The Online Safety Act 2023: fostering democratic participation while combatting anti-democratic harms?

Abstract

the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA): its ability to combat anti-democratic online content and practices. The original perception of the internet as an egalitarian, democratic, expression-rich environment, free of burdensome regulation and of the dominance of global ‘traditional’ media companies, has given way to a focus on the harms its ‘lawless’ nature are deemed to create. The idea that the availability of online platforms fosters free expression and therefore promotes the health of democracies is coming into conflict with concerns as to the anti-democratic impact of some online practices and content. The spread of false information online, as destabilising the democratic process and undermining faith in elections, is far from the only concern, but it is a highly dominant one. As a result, intense pressure has been placed on governments globally to combat such anti-democratic tendencies, largely via regulation of online content. That pressure was one of the driving factors behind the introduction of the OSA in the United Kingdom. It was presented as creating a new model of sanitising internet governance, able, inter alia, to address online harms inimical to the health of democracy while preserving content of democratic importance. This is the first article to question its success in that venture, by interrogating the OSA, mainly in terms of its ability to create curbs on anti-democratic online content and practice (in particular, algorithmic tendencies), while also demonstrating efficacy in navigating the tensions between the creation of such curbs and the promotion of such content.