At a recent UK parliamentary hearing on social media and algorithms, lawmakers ramped up calls for increased censorship online, despite revealing that they themselves remain unclear on what the existing law, the Online Safety Act, actually covers.
The session, led by the Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee, displayed a growing appetite among MPs to suppress lawful speech based on subjective notions of harm while failing to reconcile fundamental disagreements about the scope of regulatory authority.
Rather than defending open discourse, members of Parliament repeatedly urged regulators to expand their crackdown on speech that has not been deemed illegal. The recurring justification was the nebulous threat of “misinformation,” a term invoked throughout the hearing with little consistency and no legal definition within the current framework.
Labour MP Emily Darlington was among the most vocal proponents of more aggressive action. Citing the Netflix show Adolescence, she suggested that fictional portrayals of misogynistic radicalization warranted real-world censorship.
