THE Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok has often aroused fears that personal data collected on its users could end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
What fewer people imagined was that our own Government would try to use TikTok in order to police speech in Britain. Yet that is exactly what has happened.
GettyThe state is trying to stop you from saying anything it doesn’t like[/caption]
PAProtesters outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex[/caption]
PAPolice battle with an anti-immigration mob outside the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham[/caption]
Leaked emails show that a shady branch of government known as the National Security Online Information Team has been leaning on TikTok to suppress content that is critical of official migration and criminal justice policy.
On several occasions during the riots which followed the Southport murders a year ago, the unit approached TikTok requesting that it “assess” some posts made by its users — effectively a crude instruction to suppress what they were saying.
Legitimate debate
Britain, like every other country, operates security services that spy on terrorists who are plotting atrocities as well as organisations involved in propagating serious public disorder.
Were a government organisation to prevent a bomb attack which could have killed dozens of people, no one would be too bothered about how it had obtained the vital information.
But the emails show activity which goes far beyond the demands of national security.
In one case, officials drew TikTok’s attention to a post that suggested a large number of migrants were “undocumented fighting age males”.
Another suggested that TikTok take a look at users who spread “concerning narratives about the police and a two-tier system [of justice] ”.
I am sure the police and courts will defend themselves robustly against a charge of operating two-tier justice, but whether or not you think they are doing this, it is a perfectly legitimate area for public debate, just as is the question of whether ethnic minorities suffer disadvantage in the workplace, schools, hospitals and so on.
Those who made online accusations of a disproportionate response by the police towards protesters, and who dubbed our Prime Minister “two-tier Keir”, had good reason for raising their concerns.
Ten days before the Southport murders, the Harehills area of Leeds erupted into rioting after children from a Roma family were taken into care.
Days later there was a machete fight on Southend seafront.
Keir Starmer had little to say about those grim developments, yet went into overdrive when protesters took to the streets following the Southport riots.
True, there were plenty of thugs among them, but to insinuate that all protesters were driven by nothing more than “far-right hatred” was outrageous.
I am not going to defend Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for 31 months for remarks she made in the wake of the Southport killings — her words read like a pretty clear incitement to violence even if she did not intend them to.
But it is perfectly reasonable to question whether her punishment was consistent with the treatment handed out to extreme Islamist preachers and Irish Republican sympathisers.
Take the Prevent programme, which was set up by the Blair government specifically to deal with the threat of Islamist terrorism in the wake of the 2005 Tube bombings.
PALucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months for remarks she made in the wake of the Southport killings[/caption]
GettyChinese-owned TikTok has aroused fears personal data could end up in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party[/caption]
Over time it seems to have become more concerned with the far right.
Nineteen per cent of those reported to the programme in the year ending March 2024 were recorded as supporting a far right ideology, against only 13 per cent with Islamist ideology — in spite of the latter being responsible for far more terror attacks and killings than the former over the past two decades.
For Government officials to try to stop us discussing these matters is something you might associate more with a dictatorship than with British democracy.
We have a human rights lawyer as PM, but where is he when it comes to defending our long-held right to free expression?
Labour, however, has taken state surveillance of social media to a new level
To be fair to Starmer, it is not just his government that has been trying to silence its critics.
The National Security Online Information Team was derived from a body set up during Covid to try to gag critics of vaccines and lockdown.
The Online Safety Act, which places obligations on social media companies to police content — and which the Government has used to put pressure on TikTok and other companies — was the brainchild of the last Conservative government.
Deep concerns
Labour, however, has taken state surveillance of social media to a new level.
Particularly disgraceful was Technology Secretary Peter Kyle’s attempt this week to claim that Nigel Farage was on the side of Jimmy Savile for daring to criticise the Online Safety Act.
To listen to Kyle you would think the act was about nothing other than age verification for users of online pornography (not that Savile used the internet to abuse his victims).
Even the day’s news could be deemed harmful to children if it upsets their immature sensibilities
There are many people, myself included, who support the age verification measures but who have deep concerns about the act’s other provisions, in particular its demand that technologies companies act against anything that could fall under the vague definition of being “harmful to children”.
Even the day’s news could be deemed harmful to children if it upsets their immature sensibilities.
The trouble is that the Online Safety Act was pushed through on the back of emotional propaganda, with few people realising the dark and disturbing ways in which it could be used to silence any of us.
We are belatedly realising that now.
legislation.gov.ukThe Online Safety Act was pushed through on the back of emotional propaganda[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
