Whilst all eyes have been focused on the proposal to age-gate social media for kids, a further far-reaching proposal with profound implications for free speech in the UK has just been sneaked through. The Government's WATCH THIS SPACE green paper, announced earlier this week, proposes to structurally skew the online space in favour of legacy broadcasters.
Its implications are enormous. It would apply to all of us, not just kids. It would entrench a structural bias in favour of legacy media. It would replace audience choice with state manipulation. It would undermine independent journalism and erode the ability of UK audiences to verify what they are being told on traditional broadcast channels.
Totalitarian in its outlook and disingenuous in its assumptions it takes the UK further still from being a free speech society and towards a system of monopoly State control over media.
I've done a series of short video explainers. The first is here.
“We are all breathing in, what is falling into our soil, our water and our food”
“We are watching bees disappear, we are watching insects decline”
“We all know, that what’s happening in our skies is connected to something so much bigger”
Yep - question is what?