Reform has vowed to scrap the Online Safety Act because it creates a ‘dystopian’ world that suppresses freedom of speech.
Nigel Farage‘s intervention comes after it emerged that X blocked a powerful speech on grooming gangs by Tory minister Katie Lam in Parliament this year.
Meanwhile, footage of arrests during asylum seeker hotel protests was also blocked ‘due to local laws’, according to the social media platform.
Last week, the law changed to require websites to check users are over 18 before allowing them to access ‘harmful’ material such as pornography or suicide material.
Failing to comply with the new rules could incur fines of up to £18million or 10 per cent of a firm’s global turnover.
Sir Keir Starmer today denied the legislation was censoring online content and said it was there to protect children.
But at a Reform press conference today, Zia Yusuf, head of government efficiency for the party, said he would repeal the act, which he argued did nothing to protect children.
He said the new powers were ‘the sort of thing that I think [Chinese president] Xi Jinping himself would blush at the concept of’, adding: ‘So much of the act is massive overreach and plunges this country into a borderline dystopian state.’
The intervention by Nigel Farage (above) comes after it emerged that X blocked a powerful speech on grooming gangs by Tory minister Katie Lam in Parliament this year
Sir Keir Starmer (above) denied the legislation was censoring online content and said it was there to protect children
At a Reform press conference, Zia Yusuf (above) said he would repeal the act which he argued did nothing to protect children
Arguing that the laws suppress freedom of speech, he said: ‘We will repeal this Act as one of the first things a Reform government does.’
Asked how he would protect children such as Molly Russell who took her own life after viewing footage promoting suicide, Mr Farage acknowledged he did not have the ‘perfect answer’.
He said his party had ‘more access to some of the best tech brains, not just in the country but in the world’ and would ‘make a much better job of it’.
Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, set up in Molly’s memory, said scrapping the Act ‘would not only put children at greater risk but is out of step with the mood of the public’.
After a demonstration outside the Britannia Hotel in Leeds at the weekend, X users said the site blocked arrest footage.
They were shown the message: ‘Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age.’
