Online Safety Act: The truth behind one of UK’s most authoritarian pieces of legislation yet – The Expose
Online Safety Act: The truth behind one of UK’s most authoritarian pieces of legislation yet
The Online Safety Act, which originated in 2017 after the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, has evolved to include provisions which introduce a new criminal offence for “knowingly sending false information” that causes harm and criminalising sending “seriously threatening messages” online. Not just for content targeting children but adults as well.
The Act also grants significant power to Ofcom, the government-approved regulator, and exempts “recognised news publishers” from fines for potentially harmful material, while independent journalists, citizen journalists and social media commentators face content restrictions.
It gives significant censorship powers to a single civil servant, Ofcom’s Melanie Dawes, and grants police chiefs the power to arrest citizens for sending “false communications” or “threatening messages” online, which has been used to restrict free speech.
The Act compromises privacy rights by forcing online platforms to deploy technology that detects and removes illegal content, even within end-to-end encrypted messages, and requires age verification for users.
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By JJ Starky
Table of Contents
The Online Safety Act has been in the works since 2017. It all began, as so much invasive, wide-reaching legislation does, with tragedy.
In 2017, a 14-year-old girl by the name of Molly Russell started consuming dark content online. Themes of self-harm and suicide relentlessly bombarded her feed, pulling her into despair.
Soon, she fell into a pit of severe depression. Months later, unable to escape its grip, little Molly took her own life. Reports didn’t state specifically how she died, only that it involved “self-harm.”
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Theresa May’s government had already published plans to address online safety the month before Molly’s suicide. Her Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Dame Karen Bradley, had released the ‘Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper’.
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Aiming to make Britain the “safest place” to be online, the paper outlined plans for a voluntary code for social media companies to tackle abuse, annual reports on harmful content and responses, and a levy on tech firms to fund awareness campaigns.
Education was also key – integrating digital literacy into school curricula for parents, children and caregivers alike.
The initial recommendations placed some burdens on social media firms but they were far from draconian. They contained some inconvenient safeguards but ones arguably needed.
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By April 2019, Theresa May’s Home Office and Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport were involved, co-publishing the ‘Online Harms White Paper’. Now, with ministers citing Molly’s fate, the scope of their plans expanded.
It was here we first saw proposals of a legal obligation for companies to take reasonable steps to safeguard users from illegal content, underage exposure to legal content and – the big one – “harmful but legal content.”
The mandate was widened to seemingly include almost everything.
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They also proposed the establishment of an independent regulator to oversee compliance, develop codes of practice and have the authority to impose sanctions on companies failing to meet their new rules.
This is what came into force on Monday, 17 March 2025, with technology companies needing to complete compulsory content risk assessments, showing how their algorithms downgrade certain content.
Failure to do so could result in fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their worldwide revenue.
After subsequent draftings of the bill in 2021 and legislative amendments in parliament throughout 2022, the bill, dubbed ‘The Online Safety Act’, passed through parliament and received Royal Assent in October 2023.
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Campaigners successfully pressured representatives to withdraw the “harmful but legal” provision, citing its vague and subjective nature that would have no doubt had a damning effect on online speech.
It marked a solid win. But while attention fixated on the former, the government, civil service and stakeholders successfully pushed through more, let’s say, insidious clauses.
New Criminal Offences
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One of those was Section 179, which introduced a brand new criminal offence for “knowingly sending false information” that causes “non-trivial psychological or physical harm.”
The provision obviously intends to prevent things like cyber-bullying. What we didn’t know was that it would be used by police forces to arrest citizens for speculation.
You read that right.
The story of Bernadette “Bernie” Spofforth is a case in point.
On 29 July 2024, Bernie misidentified Southport child murderer Axel Rudakubana as Ali-Al-Shakati on X (formerly Twitter) hours after the heinous attack. About a week later, Cheshire Police arrested her for “stirring up racial hatred” and “false communications.”
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Now, the force genuinely did not have any evidence that Bernie “knowingly” sent false communications that “caused non-trivial psychological or physical harm.” Nor, it turns out, did they have proof of “false communications.”
Bernie prefaced her X post with – wait for it – “if this is true.” Meaning, though she categorically declared she did not know the child murderer’s identity, she was arrested, at least partially, for speculating on it.
She was reportedly held in jail for 36 hours after “being dragged” from her home. The police eventually dropped the case.
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Cutting the story short: we went from voluntary social media codes to attempts to censor “legal but harmful” content for all (not just children), to a draconian speech law – one that allowed a seemingly politicised police force to arrest a citizen for airing rumour and arguably violate her human rights in the process.
The maximum penalty for a false communications offence under Section 179 is 51 weeks in prison, a fine, or both. Worse, as a summary-only offence, defendants lose the right to a jury trial, like Section 127 of the 2003 Communications Act before it.
Instead, a lay magistrate or district judge decides their fate – without the scrutiny or safeguards a jury provides, thus, stripping away a considerable degree of due process and opening up sentences to judicial bias.
Section 181 of the Online Safety Act also creates a new criminal offence: sending “seriously threatening messages” online. While it’s framed as a way to tackle harmful content, the law goes further – criminalising any threat “intended to cause fear or distress.”
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This includes threats of death, serious injury, sexual assault, rape and, notably, threats of serious financial loss or damage to property.
Death and sexual assault sure, but financial loss? What qualifies? A joke about boycotting a business? A satirical meme aimed at a politician’s donors?
If the police’s prior arrest of a veteran for “malicious communications” over a meme – an LGBTQ+ flag shaped like a swastika that allegedly “caused someone anxiety” – is any indication, it’s clear it might extend to similarly trivial acts.
The punishment for breaking Section 181 is up to 5 years imprisonment, an unlimited fine or both. Serious offences are tried in the Crown Courts with juries while others are tried in the Magistrates without.
In 2023, close pal of former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, hereditary peer Lord James Bethell even attempted to criminalise “vaccine misinformation” by adding it to the bill. The same bloke who “replaced” his phone when questions arose about £85 million contracts he awarded for covid tests.
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Unfortunately, the overreach didn’t stop there. The political class baked in yet more wide-reaching and punitive provisions.
Preferential Application
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While independent journalists and social media commentators face content restrictions, Section 50 exempts “recognised news publishers” (i.e., “mainstream”[aka corporate] media) from fines for potentially harmful material.
Online platforms are not obligated to apply their new safety duties to content from recognised news publishers. So, The Guardian won’t be subject to the same regulation. This also includes prosecution under “false communication” offences.
Put simply, if a corporate journalist knowingly posts false information that causes “harm,” he/she cannot be arrested. Little citizen journalist Billy, however, doing the same on his blog or social media profile could be.
Advocates of the Act contend this makes sense because corporate outlets are rigorously regulated by the “independent” IPSO or IMPRESS.
Empowerment of Ofcom (and Starmer’s Cabinet)
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Then there’s the simultaneous expansion of power for Ofcom – the government-approved regulator for broadcasting, internet, telecommunications and postal services – paired with a reduction in its “independence.”
In February 2020, before the first version of the Online Safety Bill was published and introduced to Parliament for pre-legislative scrutiny, Boris Johnson’s government made Ofcom the enforcer of the Act. It gave the regulator huge control over how social media operates, despite them having no prior experience regulating content on this scale.
Not only that, in its final iteration, the Act granted secretaries the authority to direct Ofcom in its regulatory functions, including influencing codes of practice.
Ofcom is called an “independent” regulator but it is ultimately accountable to Parliament and the Government. It was established by the Government in 2003 and reports to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (“DSIT”). The Government also appoints Ofcom’s board members, including the Chair and Chief Executive. In short, its independence was arguably non-existent already. The Online Safety Act further crushed any glimmer that it was.
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Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s current Chief Executive, has come under heavy fire in recent years.
The former Permanent Secretary Champion for Diversity and Inclusion has been accused of biased regulation, including imposing inconsistent and selective fines and unfairly dismissing complaints.
In 2022, Dawes & Co. fined GB News for comments made by a guest on presenter Mark Steyn’s show about the covid response and pre-Nazi Germany. When other hosts and guests, like LBC’s James O’Brien, directly compared Donald Trump to past fascist leaders, on the other hand, Ofcom was nowhere to be seen.
Another famously unbalanced ruling: Toby Young and Laura Dodsworth lodged complaints later that year over Sky’s partnership with the Behavioural Insights Team (“BIT”) – part-owned by the UK Cabinet Office.
Sky and BIT’s collaboration in 2021 aimed to subtly “nudge” viewers, targeting kids, to back the Government’s Net Zero agenda, a tactic Young and Dodsworth argued broke Ofcom’s rules.
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Four months later, Ofcom dismissed the complaint, deeming climate science “broadly settled,” suggesting psychological manipulation is acceptable, as long as the message aligns with the “scientific consensus.”
It might come as little surprise that Dawes has also worked with The Patchwork Foundation, a group “focused on communities and individuals that are traditionally under-represented.”
Dawes can not only set and alter legally binding codes of practice (within a certain scope) that social media platforms, websites and even search engines must follow, but she can fine them heavily for breaking those codes.
Put plainly, censorship powers have been concentrated in the hands of a single, seemingly compromised career civil servant. She interprets the rules, amends and enforces them.
And if the Government is unhappy with Dawes’ enforcement style, Starmer’s partisan secretaries can step in by law – potentially pressuring her into imposing regulations that more align with their agenda.
Empowerment of Police Chiefs
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Of course, this doesn’t include the powers granted to police chiefs, who can selectively arrest citizens on suspicion of “knowingly sending false communications” causing “non-trivial psychological or physical harm.”
Or, indeed, arrest those they suspect of sending “seriously threatening messages” online “intending to cause fear or distress.”
Given Bernie’s case and the recent testimony of arrests and police intimidation following the Southport protests and riots, it constitutes yet another subjective and restrictive speech law that politically-captured police forces can use to punish almost anyone, for anything.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some positives.
The Act does target online content that commentators across the political spectrum agree should be removed, including child sexual abuse material, terrorism-related content, revenge porn, non-consensual intimate images and the promotion of self-harm or suicide.
But the main problem: it extends to “hate crimes” – a concept that our government and policing establishment have repeatedly shown they’re incapable of enforcing impartially and without fundamentally undermining free speech rights.
The vague terms, such as “harmful,” “democratic importance,” and “reasonable steps” peppered throughout the Act compound the problem. Put another way: the authoritarian powers it enables for any government to exploit outweigh the benefits proponents claim the Act could ever offer.
Subversion of Privacy Rights
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Privacy rights have also been dented.
Section 122 forces online platforms to deploy technology that detects and removes illegal content, even within end-to-end encrypted messages.
End-to-end encryption ensures only the sender and recipient can read communications. Content scanning within these channels will inevitably weaken encryption.
As a result, users face greater risks of cyber threats, hacking and unauthorised surveillance – the same dangers Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s recent successful push to access Apple users’ iCloud data enabled.
Elsewhere, platforms must implement technology to verify every user’s age, thereby effectively “age-gating” websites and setting the stage for more invasive verification checks.
Disproportionate Effects
Finally, we come to the issue of proportion.
The Act imposes such sweeping obligations on online platforms, covering any “user-to-user service” that allows user-generated content to be seen by others, that smaller platforms, websites and blogs have already been shutting down.
From cycling to gaming, birdwatching to history, various UK-based online forums are disappearing. They simply can’t afford moderation teams, legal compliance or even the time to navigate the Act’s vague language.
The law is so broad that many forums – both in the UK and beyond – are switching to read-only mode or geo-blocking UK users entirely. Compliance isn’t a matter of difficulty. It’s impossible for them.
In January, the Labour government passed an amendment setting user number thresholds to determine which websites, search engines and platforms fall under the Act – but the details remain unclear. We have to wait until summer for Ofcom to spell it out.
Wider Context
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Last November, in the wake of the frenzy of questionable and prompt guilty pleas and mass sentences for non-violent Southport protestors, Labour Science Secretary Peter Kyle announced tougher enforcement of the Online Safety Act.
He and his department issued a statement on ‘Strategic Priorities for Online Safety’ where they referenced the word “robust” three times in one paragraph about the “vast amount of misinformation and disinformation.”
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Weeks before, Starmer declared: “We’re due sentencing for online behaviour … whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable, and you will be put before the courts if you’ve broken the law.”
My two cents …
The Online Safety Act gave Labour the perfect legal framework to supercharge their invasive, controlling, Big State agenda – that much is obvious. But its origin story is less one of child protection than it is of how the establishment will exploit tragedy to no ends in their painfully apparent bid to ascertain complete control over our lives.
They did it with Iraq. They did it with the Public Order Act 2023. They did it with the National Security Act 2023. They did it with the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. They did it with the Online Safety Act 2023.
How do we go from heartbreaking teenage suicide to arresting a woman for speculating on a child murderer’s identity for Pete’s sake? Some would say because it was never really about child protection after all. And they’d probably be right.
About the Author
JJ Starkey is a pen name for a former political strategist who is now a part-time citizen journalist based in the UK. His work has been published in The Salisbury Review, Off Guardian and The Conservative Woman. He is the proprietor of the Substack pages titled ‘The Stark Naked Brief’ and ‘Project Stark’.
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While previously it was a hobby culminating in writing articles for Wikipedia (until things made a drastic and undeniable turn in 2020) and a few books for private consumption, since March 2020 I have become a full-time researcher and writer in reaction to the global takeover that came into full view with the introduction of covid-19. For most of my life, I have tried to raise awareness that a small group of people planned to take over the world for their own benefit. There was no way I was going to sit back quietly and simply let them do it once they made their final move.
