British users of the X social media platform have reported being prevented from viewing anti-mass migration protests after the Online Safety Act censorship law came into effect for social media companies on Friday.
The draconian Online Safety Act, passed by the previous Conservative Party, is already appearing to have a negative impact on free speech in Britain. Pitched to the public as a means of preventing children from seeing pornography or other graphic content on the internet, critics of the legislation have long warned that it would be used to stifle political discourse.
As it came into force on Friday, British users shared screenshots of messages they received from X while attempting to view footage from recent anti-mass migration protests, which have sprung up in the wake of an Ethiopian living at taxpayer expense in a migrant hotel allegedly sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Epping.
“Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age,” was the message users in the UK reportedly received when attempting to view footage of protests that contained violence.
Prior to the Online Safety Act coming into force, X stated that it would implement methods such as “email address-based estimation,” which cross-references email addresses with financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and utility providers to determine whether a user is an adult, the Times of London reported.
The Elon Musk-owned social media platform said that it would also use “reverse address book median age estimation”, which gauges the likelihood of a user being an adult by their social connections.
While the age checks were ostensibly intended to block children from seeing pornographic content, they have apparently been broadened to include violent protest footage.
Given the exorbitant penalties for platforms that violate the Online Safety Act, with fines of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of a firm’s global turnover, social media companies may be incentivised to over-police content in Britain to avoid being penalised.
Although Musk did not specifically address X’s apparent restriction of protest footage, he said on Saturday morning that the Online Safety Act’s “purpose is suppression of the people.”
Responding to the censorious impact of the legislation, the UK-based Free Speech Union said: “Our fears appear to have been vindicated on the very first day of the Online Safety Act’s enactment.
“If you have a standard X account in the UK – presumably the majority of British users – it appears that you may not be able to see any protest footage that contains violence. We’re aware of one censored post that shows an arrest being made.
“We warned repeatedly about how censorious this piece of legislation would be.”
An online petition urging the Government to repeal the Online Safety Act has so far received over 160,000 signatures, requiring the parliament to consider the motion for debate.
Meanwhile, searches for VPNs — software which can mask IP addresses in order to make it appear that one is in another country — reportedly surged by over 700 per cent in Britain on Friday as users seek to skirt the new restrictions.
