{"id":1197424,"date":"2023-10-28T06:43:44","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T10:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1197424"},"modified":"2023-10-28T06:43:44","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T10:43:44","slug":"the-uks-problematic-online-safety-act-is-now-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1197424","title":{"rendered":"The UK\u2019s problematic Online Safety Act is now law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jeremy Wright was the first of five UK ministers charged with pushing through the British government\u2019s landmark legislation on regulating the Internet, the Online Safety Bill. The current UK government likes to brand its initiatives as \u201cworld-beating<\/a>,\u201d but for a brief period in 2019 that might have been right. Back then, three prime ministers ago, the bill\u2014or at least the white paper that would form its basis\u2014outlined an approach that recognized that social media platforms were already de facto arbiters of what was acceptable speech on large parts of the Internet, but that this was a responsibility they didn\u2019t necessarily want and weren\u2019t always capable of discharging. Tech companies were pilloried for things that they missed, but also, by free speech advocates, for those they took down. \u201cThere was a sort of emerging realization that self-regulation wasn\u2019t going to be viable for very much longer,\u201d Wright says. \u201cAnd therefore, governments needed to be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill set out to define a way to handle \u201clegal but harmful\u201d content\u2014material that wasn\u2019t explicitly against the law but which, individually or in aggregate, posed a risk, such as health care disinformation, posts encouraging suicide or eating disorders, or political disinformation with the potential to undermine democracy or create panic. The bill had its critics\u2014notably, those who worried it gave Big Tech too much power. But it was widely praised as a thoughtful attempt to deal with a problem that was growing and evolving faster than politics and society were able to adapt. Of his 17 years in parliament, Wright says, \u201cI\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve seen anything by way of potential legislation that\u2019s had as broadly based a political consensus behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\nSource: Ars Technica – The UK\u2019s problematic Online Safety Act is now law<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enlarge (credit: panorios\/Getty Images) Jeremy Wright was the first of five UK ministers charged with pushing through the British government\u2019s landmark legislation on regulating the Internet, the Online Safety Bill. The current UK government likes to brand its initiatives as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1197425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,110],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-1197424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-ars-technica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1197424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1197425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1197424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1197424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1197424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}