UK Braced for “Free Speech” Battle with VP

The UK is bracing for a fight with the White House over so-called free speech. Trying to do it quietly, hopefully.

The British regulator Ofcom sent warning letters to several US technology companies telling them that Ofcom was about to enforce the UK’s Online Safety Act.

Note that every country thinks that their free speech suppression is okay, but what other countries do is not. The US and UK are certainly members of that club.

The letters warned the tech companies that they have an obligation under UK to ban certain speech and failing to do that could have the company fined up to 10 percent of their global revenue.

Two far right platforms, Gab, a neo-Nazi hangout, and Kiwi Farms, a harassment forum, are not fond of censorship and complained about it to the feds.

The president signed an EO recently that says that the US doesn’t like censorship that it doesn’t do and it will use tariffs to enforce that thought.

The VP said recently that the US military support of its allies should be contingent on those allies respecting free speech. I wonder if that applies to the VP not supporting the US – as the President called on Congress to pass a very sweeping censorship bill disguised as a protection against deep fakes (see details)?

For the moment, the UK is not backing down, saying that failure to implement the requirements of the Online Safety Act could lead to blocking payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers from working with offending platforms.

This seems like a massive game of high stakes chicken. We will see who blinks first. Credit: The Record

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