The Media Blog: Shouldn’t everyone be a little worried about what Theresa May wants to do with the media?

As the Independent rightly calls it, the United Kingdom government is “planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online.”

There is no universe in which that sounds good, or – if you ask us – ends well.

“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet,” the Conservative Party’s manifesto on the matter states. “We disagree.”

For some reason these guys think it is an achievement to become “the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the internet.”

So, in addition to a law (the Investigatory Powers Act) a few months ago that allows “the government to force internet companies to keep records on their customers’ browsing histories, as well as giving ministers the power to break apps like WhatsApp so that messages can be read”, there is now this one that has the power, potentially, to decide what online media should publish and what they shouldn’t.

Of course, the excuse for that earlier law is terrorists. They don’t want terrorists to be able to communicate online, by forcing technology companies to build backdoors into messaging. But yes that weakens terrorists, but weakens everyone else too.

So power moves from the hands of business to the hands of government. And now two of the government’s excuses are pornography and cyber-bullying.

“We will put a responsibility on industry not to direct users – even unintentionally – to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of harm,” the Conservatives write.

But apart from the fact that we continue to wonder why secular governments are so obsessed with the private sexual behaviours of adult human beings, there is the fact that this is too much power given to politicians – the power to order companies to delete posts, to force companies to support government schemes, to pay forced levies for adverts warning people that the internet is dangerous, to regulate how online companies are paid and then to decide what kind of news can be posted online.

Lord have mercy.

“While we cannot create this framework alone, it is for government, not private companies, to protect the security of people and ensure the fairness of the rules by which people and businesses abide,” the manifesto reads. “Nor do we agree that the risks of such an approach outweigh the potential benefits.”

Is this related to the oncoming 8 June General Elections? The same reason why prime minister Theresa May has been visiting Redeemed churches up and down?

Your guess is as good as ours.

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