Nigel Farage would repeal the Online Safety Act, Reform UK has announced. Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf branded the legislation “the greatest assault on freedom of speech in our lifetimes”.
He said VPN downloads have shot up, pushing kids into more dangerous corners of the internet like the dark web.
Mr Yusuf said the Online Safety Act created a “perverse set of incentives” by threatening social media companies with fines and executives with jail if their companies did not comply.
He continued: “We’ve seen a few things. VPN providers are publishing their stats, increases in signups in the UK up thousands of per cent, evidence by the way that 13, 14, 15-year-olds know far more about how the internet works than the dinosaurs that drafted this legislation and voted it through.
“But it also shows that if you go onto X you will have seen there was a protest in Leeds against illegal immigration and a migrant hotel in the local area that have been actively suppressed. There are many other examples surfacing now.
“And this is X, which I would bet will still be the strongest in maintaining free speech.”
Mr Yusuf noted the creation of an elite police force to monitor anti-migrant sentiment, saying: “This elite police force has been set up to ‘monitor anti-migrant sentiment’, so I use the word dystopia advisedly.
“If you look through history, the way countries slip into this sort of authoritarian regime it is through legislation that cloaks tyranny inside the warm fuzz of safety and security and hope nobody reads the small print. Well, we have read the small print. We at Reform think this is the greatest assault of free speech in our lifetimes and I can announce today that Nigel Farage and a Reform government will repeal the Online Safety Act.”
New online safety measures came into effect on Friday.
Aroun 6,000 pornography sites had agreed to bring in age checks from Friday, as well as other sites including X, formerly Twitter, to ensure users are 18 or over.
These can be in the form of facial age estimation or credit card checks.
On Friday, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “The Act has taken a long time to come into force, so it means the technology companies themselves have seen this coming for a very long time, and had all that time to prepare.
“So I have very high expectations of the change that children will experience.
“And let me just say this to parents and children, you will experience a different internet really, for the first time in from today, moving forward than you’ve had in the past.
“And that is a big step forward.”