UK braced for ‘free speech’ row with JD Vance as far-right websites spurn Online Safety Act

Officials in the United Kingdom are bracing for a clash with the White House as far-right social media platforms dismiss legal requests from British regulators tackling illegal online content.

It comes as Westminster’s envoys make purposefully quiet representations to their counterparts in Washington over a separate, unrelated legal order controversially given to Apple earlier this year.

As one official told Recorded Future News, that quiet approach was based on a strong desire to avoid provoking an “unproductive public argument” with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on the issue of British laws impacting U.S.-based technology companies, particularly in the wake of Vance chastising European countries for what he deemed to be their regulators’ lack of commitment to free speech on U.S.-based platforms.

Such an argument may now be on the horizon anyway. Last week, Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulator, began enforcing the country’s Online Safety Act by sending advisory letters to online platforms that serve content to users in the U.K.

The letter warns those platforms that they have certain duties under the British law to tackle illegal content, for instance material that could amount to a racially aggravated public order offence, and that failing to meet these duties could result in a fine worth £18 million ($23 million), or 10% of their global turnover, whichever is higher.

Two far-right platforms have publicly announced receiving such letters and rebuked Ofcom. Gab, a messaging platform with a significant neo-Nazi user base, and Kiwi Farms, a harassment forum, both described the legislation as amounting to censorship.

Lawyers representing Gab, in a response to Ofcom shared by the company’s chief executive Andrew Torba, dismissed the legal request.

The letter cited President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14149 and said: “It is the policy of the United States to ensure that no United States agent or agency facilitates the censorship of American citizens. It is also the policy of the United States to use tariffs to combat digital censorship.”

Gab’s lawyers said they would be referring Ofcom’s letter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Kiwi Farms, which was previously blocked by Cloudflare because the company deemed the site’s content to pose an immediate threat to life, currently prevents users from the United Kingdom from directly accessing the forum, encouraging them instead to use a VPN or the Tor browser.

The Online Safety Act does not target website users, but the service providers themselves.

In a comment last November that appeared to mistake the NATO alliance for the European Union, Vance suggested that the United States’ military support for its allies should be contingent on those allies respecting “free speech.”

Despite the considerable efforts of the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ingratiate himself with Trump to secure U.S. support for Ukraine, senior British ministers have said that they will not negotiate on compliance with the Online Safety Act.

While Vance has spoken out strongly in support of Elon Musk and his social media platform X, it is not clear whether he would extend his support to platforms used by the Tree of Life synagogue shooter and to host the manifesto and video of the Christchurch shooter.

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “Just like in any other industry, services that want to operate in the UK must comply with UK laws. The new duties that have just come into force under the UK’s Online Safety Act have free speech at their core and are all about protecting people in the UK from illegal content and activity like child sexual abuse material and fraud.

“We’re currently assessing platforms’ compliance with these new laws, and our codes of practice can help them do that. But, make no mistake, providers who fail to introduce measures to protect UK users from illegal content can expect to face enforcement action.”

A spokesperson for the British government said that failure to implement the Online Safety Act could lead to enforcement action, including in the most extreme cases Ofcom asking British courts to block “payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers” from working with offending platforms.