Westminster, (Parliament Politics Magazine) – I recently spoke on a debate in the House of Lords on the Communications and Digital Committee’s report Free for all? Freedom of Expression in the digital age. Although I did not agree with lots of its recommendations, the report was a real treat to read—like a great primer or literature review. I recommend you take a look.
The backdrop to the report is of course is the Online Safety Bill, which hangs like a sword of Damocles over online free speech. Whatever its original intentions, for many civil libertarians it is seen as a potential green light for legitimising the censorship of what the public can see, view and read, in the name of safeguarding.
One clarification: whenever I raise problems with the Bill, the justifications that come back at me always centre on children’s safety. However, I would be happy if the Online Safety Bill confined its focus to the young and children. Instead, the Government seems to haveused adult worries about children’s access to porn, self-harm and suicide sites —all justified concerns—to introduce huge legislative changes that will affect adult freedoms. This bill effectively infantilises all citizens of all ages, and treating grown-ups as though they are dependent children in need of protection from each other’s speech.
There is much to debate on the proposed legislation, but in my contribution to the discussion, I focused on just a couple of issues raised by the report.
I was grateful to see a refreshingly nuanced approach in the report to misinformation, which I have focused on in various speeches in Parliament. As research from Ofcom notes, some believe that the term “misinformation” is being “weaponised for censorship of valid alternative perspectives.” (pg 19).
The report’s many examples from the lockdown and Covid era make it clear why such concerns might be pertinent. For example, expert medical opinion—albeit a minority—that challenged either the Government or the World Health Organisation was labelled misinformation, deemed so by big tech fact-checkers who – as cited in the report – have no scientific qualifications themselves but are rather “certified by the International Fact-Checking Network” (whatever that is). What is more, even well-known UK fact-checker Will Moy, the CEO of Full Fact, was quoted as has noting that “freedom of expression includes the freedom to be wrong” (pg 18). Full Fact warns “There is a moral panic about ‘fake news’ which is prompting frightening overreactions by Governments and potentially internet and media companies” (page 19).
I was also glad that the report noted the broader context of what I think is in danger of being a potential moral panic about online safety per se. Concerns from free-speechers are based on the offline problems of cancel culture and the ever-growing attacks on, for example, academic freedom in universities. Campus censorship is such a concern that the Government is attempting to legislate to enhance free expression in Higher Education institutions, yet at the same time seems to be oblivious to the dangers of legislating to undermine free expression online.
I want to add another offline context, which I think is key to why I am so wary of the proposed legislative changes: there is a contemporary therapeutic ethos that posits safety—especially psychological safety—as trumping freedoms of any sort. I hope that the Communications and Digital Committee will look at this at some stage. We cannot discuss online harms without understanding that the concept of harm is an ever-expanding category in the contemporary period.So, when the report tells us that “Civilised societies have legal safeguards to protect those who may be vulnerable”, legislators need to be careful not to just nod this through. They should note that when vulnerability gets discussed in relation to adults today, it is a weasel word that can cover a wide range of individuals who self-identify as vulnerable, dragginglaw–making into the dangerous territory of subjective definitions.
The problem is, in a therapeutic culture, vulnerability and victimhood are valorised and often incentivised because, if we present ourselves as fragile and vulnerable, we have a valuable cultural currency. This affords real cultural power that not only allows individuals to gain social attention and institutional support, but that can also be used to silence others by presenting someone else’s speech as harmful to the vulnerable.
The report is extremely helpful in deconstructing the whole concept of harm: the committee rightly rails against the illiberal notion of censoring “legal but harmful” material. Thankfully, it looks as though Rishi Sunak’s Government is indeed set to drop that egregious clause. However, the whole premise of the Bill is based on the idea that speech online can be, and often is, harmful. The elastic use of the term “harm” makes it ill-defined and subjective, fudging physicalharm with psychological harm—and it is no wonder that many now see words as interchangeable with physical violence.
The committee helpfully asked the Government whether the “Bill’s definition of psychological impact has any clinical basis”. The reply came back saying, “No”; it would be up to “platforms … to make judgements” about speech causing anxiety or fear. This is potentially disastrous, as we know from other subjective, ill-defined terms such as “offensive”, “hate”, and “misinformation”— all can be said by individuals to mean that something should be banned, in this instance as harmful to them.
The difficulty of trying to pin down what harm means isillustrated in instances cited where it has been used as an excuse for censorship. The report notes that, a few years ago, “the Christian Union at Balliol College … was banned from its freshers’ fair”, on the basis that “its presence could ‘harm”’ some attendees.” Could secularists in the Lords equally claim that having Bishops in Parliament is harmful? Only recently, Cambridge University faculty heads apologised to students for “distressing” them by sending an email promotion for a “potentially harmful” talk. What caused such alarm? A talk by Sex Matters’ Helen Joyce entitled, “Criticising gender-identity ideology: what happens when speech is silenced” (Oh the irony).
Much speech is already silenced, online and offline, by deploying the language of psychological harm to suggest that words, books and ideas are dangerous. Trigger warnings are put on lectures and literature to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is now not confined in usage to a clinically diagnosed condition, usually associated with problems experienced post living through the horrors of warfare or a disaster, but by the potential harms caused by upsetting speech or words. So even if “harm” in the Bill was to bemedically diagnosed, it will not help untangle the dangers of the Online Safety Bill (originally called the online HARMS bill) because psychological language is now frequently used to silence the speech of opponents or anyone putting forward ideas that make some feel uncomfortable. Safety in this therapeutic context can become a weapon to pathologise all free speech.
Finally, authoritarian regimes the world over, from Xi’s China to Putin’s Russia, always justify censorship on the basis of keeping the public safe and protecting their citizens from harm. We should ensure a democraticgovernment, using similar paternalistic rhetoric, doesn’t ape the same illiberal approach to our online speech and freedoms.