Ultimately the wording of the bill is too broad. It needs to be very specific in what's not OK, and mindful of allowing whistle lowing and public concerns to be voiced.
It also needs to understand the implications of criminalisation and who this affects and whether its in the public interest.
Its well summed up in the phrase: 'one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist' - who makes that decision?
Sonia Sodha was on politics live last week, talking about this. She suggested that rather than it being about individuals it's should be more about social media giants and algorithms - and how these direct and heighten echo Chambers and thats where the criminality of 'lawful harms' should be directed.
The debate was interesting in that it pointed out that this legislation runs the risk of needing vast censorship monitoring - which only the social media giants could manage. Thus driving smaller social media outfits out of business (hello mn) and its the algorithms which are driving a lot of this to begin with.
You have to ask a question here. The case that this has sprung from has been the suicide of a teenage girl. She didn't wake up one morning and decide to kill herself. It was a process of almost channelling her through a maze of gates to sources that amplified the same message. You don't start in that place - you go through a journey through online referrals to get to that. That for me is what you need to consider more. How do you counter that process and set up barriers, not how do you censor content outright (cos you'll never achieve that).
And this actually also sits next to the big question of why teens are searching online in the first place? There's an absence of counter voices and services both online and in the real world to catch them before they get to that point.
Why are we getting massive waves of online harms at a time where mental health provision and access to support in the real world is near impossible. Especially within a short time frame. The two are not unconnected.
The online harms bill is a cheap way to look like you are solving a problem, when the problem really is that people needing professional support rather than quackery and exploitation and online cultish echochambers, simply can't get it promptly.
There needs to be easy access alternatives available so teens aren't driven to seek out something else.
If it were a physical illness and the solution was a simple drug through the NHS we'd understand why restricting access to the drug (evidence based solution) was the problem. Because its less tangible and understood we say 'ban people talking about harming themselves'.
Its nonsense. People will still seek it out, because the key factors here are lack of access and growing desparation fuelled by people alienated and outside mainstream thinking (because of the self selecting and computer generated streaming of people into echochambers)