Source: the UK plans to remove the Online Safety Bill's controversial “legal but harmful” content rules, leaving them only for material targeted at children
EXCLUSIVEThe Bill is due to be brought back to Parliament later this month after it was delayed over the summer
The i PaperChloe Chaplain
Context & Ripple Effects
The Online Safety Bill has been in retreat since summer: it was pulled from the parliamentary schedule after Boris Johnson's resignation, delaying it until the fall [[a:980787]], and critics including Sky News had already called its core design an unworkable compromise [[a:977038]]. The government had separately expanded the bill's list of outlawed conduct — revenge porn, drug and weapons dealing, suicide promotion, people smuggling [[a:975742]].
Now the source report says the 'legal but harmful' duties — the part that would have obliged large platforms to police lawful adult speech — are being stripped out entirely, surviving only for content targeted at children. The government subsequently confirmed exactly that shift following free-speech complaints [[a:985297]], and the slimmed-down bill went on to pass Parliament in 2023 [[a:844346]].
First-order effects
Major platforms operating in the UK no longer face a statutory duty to remove lawful adult content deemed harmful, sharply narrowing their compliance exposure under the bill.
Child-safety obligations survive intact, so services aimed at or reachable by minors keep the strictest duties while adult-facing sections of the same platforms are relieved of them.
Second-order effects
Free-speech campaigners who lobbied against the clauses get a template win they can cite in other jurisdictions, while child-protection groups are pushed to demand stronger age-assurance as the price of the carve-out.
Platform compliance spending reorients from vague 'harm' triage toward the bill's enumerated criminal offences and child-safety tooling, shifting vendor demand toward age-verification systems.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, online-safety law converges on an audience-based structure — strict duties where children are present, lighter touch for adults — rather than policing lawful speech by category, a split other regulators weighing similar bills can copy.
The retreat also signals that broad 'harm' definitions are politically fragile, pushing future legislation toward the specific criminalised conduct lists the UK already added earlier in 2022.
The trend: Online safety legislation is narrowing from open-ended 'legal but harmful' speech duties toward child-specific protections and enumerated criminal offences, with the UK's climbdown as the clearest data point.
Scoop @theipaper by @ChaplainChloe: Online Safety Bill will return this month - *without* controversial clause forcing web firms to censor ‘legal but harmful’ content. Requirement will be restricted to posts aimed at children after free speech fears. https://inews.co.uk/...
It is the time to tackle the avoidable harm that Molly Russell experienced and protect the children who pay the human cost of the horrifying number of child sex offences reported to police each week. It is the time to deliver the Online Safety Bill. https://twitter.com/...
Pleased to see egregious “legal but harmful” clause dropped. But much left in #OnlineSafetyBill is dangerously censorious. Not least policing weazle word misinformation. Also v premise of bill is: online speech of all sorts is harmful & needs 2B regulated. No room for complacency…
The decision to abandon the “legal but harmful” clause is welcome. The clause would give sweeping powers to ministers and encourage more censorship by Big Tech companies. That is why I introduced an amendment to remove the clause in July. https://www.thesun.co.uk/...
That's one 🚨 of at least ten dealt with. Yay. But here are just four more 🚨s with the #OnlineSafetyBill that haven't even been touched: https://webdevlaw.uk/... and as a result are likely to be pushed into law in the name of “protecting children” or “getting it done”. https://twi…
Exclusive - Rishi Sunak brings back online safety bill this month But will ditch legal but harmful clause for adults And extra protections to specifically distinguish publishers With @JackElsom https://www.thesun.co.uk/...
According to several newspaper reports, the Government is planning to scrap the clause in the Online Safety Bill designed to protect adults from ‘legal but harmful’ content - a huge victory for free speech campaigner https://dailysceptic.org/...
NEWS: Online Safety Bill is coming back.. but without powers to suppress legal “but harmful” speech. An *incredible* victory for @BigBrotherWatch and free speech if true!! https://www.thesun.co.uk/...
Twitter today is awash with posts calling for #onlinesafetybill sooner, stronger, tougher. It's policy-making by who shouts loudest. What's needed is thoughtful, rational policy-making to help victims of abusive content & protect the rights of those posting lawfully. /4
This is excellent news for free expression — govt to remove ‘legal but harmful’ provisions from Online Safety Bill. BUT this only addresses the tip of the iceberg in respect the Bill. 🧵 Let me explain... https://twitter.com/...
Good news for freedom of expression in the UK. Still worry about requiring private companies to remove forms of expression they have ‘reasonable grounds to infer’ could be illegal. Clear risk of over-removal of legal speech by cautious companies responding to political pressure h…
This has been expected for a while. But deleting Clause 13 - legal but harmful content for adults - won't protect free speech. This claim is pure gaslighting. It won't alter the underlying fundamentals of the #onlinesafetybill @openrightsgroup THREAD 1/ https://twitter.com/...
Beware too that “Requirement will be restricted to posts aimed at children after free speech fears.” Not quite. It will likely force stronger restrictions on content deemed “legal but harmful” under other clauses which mandate age-gating. Likely to target similar issues. /3
The ‘legal but harmful’ provision, formally known as ‘content that is harmful to adults,’ required firms to state in their T&Cs how they would respond to priority content. The clear intention of these provisions was to encourage removal of legal speech.
Bewsare of getting the wrong end of the stick. The idea that internet platforms will no longer make decisions on what is/isn't illegal is to misunderstand the #onlinesafetybill The illegal content provisions will stay & make them do precisely that. 2/ https://twitter.com/...
Failing to introduce legislation that goes further to protect children, after the Molly Russell inquest verdict, is a controversial move ... https://twitter.com/...