American voters are famous for our focus on domestic, not international affairs. However, conservatives and libertarians in the US should be paying close attention to events across the pond—and not just because President Trump recently wrapped up a visit to Scotland so we’ve seen plenty of British and Scottish flags flying on our TV screens of late.
While debate in the US rages about whether and how to further regulate Big Tech, with a huge number of our Members of Congress continuing to push the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the United Kingdom just put our version of the law into effect. The problems and pitfalls have been voluminous, and range from the comical to the very serious.
Let’s start with the amusing, because who doesn’t need a laugh right now.
Initially, news broke that Wikipedia was contemplating throttling traffic because of the Online Safety Act’s diktats. If you’re thinking “what could possibly be harmful about Wikipedia,” you’re not alone. Unfortunately, because the law mandates that platforms block minors from accessing legal content that could be “harmful,” or—in the case of bigger platforms or sites—face fines of the higher of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, the “free encyclopedia” is in the firing line. That’s because, well, it contains articles like “Bulimia nervosa,” “Suicide methods,” and “Oxford child sex abuse ring.” Educational? Sure. Harmful? Apparently.
Spotify also became inaccessible to British users who didn’t want to verify their age, as did pizza delivery.
VPN apps, which allow a user to disguise their actual location, became the most downloaded apps in the UK—as Brits sought to dodge the restrictions.
And in a matter of days, 500,00 Brits—approaching 1 percent of the population of England—signed a petition urging Parliament to debate a repeal of the law (10,000 signatures are all it takes to force an official response from the government; after 100,000 signatures, Parliament must consider a debate).
While all of this will make libertarians, especially, chuckle as we routinely do when statist efforts to regulate “for the children” blow up in everyone’s faces, there have also been some really serious, adverse effects that actually could jeopardize, not enhance kids’ safety. It all demonstrates what many of us who criticized the law when it was a bill, and who have criticized the US companion bill, KOSA, have been saying for a long time: One man’s definition of “protecting” children online can easily wind up hurting kids when a well-intentioned rule comes into effect.
This is exactly the big risk that flows from Online Safety Act-mandated bans on social media users being able to see tweets related to the so-called “Grooming Gangs” scandal.
If you read up on the scandal, you will discover that it’s not really about “grooming” at all, and much more about really horrific mass rape and abuse of kids orchestrated by gangs here in Britain. It’s in the public eye not just because what happened, over decades, was so vile and evil, but also because of alleged government, prosecutorial and law enforcement inaction (and even alleged law enforcement involvement in the rape and abuse). Even the Prime Minister is under a spotlight, not just because he is the man now in charge of cleaning up the mess, but because at the time that many of the crimes were perpetrated, he was the country’s head prosecutor, and too few prosecutions occurred.
Of course, discussion of the scandal inherently involves the airing of really appalling, horrendous details—details that qualify as “harmful” for kids to be exposed to online. Thus, the content has been throttled.
But the risk in censoring the content is that kids who are online are deprived of that additional avenue to learn about what happened and what to watch out for in terms of grooming behavior—as well as details of what we’re all trying to avoid happening to kids, which frankly makes the child sex abuse that features in truly dark, disturbing British crime dramas like Prime Suspect or The Vice look mild. Maybe tween and teenage girls in areas where these gangs have operated don’t need to be exposed to every last detail, but surely they need to have some idea of the fact that if they accept gifts from an older “boyfriend,” the end result may be really, really atrocious, almost unthinkable abuse—and not groping or unwanted kissing (and not just by the “boyfriend” but dozens of his “friends”)?
Awareness as to how pedophiles have preyed on victims and operated will not, of course, stop predators entirely.
But information is power, and censoring social media so that underage individuals do not have access to tweets, including from Members of Parliament, about what happened seems like a great way of keeping potential future victims even less aware.
Since the effect of the Online Safety Act has also been to prevent adults from accessing the content, of course it also means that the Prime Minister and current government have been insulated more than they otherwise would have been from criticism that should be able to be widely seen by the British public, and doesn’t come from traditional, more “approved” sources. That is obviously another ill effect, and perhaps explains why government ministers have dug their heels in, basically saying that those of us who want repeal of the Online Safety Act are pedophiles’ best friends. Of note, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has been a consistent and staunch opponent of the Online Safety Act.
Protecting kids is obviously a worthwhile endeavor and parents do need to pay more attention to what their kids are doing—online, and indeed offline (as the Grooming Gangs scandal has also amply demonstrated). But the entire Online Safety Act saga is demonstrating that government, especially, does a really, really bad job of this.
Members of Congress may be tempted to think that because the UK has a different system of laws to the US, and because KOSA is not a literal 100 percent copy of the Online Safety Act, what is happening in Britain is irrelevant. They would be wrong. KOSA should be dumped before we replicate the UK experience, only to find out what’s in the bill after it becomes law and we suddenly discover Spotify is limiting access to playlists containing Sonic Youth’s “Tunic,” Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks,” Nirvana’s “Rape Me,” White Zombie’s full version of “More Human Than Human,” Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like A Lady,” and basically any Bloodhound Gang song anyone has ever heard of.
Liz Mair is a dual US-UK citizen, and President of Mair Strategies LLC, where she has advised UK Conservative Party figures and candidates for major office in the US on communications. She is also a free speech campaigner who has worked in opposition to both the Online Safety Act and the Kids Online Safety Act.
