The Trump State Department on Monday said the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act undermines free speech and that it is “completely unacceptable” to suppress criticism of mass migration.
“President Trump and Secretary Rubio have taken a strong and unequivocal stand defending free-speech, and have taken decisive action against foreign nationals who engage in censorship of Americans,” a senior State Department official told Breitbart News in a written statement, and continued:
One of the reasons free-speech is so important is that it enables citizens to have accurate information and honest conversations about policy failures of the ruling class – immigration is a prime example of this. We are monitoring free-speech developments in the UK closely and with great concern.
The State Department spoke to Breitbart News as the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, & Labor (DRL) stated that the UK’s Online Safety Act “undermines the right to free expression by imposing censorship on vague grounds. Suppression of criticism of illegal immigration or the criminal justice system is completely unacceptable in a free society. These laws will also create immense pressure on American companies to kowtow to the censors. Foreign laws must not undermine the right to freedom of expression of Americans.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) told Breitbart News last week that the United Kingdom and European Union are issuing a “direct attack” on free speech, much like how the Biden administration pushed big tech platforms to censor free speech.
President Donald Trump has warned Prime Minister Keir Starmer that it would be a “mistake” for the British government to censor his Truth Social platform under the recently enacted Online Safety Act.
The UK government, under Starmer, sought to “silence discussions about Europe’s mass migration policies,” Jordan said.
The UK Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) said in a statement it would make “no apologies” for flagging allegedly harmful content.
Britain’s Online Safety Act, which was passed in 2023 but came into full effect last week and allows for UK broadcasting authority Ofcom to impose fines of up to £18 million or ten per cent of a social media platform’s global revenue. While pitched to the public as merely an attempt to safeguard children from pornography or other extreme content, critics have noted that it has already resulted in restrictions being placed on political content, such as footage of anti-mass migration protests.
Ofcom has continued to defend the Online Safety Act, arguing that free speech concerns are overblown as platforms “must carefully consider how they protect users’ rights to freedom of expression while keeping people safe.”
Preston Byrne, managing partner at the tech law firm Byrne & Storm, remarked, “If Ofcom isn’t an online content regulator, then why did they tell my American clients they’d potentially be criminally charged if they didn’t send Ofcom ‘risk assessments’ explaining how they’re going to remove online content?”
Shoshana Weissmann, the director for digital media at the R Street Institute, has noted that the Online Safety Act requires users to verify age to allow access to “newsworthy, educational, or other standard content while other sites can provide the exact same content to minors without age verification simply because they do not host user posts.”
Weissmann explained that this may lead to regulators barring minors from accessing “historical and newsworthy content about wars—but many episodes of SpongeBob (if posted to social media), including but not limited to ‘No Weenies Allowed.’ This is not an exhaustive list of prohibited content, either.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3
