Remember Claire Fox?
Well, sadly, she is not alone. Many on the right of politics, especially the far right, do not give a stuff about our children’s safety. They would prefer to protect the monsters.
Why Online Safety Is So Important
For years, children in Britain were forced to navigate a digital Wild West, bombarded with violent videos, hardcore pornography, and eating disorder content deliberately pushed at them by ruthless algorithms. Then, at long last, Parliament acted. The Online Safety Act forced tech giants to pull harmful content away from under-18s and introduce age checks for pornography.
The results have been immediate and undeniable. Teenagers themselves report that their feeds feel “cleaner” and “safer”. Eating disorder content that once flooded Instagram has plummeted. Violent clips that once ruined days on TikTok are no longer appearing with every swipe. Visits to pornography sites have collapsed.
This is what progress looks like. This is what protection looks like.
And yet, unbelievably, a chorus of right-wing politicians and campaigners are demanding that these protections be scrapped. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK pledges to repeal the Act. Big Brother Watch rails against it. Self-styled “freedom warriors” cheer on VPN salesmen and pornographers while pretending this is about civil liberties.
Let’s be blunt: these people are not defending freedom. They are defending predators, profiteers, and an industry that treats children’s trauma as collateral damage.
The Real Freedom at Stake
What kind of “freedom” do Farage and his allies mean? The freedom for a 12-year-old to be targeted with eating disorder content until they starve themselves? The freedom for a 15-year-old boy to be served endless violent porn that warps his view of women? The freedom for tech giants to profit from children’s misery while shrugging at the consequences?
That is not liberty. That is abandonment.
The Right’s Bad Faith Arguments
The right’s case is paper thin. They say it’s about privacy. But children’s privacy was already being shredded daily by algorithms designed to monetise their attention. They say it’s about “treating everyone like children”. In reality, the law only treats children as children, something right-wing ideologues seem to struggle with.
They claim the UK is going it alone, as though leadership were a crime. But the truth is the UK is doing what no other liberal democracy has had the courage to do: standing up to Silicon Valley and saying, “Enough.”
And that is exactly why repeal campaigners are so desperate to kill this law. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it does.
Whose Side Are You On?
Peter Kyle, the Technology Secretary, was right when he said those who oppose the Act are “on the side of predators”. It may sound harsh, but it is the truth. To side with repeal is to side with pornographers who lost nearly half their UK traffic overnight. It is to side with the cynical VPN industry, which has profited from parents’ fears. It is to side with tech giants who would rather addict a generation than protect it.
And it is most certainly not to side with children, the very people whose lives are at stake.
No Retreat, No Repeal
The Online Safety Act is not perfect. Harmful content still slips through. Determined adults still dodge checks with VPNs. More work must be done. But to roll back the Act now would be nothing short of surrender, a conscious decision to abandon children to the very harms Parliament promised to confront.
We should be strengthening this legislation, not scrapping it. We should be tightening the loopholes, not handing victory to pornographers and right-wing opportunists.
The moral divide could not be starker. On one side: children who finally feel cleaner, safer, freer online. On the other: Nigel Farage, Big Brother Watch, and an army of bad-faith ideologues who dress up indulgence for adults as liberty while ignoring the cost to kids.
This is the choice. And Britain must make it clear: we will not let the right sacrifice our children at the altar of their so-called “freedom”. Especially when so many are acting in bad faith.
