With the conclusion of the inquest into the death of the teenager Molly Russell, attention has turned again to the Online Safety Bill, currently making its way through the House of Commons. The bill’s concept of “legal but harm” is controversial, and has attracted criticism from high places, not least of all former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption. Lord Sumption joins Rosalind English in this episode to discuss the problems involved in defining this kind of harm and the concepts of “misinformation and disinformation” in the Bill.
Lord Sumption worries about the “sheer randomness” of the process for identifying legal but harmful material, and points out that the internet is absolutely vast; the “scale and speed at which material is added to it every moment of our lives is breathtaking”. The only way, he says, that this can be controlled is by the use of algorithms. But they are incapable of detecting nuance or irony. They are blunt instruments. When you are applying this kind of technique to material at this scale, you are bound to get a very large number of false positives.
“So you will lose an enormous amount of perfectly acceptable material, material that is not only legal but not harmful”.
Listen to more in Episode 169.
Law Pod UK is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audioboom, Player FM, ListenNotes, Podbean, iHeart, Radio Public, Deezer or wherever you listen to our podcasts. Please remember to rate and review us if you like what you hear.
The post “Government control over the flow of information: Lord Sumption speaks out against the Online Safety Bill in latest episode of Law Pod UK appeared first on UK Human Rights Blog.