As the ‘Trump Tornado’ is forcefully rearranging things all over Europe, there’s a justified expectation about the Donald J. Trump administration’s reaction to the ill-disguised push for censorship in the upcoming ‘Online Safety Act.’
As of now, Tech companies, including Elon Musk’s X and Google, have warned businesses could leave the PM Keir Starmer’s leftist experiment in Britain over the cost of funding the online safety crackdown.
Google said the fees charged to internet companies will drive services out of the UK, while X says it will ‘disincentivize’ global companies from entering the British market.
The Telegraph reported:
“Ofcom [British Office of Communications] has laid out plans to raise around £70m a year to cover the costs of enforcing the new laws, which take effect in the coming months. They will require tech companies to introduce age checks and limit exposure to harmful content. The bill would almost entirely be borne by the largest five providers – believed to be Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple and TikTok – [that] would face charges equal to 0.02pc of global revenue.”
The plan has an absurd aspect that aims to apply fees and fines to income from outside Britain.
“Responding to an Ofcom consultation, Google said: ‘The use of the worldwide revenue approach … risks stifling UK growth, and consequently affecting the quality and variety of services offered to UK users, by potentially driving services with low UK revenue out of the UK, or stopping companies from launching services in the UK’.
X said: ‘Aggregating worldwide revenues for the calculation of [qualifying worldwide revenue] may disincentivize global providers from introducing new regulated services into the UK’.
Uber also criticized the plan, saying that the fees ‘may have the effect of encouraging these companies to withdraw from the UK’ and that ‘large global businesses may also be dissuaded from launching their products in the UK – or growing their business there – given that this regime would capture their worldwide revenue’.”
Silicon Valley companies are taking a more aggressive approach against outlandish laws that can fine their companies up to 10% of world annual revenue for failure to deal with ‘harmful material’ (inconvenient truths) on their services.
But out-of-touch British officials believe that the proposals ‘are fair and proportionate’.
“It’s our view that the UK will continue to be an attractive and important market, and we are always mindful of the impact of our regulation, while protecting users.”
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