Thread by @BigBrotherWatch

🚨NEWS🚨 We've just launched our new report:

🟥The State of Free Speech Online🟥

We document the growth of big tech censorship & explain why Johnson's Online Safety Bill could be the greatest threat to free speech in the UK in living memory.

Read more: bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/campaigns/free…

Far from “reigning in” social media companies, the Government is seeking a share of the extraordinary power to monitor, suppress + censor lawful speech on a scale never seen before.

The Online Safety Bill is disastrous for the future of free speech in the UK.

#SaveOnlineSpeech

The Bill gives state backing to foreign companies' terms + conditions, abandoning legal speech standards.

This convergence of big tech + state power is unaccountable & difficult to contain. Once we go down the Orwellian road of online speech control, there will be no going back.

Our report documents how big tech's corporate speech standards often disadvantage the marginalised groups they claim to protect.

And as the Online Safety Bill will force companies to suppress even more lawful speech that could be 'harmful', deeper marginalisation is inevitable.

On Instagram, photos of users who have self-harm or surgery scars are routinely hidden and labelled as “sensitive content” that people may find “disturbing”.

The company is routinely erasing young people who have experienced mental ill health and trans people in particular.

Facebook's gender policy has resulted in account suspensions for jokes and off-hand comments, including of a gay man who joked "men are the worst".

Whilst Twitter's gender policy has resulted in multiple women being suspended for posting the legal definition of rape.

Twitter's misgendering policy is well-intended but deeply flawed, open to abuse & has led to undue censorship of women + trans people.

It has even been used many times to suspend users for using the word 'cis'.

@ZubyMusic + others have been suspended for using the word 'dude'.

Silicon Valley's speech standards, detached from rights standards, are increasingly having political influence - sometimes overtly.

Twitter recently removed the “Kill the Bill” account, which opposes #PolicingBill. Only after we complained to Twitter was the account reinstated.

Now, online speech controls are cast over public health discussions at a mass scale.

This has already led to Ofcom-regulated broadcaster @talkRADIO being removed from YouTube, scientists censored for sharing research, and an award-winning journalist's article marked as "false".

Automated censorship is deeply flawed and can have significant political impact.

Instagram labelled MP @zarahsultana's accurate post about pandemic deaths as "false".

It also labelled @BerniceKing's post about the assassination of her father MLK as vaccine misinformation.

The rule of law must be upheld online. But the Online Safety Bill does absolutely nothing to help police deal with real crime online, rather focusing the lens on ordinary people’s lawful conversations.

The Government MUST remove powers over lawful speech from the Bill altogether

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