Petition Create a public consultation on freedom of speech and disinformation

We recognise the threat misinformation and disinformation pose to our democracy and understand the widespread public concern on this issue. Creating a safer online world is a priority for the Government, and the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA) will be our key legislative tool for this.

The OSA takes a proportionate approach, ensuring user safety whilst still protecting freedom of expression and online debate. It focuses on addressing the most damaging forms of misinformation and disinformation – those amounting to illegal content – which companies are required to remove if they become aware of it on their services.

The foreign interference offence is a priority offence in the OSA and forces companies to take systematic action against a wide range of state-sponsored disinformation and state-linked interference online. The OSA also introduced the false communications offence, which captures communications where the sender knows information to be false and sends it intending to cause harm, without reasonable excuse.

In addition, the OSA seeks to hold services over the designated threshold (known as ‘Category 1 Services’) to account by ensuring that they clearly and consistently uphold their terms of service. Under the OSA’s duties, if legal mis- and disinformation is prohibited in their terms of service, they will have to remove it.

Safeguards for freedom of expression have been built in throughout the framework of the OSA. All services must have particular regard to the impact on users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy when implementing safety measures and policies.

Category 1 services will have additional duties in relation to freedom of expression. This will include assessing the impact of how safety measures and policies affect users’ freedom of expression within the law, the privacy of users, and news publisher and journalistic content on the service.

Companies who fail to fulfil their duties can be issued enforcement decisions by Ofcom that direct them to take specific steps to come into compliance or receive fines up to £18m or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue in the relevant year, whichever is higher. We are confident that when these duties start to be enforced next year, they will have an impact on the spread of misinformation and disinformation. We are however clear that social media companies should act now – rather than wait for the legislation to take effect.

We also understand the importance of building societal resilience in this context. Evidence shows that improving media literacy – the broad set of skills and knowledge that users need to make safe and informed decisions online – helps people more easily recognise misinformation and disinformation. DSIT has given almost £3million in grant funding to media literacy projects since 2022. The OSA also updated Ofcom’s statutory media literacy duty to promote media literacy by placing targeted duties on the regulator to develop regulated service users’ understanding of the nature and impact of mis and disinformation.

Finally, the Government recognises that society’s shift online presents new challenges and opportunities to news media and to the provision of trustworthy information. We are committed to a free and independent media and understand that having a free and fair press that is completely separate from the Government, in an age of misinformation and disinformation, is more important than ever. It is vital that the public have access to accurate and trustworthy information from a range of different sources.

We are also clear, however, that with this freedom comes responsibility, which media organisations must take seriously. In this context, an independent self-regulatory regime is important to ensure the press adheres to clear and high standards and offers individuals a means of redress where these are not met. The government is opposed to the idea that politicians should be telling the press what they can and cannot say.

While there are currently no plans to hold a formal public consultation on freedom of speech and misinformation, we assure you that your concerns have and will continue to be heard.

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology