The Online Safety Act is Bad for Free Speech, says Substack CEO

Chris Best, the co-founder and CEO of online publishing platform Substack, has written a piece for the Telegraph explaining why the Online Safety Act is bad news for free speech. Protecting children on the internet is important, he argues, but this law goes way beyond that.

Substack has a strong and growing presence in the UK, with independent journalists and major cultural and political figures publishing their work and communicating with their audiences through our platform. So when the OSA came into effect, we set out to comply.

What I’ve discovered, as we have implemented these rules, shocks me.

In a climate of genuine anxiety about children’s exposure to harmful content, the Online Safety Act can sound like a commonsense response. But what I’ve learned is that, in practice, it pushes toward something much darker: a system of mass political censorship unlike anywhere else in the western world.

What does it actually mean to ‘comply’ with the Online Safety Act? It does not mean hiring a few extra moderators or adding a warning label. It means platforms must build systems that continuously classify and censor speech at scale, deciding – often in advance of any complaint – what a regulator might deem unsuitable for children. 

Armies of human moderators or AI must be employed to scan essays, journalism, satires, photography, and every type of comment and discussion thread for potential triggers. 

Notably, these systems are not only seeking out illegal materials; they are trying to predict regulatory risk of lawful, mainstream comment in the face of stiff penalties.

Once something is classified as potentially sensitive, the next step is age gating. Readers – who in our case are overwhelmingly adults reading lawful material – often must be asked to prove their age through third-party checks that may involve facial scanning, providing identification documents, or financial verification. 

These measures don’t technically block the content, but they gate it behind steps that prove a hassle at best, and an invasion of privacy at worst. Readers who hoped to engage with the material are deterred from doing so; writers and creators, some of whose livelihoods depend upon getting their work in front of potential subscribers, bear the penalties. The result is that vast swathes of legitimate cultural discourse are swept up, bogged down, and discouraged.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Google has also weighed in, criticising Ofcom for insisting that social media restrict posts (although not take them down) if they contain “potentially illegal” material.