LONDON — The U.K.’s controversial Online Safety Bill has been removed from the House of Commons schedule next week, reportedly to be revisited “in the autumn.”
This action was taken only hours after anti-porn activist and Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, motioned to insert amendments which, in her words, “would place a legal duty on online platforms hosting pornographic content to combat and remove illegal content through the specific and targeted measure of verifying the age and consent of every individual featured in pornographic content on their sites.”
Her amendments were defeated by a vote of 285-220.
Parliamentary insider newsletter Politics Home reported today that the Online Safety Bill — which has been sharply criticized by privacy and digital rights advocates, and promoted by supporters using overt anti-porn propaganda — was “removed from the government's agenda to make space for a motion of ‘no confidence’ in the government due to be put to the House on Monday.”
The outlet also cited concerns among supporters of the bill that “it could be subsequently scrapped as its return later this year will be dependent on the focus of the new Prime Minister.”
Conservative Party leadership contender Kemi Badenoch, Politics Home noted, has warned that the Online Safety Bill will have "serious implications for free speech."
“Free speech is no longer something we can take for granted as a commonly shared value,” Badenoch noted, citing a shift in attitudes that has caused “some dramatic, real-world events.”
Labour MP Enters Religiously Inspired US Propaganda Into the Parliamentary Record
Had Johnson's amendments passed yesterday, they would have implicitly created a legal category of “pornography websites,” which would then have been subject to record-keeping mandates.
Such mandates, which remain on the agenda for U.K. anti-porn conservatives and their allies, could potentially also force open platforms such as Twitter or Reddit, which tolerate adult content, to reevaluate their content policies in order to avoid being categorized as “pornography websites” and thereby forced to keep records of the age and identity of anyone appearing on any piece of sexual content posted onto the site.
The anti-porn Labour MP promoted her amendments by referring to blatantly tendentious “investigations” by mainstream publications, and also to the work of Laila Mickelwait, a religiously inspired U.S. anti-porn activist who until recently was the mouthpiece for homophobic ministry Exodus Cry.
“Legislation requiring online platforms to verify the age and consent of all individuals featured in pornographic content on their sites is backed by leading anti-sexual exploitation organizations including CEASE — the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation — UK Feminista and the Traffickinghub movement, which has driven the global campaign to expose the abuses committed by, in particular, Pornhub,” Johnson told the House of Commons.
Parroting the War on Porn rhetoric of Mickelwait, Exodus Cry and groups like NCOSE — formerly known as Morality in Media — Johnson added, “Some of the world’s biggest pornography websites allow members of the public to upload videos without verifying that everyone in the film is an adult or that everyone in the film gave their permission for it to be uploaded. As a result, leading pornography websites have been found to be hosting and profiting from filmed footage of rape, sex trafficking, image-based sexual abuse and child sexual abuse.”
A Labour Advocate for Direct State Intervention in Online Content
Johnson also entered into the parliamentary record the words of former New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof from his sensationalistic attack on Pornhub published in December 2020.
“In 2020, the New York Times documented the presence of child abuse videos on Pornhub, one of the most popular pornography websites in the world, prompting Mastercard, Visa and Discover to block the use of their cards for purchases on the site,” Johnson said yesterday, reciting Kristof’s dramatic characterization of Pornhub. “Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.”
Advocating for direct state intervention in online content, Johnson alleged that “the owners and operators of pornography websites are getting very rich from hosting footage of rape, trafficking and child sexual abuse, and they must be held to account under the law and required to take preventive action.”
Yesterday Johnson tweeted, “Today I tried to amend the #OnlineSafetyBill to require pornography websites to verify the age and consent of those featured in pornographic videos on their site. It’s time to stop these sites profiting from videos of rape, trafficking and child abuse.
”We lost the vote on a legal duty for age verification and consent for those featured on pornographic websites... Tories voted against," she added.