The UK government says the updated Online Safety Bill won't force tech giants to remove content that is “legal but harmful”, following free speech complaints
Britain will not force tech giants to remove content that is “legal but harmful” from their platforms after campaigners …
ReutersPaul Sandle
Context & Ripple Effects
The government’s position confirms an earlier report that the Bill would remove the disputed “legal but harmful” duties, while retaining them for content aimed at children. It narrows a regime that had already drawn a parliamentary warning that it did not adequately balance free speech with action on illegal and harmful material.
The Bill still had a more specific enforcement track: its earlier update targeted categories including revenge porn, drug and weapons dealing, suicide promotion and people smuggling. The policy divide is therefore between defined illegal content and broader, lawful speech. That earlier expansion of illegal-content categories remains the relevant compliance baseline.
First-order effects
Major platforms are no longer subject to a general Bill-mandated duty to remove lawful material deemed harmful, leaving those moderation decisions more squarely with their own rules.
The government preserves a distinct child-safety obligation, so platforms must continue separating protections for minors from moderation of lawful content for adults.
Second-order effects
Platforms’ compliance teams can concentrate mandatory controls on defined illegal categories and child protection rather than building a broad legal-but-harmful removal system.
Publishers and platforms gain a stronger basis to contest premature removals of news content, aligning with the Bill change that would require an appeal opportunity before such removal. The proposed news-content appeal protection makes that boundary operational.
Third-order effects
UK platform governance is moving toward obligations tied to illegality and child risk rather than a general state-backed standard for harmful lawful speech.
The later push to make senior managers criminally liable for failures to protect minors indicates that narrowing speech duties does not mean lighter accountability overall; enforcement pressure is being concentrated on child safety. Senior-manager liability for child-safety failures illustrates that direction.
The trend: UK online-safety policy is separating broad speech moderation from targeted platform duties around illegal content and protection of minors.
The UK just (re)-introduced its online content rules, known as the Online Safety Bill. It's a mixed bag of proposals — some good, some bad — but it fails to lay down a legitimate marker of enforcement that requires @Ofcom to dole out hefty fines. <<cue thread>>
This is really concerning. And those standing in the way of proper protection - Lord Frost, David Davies etc - what do they know of being a teenager, steeped in online material some of which can be profoundly damaging? Young people need protection. https://twitter.com/...
UK Online Safety update. If I'm getting this right: - no more duty to remove “harmful but lawful” content - special carriage rights for political speech & (ill-defined) journalism - more child safety/anti-self-harm - something about giving users more control? - Ofcom role same ht…
“The legal but harmful provision” in UK gov' Online Safety Bill “will be replaced with new rules for companies to be more transparent over internal policies on content moderation, protections for free speech and strict laws on removing illegal content” https://www.ft.com/...
The “legal but harmful” farce is dead, thank God, but don't let that distract from the extra things that the Online Safety Bill *makes illegal*. 1. Content that causes “serious distress” is made illegal 2. Vague “reasonable grounds to infer” is the bar for assessing illegality ht…
Ian Russell, father of Molly Russell who took her own life in 2017, tells @MarthaKearney it's hard to understand the ‘watering down’ of the Online Safety Bill which removes the ban on the type of legal but harmful content his daughter had seen. https://www.bbc.com/... | #R4Today …
Molly Russell's dad Ian criticises the decision to remove a duty on social media giants to curb legal but harmful content “I don't think you can see the removal of a whole clause as anything other than watering down” he tells @BBCr4today
These BBC Panorama investigations I did reveal the terrible consequences of legal but harmful content online. Hate targeting women, conspiracies directed at terror survivors, violence promoted to teens. Those I spoke to now ask how the online safety bill will protect them. https:…
Big issue many campaigners have with stripping out of legal but harmful provisions for adults from Online Safety Bill is that vulnerability does not end at 18...
Olly Stephen's brave parents are particularly upset about the decision to drop defining legal but harmful from the bill. Despite its commitments to kids, they fear that this weakens the bill's ability to protect teens from violence and hate online. https://www.bbc.com/...
Michelle Donelan tells @skynews the “legal but harmful” wording had “very, very concerning consequences for free speech, and unintended consequences associated with it. It was really the anchor preventing this bill getting off the ground...
Contrary to reports, it seems the “legal but harmful” censorship clause has not been dropped. It's still there for <18s - thereby censoring the written and spoken word in the UK for the first time. Tech firms have no idea who's a kid so will have to guess, censoring on a hunch.
We are disappointed the Online Safety Bill is to be watered down by the removal of measures targeting material designated ‘harmful but legal’. Freedom of speech is an important issue, but this is about the freedom to live. Full statement here: https://mollyrosefoundation.org/ ...…
This is the right approach. The murky concept of ‘legal but harmful’ was a route to state censorship by Big Tech algorithms. Which government committee would determine ‘harm’, and ‘harmful’ to whom? A free press and media is a foundation of liberty. Thank you, @michelledonelan. h…
Unfortunately this Bill will introduce, rather than abolish the “legal but harmful” censorship clause. If it's there for <18s in a cyberspace that doesn't check age then it's there for everyone. https://twitter.com/...
Big Tech cannot be trusted to decide “legal but harmful” content. The Online Safety Bill will be used to clamp down on freedom of speech. Look at how the Equality Act is used by Civil Service HR to justify race targets & celebrating “trans remembrance”. https://www.telegraph.co.u…
The decision to abandon ‘legal but harmful’ makes huge sense. As we've argued, treating the same speech differently online and off is fraught with peril - and incentivises social media firms to block legitimate speech on pain of billion-pound fines https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ ..…
@BBCr4today Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan insists that children will be protected from ‘legal but harmful’ content. “The content that Molly Russell saw will not be allowed as part of this bill” she says
This would be a welcome change. Content that encourages self-harm is never acceptable & should be made illegal on the face of the Bill, rather than through “legal but harmful”. That is why I have an amendment tabled that would do precisely this. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
Molly's father Ian said last week that years of campaigning “have led me to not believe in anyone's words but instead judge them by their actions, because it's only when a positive step is taken will I believe it” https://www.bbc.com/...