Not content with policing the online speech of its own citizens, there are concerns that the UK government is now attempting to censor the rest of the world. Last week, Sarah Rogers, the U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, told GB News she was worried about the UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA) punishing American companies. 

“It’s misguided and unfortunate to apply that law in Britain,” Rogers said, “but applying that law extraterritorially—which means applying it to speech that has nothing to do with Britain, does not occur in Britain, is on American platforms, by American users, on American political issues, purporting to censor Americans in America—is a dealbreaker.”

Rogers’s concerns are not abstract. Ofcom, the UK’s telecommunications regulator, has already moved against U.S.-based internet forums on the theory that, if UK users can access them, British rules must apply. This summer, Ofcom opened an investigation into 4Chan, an anonymous imageboard, for refusing to comply with OSA procedures and potentially hosting illegal content. 4Chan was slapped with a £20,000 fine, plus daily penalties. The controversial forum Kiwi Farms faced similar accusations and has been ordered to prove it is obeying the OSA. Both sites have filed a lawsuit against Ofcom, claiming that the watchdog sent them “threatening communications” and interfered with their constitutional rights. That the sanctions are even enforceable outside of the UK is extremely doubtful—so much so that 4Chan’s lawyer put the Ofcom fine through a shredder and turned it into bedding for his pet hamster. 

How did the OSA go from an attempt to protect children from online nasties to an extraterritorial weapon against free speech? The law began life as a misguided effort to prevent minors from coming into contact with illegal or age-inappropriate content. Initial drafts of the bill proposed policing anything that was “legal but harmful,” a nebulous phrase that encompassed everything from fringe political ideologies to posts encouraging eating disorders. This clause was, thankfully, dropped from the legislation, but its spirit lives on. Few platforms want to risk hefty penalties for accidentally allowing a child to set eyes upon something “hateful,” “harmful,” or simply controversial, and so tend to adopt a “censor first, ask questions later” approach. 

One of the many problems with trying to censor the internet is that it necessitates censoring the entire world. There are no borders online, and users are mostly free to interact with any person or site, no matter where they are located. If the UK government decides to introduce laws that forbid social-media platforms from hosting harmful content, it effectively mandates a choice: either make all UK-based sites comply with the laws and force internet providers to region-block any foreign illegal content; or attempt to impose British laws on every other country on Earth. While sites like 4Chan with no physical presence in the UK are able to laugh off these ludicrous threats as unenforceable, global businesses with UK offices like Meta and Google don’t have the same luxury. Naturally, they don’t want to be fined £18 million or 10 percent of their annual global revenue, and will therefore choose to ramp up moderation or restrict access to UK users entirely. 

For those websites that are still open to Brits, entering them now often requires age-verification checks. Any platform that displays pornography, or sells nicotine or alcohol, is forced by the OSA to make sure all users are over 18. So, too, must any site that hosts user-generated content, like Facebook, Reddit, X, and even Wikipedia, on the off-chance that children might stumble onto porn, gore, or otherwise harmful content. That means uploading a copy of your ID, giving bank details, or having your face scanned by AI to listen to music on Spotify or read a Reddit thread about cider. In the UK, we have reached the frankly comical situation where 16-year-olds may drink beer in a pub when accompanied by an adult, but must wait two more years before they are allowed to read about pints in an online forum. A short story, written by a gay man, was hidden from view on Substack because it included the words “poof” and “faggot” in its dialogue. The results of a YouGov poll about public attitudes towards the OSA were censored merely because the title included the word “pornography.”

Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox

More seriously still, the OSA has been blocking news stories and criticism of the UK government. On X, an MP’s speech decrying the state’s failure to address the grooming-gangs scandal was age-restricted due to its sensitive content. So were some discussions of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, along with videos and news coverage of anti-mass migration protests this summer, which were deemed too dangerous to show to the masses. It even appears that the OSA is being weaponized for ideological aims. Labour MP Barry Gardiner admitted that the law was being used not only to “protect” children, but also to monitor adults—in particular, he claimed that “sentiments contrary to immigration” were in the firing line. 

This is the natural conclusion of online speech laws; just look at Australia’s own Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act. In almost every case, they are sold to the public as a way to make the internet safer for children and to stop illegal activity. But, in almost every case, they end up being wielded against political dissent. Anyone who speaks out against this sanitization of the web is met with accusations that they must want pedophiles and other assorted wrong’uns to roam freely online. According to Technology Secretary Peter Kyle, opposing the OSA puts you “on the side of predators.” 

Yes, protecting children is important. But the price to pay for that cannot be the free-speech rights of every adult inside (and perhaps even outside) the UK. While some would like to dismiss the OSA’s impact as a minor trade-off, the reality is that it prevents Brits from freely and easily participating in the digital public square. This law withholds information that might be considered damaging or distressing, even when it is true. The UK’s censorship and “hate speech” regime was already punishing enough, and unlucky Brits can find themselves facing legal consequences for criticizing the dire state of their country. Now, under these sweeping online censorship rules, they might not even be able to see reality as it is.