Dear Reader,

Parliament, in its wisdom, often sets out to protect us. Yet every so often, protection becomes overprotection, and noble aims metastasise into dangerous instruments. Such, I fear, is the fate of the Online Safety Act. Draped in the rhetoric of “safeguarding,” the Act aspires to shield citizens from harm in the digital sphere. But when protection becomes paternalism, liberty is the casualty.

The Act is framed around a “duty of care,” a phrase so benign it could belong in a doctor’s oath. But when applied to online speech, this duty morphs into a tool of censorship. “Harmful content” is no longer defined in narrow legal terms, but expands to include that which regulators consider misleading, offensive, or destabilising. What begins as the policing of criminal material risks spiralling into the policing of disagreement.

A society that never encounters falsehood or insult cannot develop resilience. We build discernment only by contending with error, just as muscles strengthen through strain. The safest speech, under this regime, is no speech at all—a silence that suits the regulator but impoverishes the citizen.

Beyond speech, the Act imposes sweeping compliance obligations on platforms: monitoring duties, reporting mandates, algorithmic transparency, endless paperwork. Such requirements are trivial for Silicon Valley giants, who can hire compliance departments. But for the small innovator, the start-up forum, the community blog, they are ruinous.


This is the paradox: in the name of democratising safety, the Act entrenches monopoly. Big Tech thrives under heavy regulation, while small challengers suffocate. The future internet, if the Act proceeds unamended, will be safer only in the sense that it will be blander, narrower, less diverse.

History does not flatter the censor. Wherever speech is suppressed, error festers underground and re-emerges in more virulent form. Rumours do not die when banned; they metastasise. The more effective remedy is always more speech—exposure, challenge, rebuttal. Citizens who are treated as fragile children, in need of protection from words, will remain forever vulnerable. Citizens who are trusted with unfiltered debate learn to discriminate, to weigh, to argue.


The regulator, for all its resources, cannot outwit the spontaneous order of public discourse. It is folly to believe that a committee can decide, once and for all, which speech is “harmful” and which is not.

This is not an argument for chaos. Child sexual exploitation, incitement to violence, direct criminal threats—such matters demand swift removal. But let regulation stop there. Let platforms enjoy safe harbour if they act in good faith and respond to proper notices. Let the state intervene only through courts, not administrative fiat.


What we need is not an Online Safety Leviathan, but a light framework that preserves openness while curbing only the most egregious abuses. Minimal rules, maximum freedom.


In Closing


We must be vigilant when Parliament legislates “for our own good.” The Online Safety Act, in its present form, risks strangling the very vitality it claims to protect. If we wish for a digital public square that is resilient, innovative, and genuinely free, we must deregulate, not overregulate. In seeking safety, let us not sacrifice liberty.