues. The spooky word here is ‘systemic’.
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Remind me why Ofcom is to be the body policing the Online Safety Act:
“Ofcom wants broadcasters to lie about biology
The UK broadcast regulator has told GB News it must broadcast trans-activist talking points.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/30/ofcom-wants-broadcasters-to-lie-about-biology/
…GB News wrote: ‘We would be grateful if Ofcom could confirm that in light of the Supreme Court judgment, it is now a settled matter that the terms “man”, “woman” and “sex” can only be understood to mean biological sex, biological woman and biological man, and, as a consequence, it is also a settled matter that a “trans woman” is not a biological female and a “trans man” is not a biological male.’
In response, Ofcom said that the trans debate should not be treated as ‘settled’. It also urged GB News and other broadcasters to continue using preferred pronouns for people who identify as trans. It even branded GB News’s view, that biological reality determines one’s sex, as ‘dogmatic’. Oh, the irony.…
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“Ofcom Still Isn’t Sure What a Woman is – But it’s Sure There’s Going to be a Climate Apocalypse”
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/07/04/ofcom-still-isnt-sure-what-a-woman-is-but-its-sure-theres-going-to-be-a-climate-apocalypse/
When GB News asked Ofcom to confirm that debates on biological sex are now ‘settled’ following the Supreme Court ruling, incredibly it replied ‘no’. Yet it deems the Net Zero debate to be settled? We’re through the looking glass now, says Toby in the Spectator…
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