Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has accused the left-wing Labour Party government of using the Online Safety Act to censor its political opposition after TikTok removed a video criticising mass migration by Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf.
In a video posted on social media, Mr Yusuf said that Britain has been “overwhelmed” by mass migration, both legal and illegal, mostly as a result of the policies enacted by successive Conservative Party governments, despite their having promised the public they would cut migration ahead of multiple elections.
Reform’s Shadow Home Secretary, who would be tasked with controlling Britain’s borders should the Nigel Farage-led party win at the next general election, warned that the UK cannot afford to grant permanent residency (Indefinite Leave to Remain) to the millions of “Boriswave” migrants who arrived under the post-Brexit immigration liberalisations enacted by former PM Boris Johnson. Reform has vowed to abolish immigration status to prevent migrants from gaining lifetime access to Britain’s social welfare schemes, and to replace it with an American-style five-year work visa.
“Those who do not speak English, those who do not contribute economically, and those who commit a crime will no longer be welcome in our country,” he said.
Yusuf also said that British culture has been eroded by the mass influx of foreigners in recent years, and warned that Islamist extremism has “gained a foothold” in the country, pointing to the fact that a convicted terrorist is currently running for political office in Birmingham. He said that a Reform government would leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated court in Strasbourg, which has often been appealed to by activist attorneys to block the deportation of terrorists and other criminals from Britain.
This relatively standard message from the Reform spokesman was apparently deemed unacceptable by the online video platform TikTok, which said the video had been removed after it was reported to its censors under the Online Safety Act.
The social media platform justified its removal by claiming that the video contained “hate speech” or “hateful behaviour”.
A message from the site posted by Yusuf said: “TikTok is a place for diverse communities to connect, not to spread hate. We don’t allow hate speech, hateful behaviour or promotion of hateful ideologies. This includes content that attacks people based on protected attributes like race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
“Users and third parties can report policy violations to us. We have detected this policy violation based on a report that the content violated our Community Guidelines.”
Yusuf said that he was also warned that further supposed violations could result in an outright ban from the platform, which he said was “all the more staggering given TikTok happily hosts hundreds of videos of people calling for the assassination of Nigel Farage.”
“This is a chilling attempt to silence one of the biggest and fastest-growing UK political accounts on the platform. TikTok is engaging in direct political interference in the midst of the most pivotal elections in our country’s history. All under the auspice of the ‘Online Safety Act’ that the Tories and Labour claimed to be about protecting children. It is, and always will be about silencing voices the open-borders political establishment don’t like,” he said.
Reform leader Nigel Farage seconded this sentiment, calling the removal of Yusuf’s video “unacceptable political interference from a big tech company.”
Under the Online Safety Act, large social media platforms are required to police the content on their sites to comply with British law, including laws surrounding so-called hate speech. Those who fall afoul of the law face up to £18 million or 10 per cent of their qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater. Critics have noted that the prospect of hefty fines was likely to incentivise companies to self-sensor.