The United Kingdom’s increasingly draconian free speech crackdown is causing international controversy as a major American Big Tech company protests the censorship regime.
Lucy Connolly, a British mother and wife of a politician, was recently released from prison where she served a sentence for exercising free speech. X honored her last Tuesday after her release, but Connolly’s is not even remotely an isolated case.
X Global Government Affairs posted Aug. 26, “Lucy Connolly has been released from prison after serving 10 months of an unjust 31-month sentence for a single deleted post. The UK government's crackdown on free speech remains a concern, but it’s great to see Lucy reunite with her family. X will continue to be steadfast in our support of users’ right to freedom of speech on the platform.” Connolly said she was asked to meet with representatives of the Trump administration concerned over the U.K. censorship regime, as the American president, like X, is looking at the vendetta against online speech.
This aggressive censorship regime has the potential to impact Americans, too, X cautioned. “As the UK Online Safety Act rolls out, its unintended consequences on freedom of expression are clear: overbroad duties may lead to proactive censorship, harming freedom of expression and innovation,” the American social media company’s Global Government Affairs posted Aug. 21.
X added, “This has a potential to set a precedent for global censorship, threatening privacy and free speech worldwide. X will remain steadfast in our commitment to stand firm against proactive censorship efforts by governments worldwide.” But the battle for free speech is increasingly difficult in the U.K., where the OSA is being wielded as a weapon for crushing free speech.
Connolly, who was accused by authorities of angrily criticizing mass migration, is one of many UK citizens jailed for online posts, hence X’s warnings. Victims of the U.K.’s insane censorship regime spoke to the New York Post, which reported that up to 30 people are arrested in Britain every day for such ridiculous “offenses” as reposts and online cartoons. Meanwhile, X Global Government Affairs warned in August that “freedom of expression” is under threat from the U.K. Online Safety Act (OSA). The U.K. government has pressured Big Tech to participate in the extreme anti-free speech campaign, to remove comments for being “hateful” or “misinformation.”
Bernadette Spofforth was arrested and temporarily jailed for reposting, and then deleting, a critique of mass migration with a caveat. She was responding to a migrant’s child, Axel Rudakabana, murdering little girls last year at a Southport dance class.
She told the Post, “We’re a year on now and I can honestly tell you that I don’t think I will ever recover. I don’t mean that as a victim. Those poor children were victims. But I will never trust anything the authorities say to me ever again.”
The Post reported that official data indicates some 12,000 British are now arrested yearly for exercising free speech. Maxie Allen told the Post he and his partner were arrested for criticizing a public school in what was supposed to be a private WhatsApp group the school’s parents shared.
“I never imagined that just by airing your views about how an organization was run, trying to hold people to account in public office, that you get arrested for that,” Allen marveled.
The OSA is used as justification for putting British citizens in handcuffs merely for stating their opinions on such topics as immigration, religion, government policy and cultural wokeness.
Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
