{"id":331092,"date":"2026-09-15T06:50:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T06:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=331092"},"modified":"2026-09-17T06:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T06:14:14","slug":"labours-pro-bbc-censorship-push-is-not-based-on-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=331092","title":{"rendered":"Labour\u2019s Pro-BBC Censorship Push is Not Based on Evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Jones \u2013 The Daily Sceptic Sept 14, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Labour\u2019s online censorship plan to force social media companies to promote the BBC and other \u2018trustworthy\u2019 news outlets and demote the rest is not based on evidence, according to a new report by David Rose for the Free Speech Union. David writes about his report in today\u2019s Telegraph<\/em>; here\u2019s an excerpt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the past year, ministers have said they want to impose broadcast-style rules of accuracy and balance on social media platforms before elections, to\u00a0compel them to push \u2018trustworthy\u2019 news into every citizen\u2019s feed<\/a>. Everything else will be demoted.<\/p>\n

In other words, barely noticed by opposition politicians or the media, the Government is rolling the pitch for the most restrictive regime to control public speech since the reign of Charles I.<\/p>\n

They justify each of their measures with the same freedom-chilling argument: that misinformation and disinformation, pumped out to innocent users by malevolent algorithms engineered to monetise extremism, division and hatred, now threaten democracy itself. The narrative has been repeated so often that it has acquired the status of fact. But the evidence suggests it is largely false.<\/p>\n

Consider the detail of what is proposed.\u00a0Lucy Powell, Labour\u2019s Deputy Leader<\/a>, wants platforms to be treated like broadcasters during elections because of the impact of what she says are \u201csocial media feeds decided by opaque algorithms, where falsehoods, deepfakes and co-ordinated mis and disinformation can spread at alarming speed\u201d.<\/p>\n

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy\u2019s Green Paper\u00a0Watch this Space<\/em> proposes laws to give \u201cregulated public service media\u201d prominence in social media feeds, so that sources such as\u00a0the BBC\u00a0are \u201cseen and heard in the fierce battle against mis and disinformation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0the media regulator Ofcom is imposing new rules<\/a>\u00a0requiring major platforms to identify and restrict the circulation of content suspected of being illegal during \u201cextraordinary events\u201d such as the riots that followed the Southport murders in 2024.<\/p>\n

Behind all this sits an \u201cevidence review\u201d which was\u00a0published earlier this year<\/a>\u00a0and commissioned by the Government Office for Science (GO-Science). It claims online misinformation has become \u201ca systemic national risk\u201d, blames algorithms and platform business models for its spread, and calls for \u201csystem-level\u201d intervention, including the compulsory integration of \u201cquality signals\u201d into the ranking of content.<\/p>\n

In March,\u00a0Steve Reed, the then communities secretary, told the Commons that voters had been driven into \u201conline echo chambers exacerbated by malevolent algorithms\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet, as I reveal in a report to be published this week<\/a> by the\u00a0Free Speech Union<\/a>, research evidence published by prestigious academic journals suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n

In 2024,\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0issued an authoritative review<\/a>\u00a0by a team led from the University of Michigan. Its conclusions were the reverse of the Government\u2019s premise. It found that exposure to misinformation and extremist content is low on average and heavily concentrated among a small fringe of users who actively seek it out, rather than coming across it by accident thanks to malign algorithms.<\/p>\n

Visits to 490 websites deemed \u201cuntrustworthy\u201d by self-appointed fact-checking organisations made up less than 6% of visits to news sites. Meanwhile, \u201cfake news\u201d accounted for some 0.15% of the average American\u2019s daily media diet. According to the paper, exaggerating the threat was creating a risk of disproportionate measures that would threaten free speech.<\/p>\n

In 2023,\u00a0Science<\/em>\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0the result of an experiment in which algorithms dictating the feeds of tens of thousands of Facebook and Instagram users were switched off. Content the algorithms \u2018thought\u2019 they wanted to see was replaced with feeds based on the chronological order of when content was posted.<\/p>\n

After three months, there was no measurable change in their political attitudes, and it turned out the algorithms served less untrustworthy content than a chronological feed, not more. The same journal later found that\u00a0misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines<\/a>\u00a0played a very small role in persuading people not to be vaccinated, and that accurate stories published by legacy media outlets about people who fell ill after having jabs were far more influential.<\/p>\n

None of this appears in the GO-Science review. Astonishingly, its assertion that platform algorithms push divisive content because they are \u201cexclusively\u201d driven by profit and engagement rests on a single citation: a 2025 paper from Universitas Muhammadiyah Buton, a small private institution in the Indonesian province of Southeast Sulawesi, ranked 470th of 562 universities in Indonesia and 12,117th of 14,131 in the world. \u2026<\/p>\n

Even more troubling is that the word \u201cmisinformation\u201d is being stretched to cover dissent, not just untruths. A label that purports to denote falsehood is being applied to legitimate opinion, and to accurate statements that officialdom finds unhelpful. For example, in 2020, the suggestion that the\u00a0Covid virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan<\/a>\u00a0was widely branded a conspiracy theory. Since then, the CIA and FBI have concluded\u00a0a lab leak is the likeliest explanation,<\/a>\u00a0and several high-profile scientists support this view.<\/p>\n

The GO-Science review says misinformation requiring Government attention includes dangerous \u201cmedia narratives\u201d that \u201cdecouple\u201d Net Zero from climate science and challenge the validity of electric vehicles and heat pumps.<\/p>\n

The review\u2019s catalogue of falsehoods also lists \u201canti-LGBTQ+ narratives\u201d, \u201c\u2018gender ideology\u2019 claims targeting schools\u201d and \u201ctransgender athlete controversies\u201d.<\/p>\n

Worth reading in full<\/a>. And read David\u2019s full report for the FSU here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stop Press:<\/strong> Watch<\/a> FSU External Affairs Officer Connie Shaw discuss the new report on GB News.<\/p>\n

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“It’s yet another thing the Government seems to be trying to do under our noses and think that we will not notice.”<\/p>\n

The Government is spreading misinformation about misinformation in order to justify mass censorship on social media.<\/p>\n

The argument that mis- and disinformation is\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/kY14DxUjqX<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) September 14, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n