Online forums based in the United States that rely on First Amendment protections are increasingly being drawn into the scope of UK internet regulation — and now face the risk of being blocked under new legislation.
Billed by the UK government as the world’s first comprehensive online safety law, the Online Safety Act (OSA) received Royal Assent in October 2023. Provisions relating to so-called “illegal content” came into force on 17 March, requiring platforms to take action to protect UK users from criminal activity online.
As free speech campaigners have long warned, the law has far-reaching implications for how online speech is governed — not just within Britain, but beyond its borders.
Owen Evans has the story for The Epoch Times:
Gab, a U.S. social media network, positions itself as a champion of free speech.
Gab CEO Andrew Torba said in a March 26 social media post that the UK government has demanded that it submit to “their new censorship regime under the UK Online Safety Act.”
Gab—which has no legal presence in the UK—was informed in a letter from UK regulator Ofcom on March 16 that it falls specifically within the scope of the law and must comply.
Under the OSA, sites that allow user interaction, including forums, must have completed an illegal harm risk assessment by March 16 and submitted it to Ofcom by March 31.
Ofcom warned that noncompliance could result in enforcement action—including massive fines of 18 million pounds (more than $23 million), or 10 percent of a company’s annual revenue—or even court orders to block access in the UK.
The OSA was designed to ensure that tech companies take more responsibility for user safety.
Under the act, social media platforms and other user-to-user service providers must proactively police harmful and illegal content such as revenge and extreme pornography, sex trafficking, harassment, coercive or controlling behavior, and cyberstalking.
Gab has refused to comply with the OSA.
“We will not comply. We will not pay one cent,” Torba said.
In a statement to The Epoch Times, Gab said that this “law operates outside their jurisdiction.”
Gab’s lawyers said that their client is a U.S. company with no presence outside of the United States.
“The most fundamental of America’s laws—the First Amendment to our Constitution—ensures Gab’s right to provide a service that allows anyone, anywhere, to receive and impart political opinions of any kind, free from state interference, on its US-based servers,” they said in a statement last month.
Web forum Kiwifarms said it also received a letter from Ofcom. The platform is now blocking users in the UK because of the legislation.
British users are now greeted with this message: “You are accessing this website from the United Kingdom. This is not a good idea. The letter states the UK asserts authority over any website that has a ’significant number of United Kingdom users’. This ambiguous metric could include any site on the Internet and specifically takes aim at the people using a website instead of the website itself.”
The unsigned message added that the situation in the UK is “now so dire I fear for the safety of any user connecting to the Internet from the country.”
The law has already affected dozens of smaller UK websites, from forums for cyclists to those supporting divorced fathers.
The regulatory pressure and the many rules have caused many of them to shut down, despite that some have operated for decades.
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