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The UK's Online Safety Bill: The day we took a stand against serious online harms or the day we lost our freedoms to platforms and the state?
Journal of Data Protection & Privacy,
5
(2),
183-194
(2022)
Abstract
This paper discusses the UK's Online Safety Bill, which is intended to protect vulnerable individuals online, although at the risk of promoting surveillance techniques and mandating proactive content removal by platforms. It analyses how the Bill, a very ambitious project, tries to safeguard vulnerable people through means which could be easily abused, and asks whether the risk of abuse that could affect everyone is worth the protection of a minority of online users. Recently demonstrated authoritarian approaches to solving the COVID-19 crisis make this concern palpable. The paper concludes by saying that once we take a path, it will be difficult to walk it back.
Keywords: online harms; Online Safety Bill; lawful but harmful; user-generated content; content monitoring; user; monitoring; cyber offences
The full article is available to institutions that have subscribed to the journal.
Author's Biography
Alexander Dittel is a solicitor at a city law firm who specialises in contentious and non-contentious data protection work, cyber security and commercial law. His previous in-house experience ranged from a tech start-up to global companies, including Google, Amazon and Pfizer. Currently, Alexander covers a spread of sectors including advertising, marketing, healthcare, retail and leisure, financial services and technology, media and telecommunications.
