The other significant element of licensing, of course, is that licenses come with conditions. A person with deficient eyesight may be required to wear glasses while driving, and so on. Here, too, Lady Benjamin’s proposal makes her intent ruthlessly clear.
As the bill reads, one of the conditions for obtaining a social media operating license would be that content made available on its platform “complies with the laws of the United Kingdom”; “is not materially harmful to users or to the public interest”; and “does not incite criminal conduct, violence, hatred or public disorder”.
Licensees would also be required to implement systems to “minimise the dissemination of materially false or misleading information” and ensure that “harmful content” – identified as such by the UK's communications regulator Ofcom – “is removed, restricted or otherwise addressed within such period as Ofcom may specify”.
A Threat to Privacy
In other words, part of the condition for obtaining a social media license, under the Baroness’s proposal, would be that social media companies would have to give the British regulator the overt and ongoing power to censor what appeared on their platforms. Note also that terms like “inciting hatred“ are open-ended and open to interpretation.
And then there is the end of online privacy, set out in a clause requiring companies to provide information about “the identity and authenticity of persons publishing content on its social media platform“.
In other words, the state would be granting itself powers to identify all of those who post materials online. Including, presumably, critics of the state itself. Or, more alarmingly in practical terms, those within its own orbit who anonymously expose or criticize policy. Consider the case of the civil servant anonymously expounding on problems with the state’s administration: under Lady Benjamin’s proposals, the state would have a mechanism to identify the critic.
In the Round: A Near Complete State Takeover
Finally, licensing has another element: A fee. While this is not specified in Lady Benjamin’s bill, extortionate license fees are another mechanism that the UK government could use to coerce or persuade truculent social media companies.
Taken together, what Lady Benjamin is proposing in her harmless-sounding licensing law is a near-complete state takeover of social media companies and, in practice, political speech on the internet inside the boundaries of the United Kingdom.
It is likely, blessedly, that her bill will not see the light of day, and will not make it – at least as written – onto the statute book.
A Bill Unlikely to Pass – for Now
But legislation like this is nevertheless useful, because it provides an insight into what a politician might do if one day they had the power to enact their wishes to their fullest extent. Further, Lady Benjamin’s bill is fiendishly clever because it operates under a framework – licensing – that the British public is already familiar with and regards as harmless in most cases. Britons are already familiar with the need for a whole range of activities, from owning a television or a dog to running a pub, being licensed.
There have, to date, been no votes on the legislation, which has only received its first reading. The first indication of the extent to which the Labour government is persuaded, or wishes to be persuaded, by the legislation will come in some weeks, at second reading. But it is likely that Lady Benjamin’s proposals will garner significant support in the Lords, and that this in turn will fuel debate and media coverage.
When that debate and media coverage comes, those in the UK who value freedom of speech and the independence of public debate from state oversight would do well to be prepared for battle.
