The UK will for the first time in the coming months attempt to properly police what campaigners and politicians have long viewed as the “Wild West” that is the online world.
From the spring, the regulator Ofcom will begin holding social media companies, including Elon Musk‘s X, to account over the content they pump out to their users.
The new laws will aim to protect children and young people, in particular, from harmful content, including pornography and material that promotes self-harm, suicide and eating disorders.
Social media firms will be expected to introduce new age verification systems to ensure young people are not freely gaining access to websites and their content as they are now, with often devastating consequences.
A failure to comply with the new rules will result in fines of up to £18m or 10 per cent of their global revenues, whichever is greater, criminal charges against senior managers for repeated failings and even, in the most extreme cases, blocking the sites from being accessed in the UK.
The new duties, contained in the Online Safety Act, have been years in the making and were conjured up at a time when governments around the world were united in the need to regulate what people were being exposed to every waking hour of their lives. Until now.
As the UK’s new internet laws begin to kick-in, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the new US president, and standing at his shoulder will be the boss of one of the largest social media companies in the world, Elon Musk.
Musk has already shown his willingness to launch attacks against the new Labour administration, and actively helped to spread misinformation online during the height of the summer riots in the wake of the Southport stabbings.
It has prompted anxiety among campaign groups that an all-powerful Musk, backed by the White House, could lead a fightback against greater regulation of the internet.
“It’s definitely a concern,” said one senior member of an internet campaign group, who asked not to be named. “We’ve already seen Elon Musk go after the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and this could further inspire companies and individuals to push back against those who criticise them.”
The CCDH, a British-American not-for-profit group with offices in both London and Washington, DC, has been part of a long-running battle with the tech billionaire that has embroiled certain members of Starmer’s inner circle.
The group was founded by CEO Imran Ahmed, a former Labour Party aide, who runs the outfit from Washington and has previously admitted that the body was set up with the help of close personal friend Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff.
Musk has the CCDH in his crosshairs, particularly following a report published by a US site called the Disinformation Chronicle, which claimed the CCDH was aiming to “kill Musk’s Twitter” as its main priorities. The reports prompted Musk to declare on X: “This is war.”
The CCDH recently announced it was leaving Musk’s X, warning that the billionaire had transformed a “once-influential town square into a dangerous, troubled space where hate, conspiracy theories, and lies have privileged access to the megaphone”.
Musk has openly chafed against attempts to regulate his website, and in a legally mandated risk assessment drawn up for the European Commission in November, X said it “strives to be the town square of the internet by promoting and protecting freedom of expression”.
The Tesla chief views himself as a free speech absolutist, which coupled with his open attacks against Starmer’s Government and his aides – as evidenced during the Southport riots and since – puts him on a potential collision course with the UK Government.
Campaigners are now worried that the Government could seek to overcompensate in its response to Musk for fear of upsetting diplomatic relations with Trump’s White House given his role in the incoming US government.
Alarm bells rang in November when Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said the UK Government should show some “humility” to the tech giants, and that they should be treated less like companies and more like nation states.
The i Paper understands the comments were raised by campaign groups in a meeting with Kyle, such was the concern that the Government may be kowtowing to social media bosses.
An ally of Kyle insisted that his comments were more in reference to the UK needing to be more intelligent when it came to dealing with tech firms, rather than suggesting “that they set the rules”.
Nevertheless, campaigners feel that Musk’s open challenge to regulating sites like his has led the way for others to follow.
“There is evidence that some sites are already pushing back. If the regulator demands X or other firms to do x,y or z to prioritise the safety of the people using their sites then that could lead to conflict with these platforms,” the source said.
“Musk may go for Ofcom, so it will be up to the Government to defend the regulator.”
Such is Musk’s position of power, both in the online world and in the real world, that Parliament’s Science, Technology and Innovation Committee has invited him to take questions from MPs to get his views on his social media platform, on technology more broadly and on the thorny issue of freedom of expression.
The Labour chair of the committee, Chi Onwurah, told The i Paper: “He owns one of the biggest platforms, which was specifically cited by Ofcom when it looked at the way in which misinformation spread over the summer and contributed to the riots.
“He’s also an innovator, he’s a technologist. So we’re trying to get to the bottom of how the algorithms work, how they drive misinformation and what the relationship is, if you like, between driving misinformation and revenues.
“But also, thirdly, because he’s a radical advocate for free speech and free expression. And there is obviously a relationship, an important relationship between misinformation and free expression.”
Onwurah pointed out that while the US has greater protections for freedom of expression, the US Supreme Court established that people “do not have the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre”.
“It seems to me, what the X algorithm does is amplify and automate shouts of fire in the equivalent of a crowded theatre,” she added.
Her committee’s inquiry will seek in the first instance to ascertain whether the new online safety laws are fit for purpose.
But others have suggested that Musk and X will fall into line with the new regulatory regime once it kicks in, as occurred recently when the Brazilian government blocked access to his platform for spreading misinformation. The ban was lifted when X agreed to changes and paid a $5m fine.
“He’s a businessman,” one senior backbench MP said. “Brazil showed that he is willing to come to a negotiated compromise.”
Musk’s attacks on Starmer’s Government
Musk’s difficult relationship with the UK Government has been underscored by his frequent public criticisms of Starmer and his hints that he could become a major financial backer of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
At the height of the riots in the wake of the Southport attack, Musk posted on X that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK and later endorsed calls for another election, branding Britain a “tyrannical police state”.
He has also dubbed Starmer as “two-tier Keir”—a reference to claims that police are stricter with some groups and more lenient with others.
More recently, Musk accused the Prime Minister of having gone “full Stalin” after the Government announced plans to increase inheritance tax on farms.
Alongside levelling harsh words at Starmer, he has also been seen to heap praise on Farage, and the pair met in early December at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida alongside new Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy.
The hour-long meeting added fuel to recent speculation that Musk is preparing to make a major donation to Reform, with some reports suggesting up to $100m (£79m) could change hands.
Farage has dismissed reports over the size of the sum, but claimed that he had discussed money with Musk during the meeting.
“We are in negotiations about whether he can help,” Farage told broadcasters. “He is fully behind this. He is motivated enough by what’s going on in Britain to give serious thought to giving money.”
The claims have raised alarm bells, especially since loopholes in existing donation law mean that Musk, who is not a UK citizen, could financially back Reform via the British branch of X.
The Electoral Commission has urgently called on the Government to close this gap by tying company donations to their annual profits. Since X only had profits of around £8.5m in 2022, this could majorly limit the scale of a potential Musk donation.
The Government has hinted that it could look to tighten existing laws, with the Prime Minister’s spokesperson claiming that “work is ongoing to reinforce the existing safeguards in that space” and that more details would be set out in “due course”.
However, a bill would have to be passed through parliament for such a change to take place, meaning it could be 2026 before it comes into effect. This would leave a whole year where Musk would still be legally able to make a major donation to Reform.
Ministers also would have to tread carefully to ensure it does not appear that they are directly trying to hinder their electoral rivals.
Farage strongly criticised reports of a potential law change, claiming officials at the Electoral Commission were “establishment stooges”.
“Both Labour and the Tories are now terrified of Reform and Elon Musk,” he wrote on X. “Never mind peerages for donations or the millions given to them by foreign [businessmen] via UK companies in the past. This old order needs to be swept away.”
