Britain’s police have become ‘too censorious’, warns Nick Clegg - Former Meta boss criticises forces for adopting a ‘whack-a-mole’ approach to policing the internet
“The police are arresting 30 people a day for so-called online speech offences. It’s often really off-colour, outrageous stuff that people might say to each other in a pub. “I just think we’re applying legislation that was invented, that was put on the statute book before any of these technologies were invented.” Sir Nick went on to say that prosecutions over online speech appeared motivated by a desire to create an internet where people were polite and nice to each other all the time. “We’re in danger of trying to make the internet nice, always nice,” he said. “It isn’t always nice. It’s very ugly in many respects. “We’re slightly labouring under this illusion that you can just play ‘whack-a-mole’ online and just keep downgrading or removing or arresting people who say stuff. It’s why they’re always never more than a heartbeat away from controversy. “You’re not producing widgets, or even sending rockets up into the sky. You’re dealing with the most liquid, controversial, difficult thing – speech – and it’s an almost impossible place to have it, because one person’s hate speech is another person’s right to free expression. “We need to move beyond this idea, because it’s in the eye of the beholder, it really is, and most of the content that these platforms are being yelled at to act against is almost always legal content.”
