Government denies weakening Online Safety Bill
Controversial measures which would have forced big technology platforms to take down legal but harmful material have been axed from the Online Safety Bill.Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan denied weakening laws protecting social media users and said adults would have more control over what they saw online.
Instead, tech giants will be told to introduce a system allowing users more control to filter out harmful content they do not want to see. Some critics of the provision in the bill have argued it opened the door for technology companies to censor legal speech.And in July, nine senior Conservatives, including former ministers Lord Frost, David Davis and Steve Baker, who has since returned to the government,Nadine Dorries, saying the provision could be used to clamp down on free speech by a future Labour government.
"I urge the government to accept the amendments in my name to fix these technology notices so that they no longer pose a threat to encryption, which we all rely on to keep safe online," he said. But that means reining in the power of the big tech companies and bringing an end to the era of self regulation.
The Molly Rose Foundation set up by Molly Russell's family believes the bill's been watered down. It's not about freedom of speech, it said in a statement, it's about the freedom to live.Campaign group the Centre for Countering Digital Hate said platforms might feel "off the hook" because of the new focus on user controls "in place of active duties to deal with bad actors and dangerous content".
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