Tech Secretary under fire as Online Safety Act faces mounting backlash

Telegraph

7 days ago

Meanwhile, Preston Byrne, a US lawyer, said on X he was preparing to sue Ofcom in the US over the act on the instruction of unnamed tech companies.
The rules may also to reignite anger over grooming gangs and child abuse.
Sammy Woodhouse, a campaigner who helped reveal the Rotherham abuse scandal, said last night on X that the 'Online Safety Act – put in place by our government – has done nothing but silence the victims' after a post from a grooming victim was subject to an age restriction.
The Online Safety Act requires tech giants to enforce their terms of service and introduce measures to stop children seeing extreme or explicit content. Most visibly, this has led to new ID or age estimation checks for porn websites.
But other websites that allow explicit posts, such as X, have also had to introduce the new checks. Failure to abide by the rules can lead to fines of up to 10pc of a company's turnover.
The legislation is broad enough that some fairly innocuous content, such as a Reddit forum dedicated to beer, has now been placed behind a digital age verification wall.
Critics, including Mr Farage, claim this will just drive internet users towards the dark web or to readily available VPN apps, which are used to hide an internet-user's identity and location.
Petition hits 450,000 signatures
Even some of Mr Kyle's Labour colleagues are not happy with the byzantine digital laws, which were originally passed under the Conservatives, though critics on the Left tend to fear the act does not go far enough when it comes to tackling misinformation or protecting children.
Chi Onwurah, the Labour chair of Parliament's science committee, says: 'The Labour Government inherited the Online Safety Act, which everyone acknowledged is a bit of a mess.'
She says the act has proved 'woefully incapable' of tackling disinformation.
Mr Kyle has said 'he wants the Government to go further but we have yet to see any real evidence of that', she said.
However, she also criticised Farage's insistence that Reform would repeal the law. 'Given the strength of Reform's calls for action on real world grooming and child sexual abuse, it seems strange that they are seeking to roll back online protection for children,' she said.
So far, Mr Kyle is not budging.
A petition to scrap the law, signed by 450,000 people, received a response from the Government that insisted there were 'no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act'. And on Thursday, Ofcom announced 34 new investigations into pornography websites over their compliance with its age-check rules.
'This enforcement goes to the very heart of what the Online Safety Act is here to do – protecting children from pornographic material,' Mr Kyle said on Thursday.
'These laws have nothing to do with censorship or policing adults seeking to access legal content. Those who suggest otherwise are playing politics with child safety and have no practical alternatives for protecting our children from content they should never see – content that can cause lasting, even fatal, damage.'