spectator.co.uk/article/america-is-coming-for-britains-social-media-censors/
America is coming for Britain’s social media censors
Top of the list will be Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes, for instance, who will be chiefly responsible for any fines handed down, and who has criticised the perception in America that ‘freedom of expression… is naturally in conflict with safety’.
They might also consider the members of the Online Information Advisory Committee. It is chaired by Lib Dem peer Lord Allan, who, as the Daily Sceptic reported earlier this year, once described questioning the deadliness of Covid, or the need for action on climate change, as ‘seditious’.
Also on the board is Elisabeth Costa, who worked at the Behavioural Insights Team on so-called ‘pre-bunking’. Several have campaigned for the Online Safety Act to be even stricter, and UCL academic Jeffrey Howard has written an ethics paper on ‘Why Content Moderation is a Moral Duty’. If the US wants to stick it to the censors, these are plum targets.
Outside of Ofcom, meanwhile, there is the PM’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who was the co-founder in 2018 of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a pro-censorship campaign group that has planned to ‘kill Musk’s Twitter’, as leaked documents have revealed.
Or even Sir Mark Rowley, head of the Met police, who during the unrest last summer appeared to threaten to extradite Elon Musk over his online posts. ‘It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on US soil’, said Marco Rubio, possibly referring to this incident.
Heil Trump. Heil Vance. Heil victory!