Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf say they would find other ways to protect children online but admit they don’t know how
Reform UK has promised to repeal the Online Safety Act, arguing that measures intended to push social media companies to limit false and potentially harmful content would instead make the UK “a borderline dystopian state”.
At a press conference in Westminster billed as discussing crime, Nigel Farage and his close aide Zia Yusuf instead spent much of the time discussing the act, which came into force last week, and particularly its approach towards social media.
Farage also leaned more heavily than normal into language on migration. Echoing the far right, he said the arrival of people from certain countries was responsible for an increase in the number of rapes and sexual assaults in the UK.
Farage and Yusuf said a Reform government would immediately repeal the Online Safety Act and seek other ways to replicate its efforts in protecting children from harmful content, for example about suicide. They said they did not yet know how this would be done.
