A government official in the United Kingdom has proposed new laws that would put the heads of social media firms in jail if they fail to remove “harmful” information.
Michelle Donelan, the undersecretary for technology and science at the Department of State, has said that she intends to have the heads of social media companies jailed if they fail to remove “harmful” information.
Due to its inclusion of prison sentence threats and other forms of censorship, the UK’s Online Safety Bill has been labeled a “de facto ban” on end-to-end encryption for private internet users.
If the bill is passed into law as it currently stands, the British broadcasting regulator Ofcom will be in charge of policing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, ordering them to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote, or justify hatred” based on a wide range of progressive characteristics, including transgenderism.
According to The Telegraph, Donelan has asked for the imprisonment of any CEO of a social media platform who opposes the new restrictions, using the need to safeguard children as the basis for this extreme measure.
According to authorities, “risking serious harm to children” justifies taking such drastic action against executives who “have consented or connived in ignoring enforceable requirements” to filter content, such as so-called “disinformation” from a foreign state.
In the event of a violation of Britain’s impending censorship system, businesses might be fined up to 10% of their worldwide turnover if they do not take preventative measures to delete or conceal the offending material.
The Online Safety Bill has the backing of many conservatives, but it has been met with widespread opposition from major IT firms who worry that it could lead to an end to user privacy over vast areas of the Internet.
Message-sharing platforms WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) and Signal (one of its key competitors) have voiced concerns that required measures enabling them to automatically detect child abuse content in private communications will essentially destroy end-to-end encryption and create a system of forced monitoring on its user base.
Both firms have now threatened to withdraw from the UK market should the planned laws be enacted there.
President Meredith Whittaker of Signal told the BBC that her company “would absolutely 100% walk” rather than follow the law.
An important thing she said was, “We have never weakened our privacy promises, and we never will.”
Given that Ofcom now permits harmful content to be shown on UK television, the idea that giving them control over the internet will boost kid safety is dubious at best.
Channel 4, which receives government funding, recently aired a show in which transgender people stripped naked in front of children to “educate” them about their identities.
The performance drew almost a thousand official complaints, despite widespread appreciation for depicting a “truly powerful moment” of trans persons stripping nude in front of youngsters. There has been no word on whether or not the show would resume airing when the inquiry is complete.