The UK government says the updated Online Safety Bill won’t force tech giants to remove content that is “legal but harmful”, following free speech complaints (Paul Sandle/Reuters)

Chloe Chaplain / The i Paper:
Source: the UK plans to remove the Online Safety Bill’s controversial “legal but harmful” content rules, leaving them only for material targeted at children  —  EXCLUSIVEThe Bill is due to be brought back to Parliament later this month after it was delayed over the summer

Reuters:
Twitter’s VP of trust and safety Ella Irwin says Twitter is heavily using automation to moderate speech, and favoring distribution restrictions to removal  —  Elon Musk’s Twitter is leaning heavily on automation to moderate content, doing away with certain manual reviews and favoring restrictions …

Alex Hern / The Guardian:
UK government says its Online Safety Bill will return to the parliament in December and will be expanded to criminalize nonconsensual “deepfake” pornography  —  Nonconsensual explicit images to be tackled in bill returning to parliament next month

Financial Times:
UK Prime Minister Liz Truss confirms she wants to dilute the draft Online Safety Bill, focusing on protecting minors while making sure free speech is allowed  —  Definition of ‘legal but harmful’ may change to give greater scope to say on web what is acceptable in person

Adam Serwer / The Atlantic:
How conservatives redefined free speech in the social media era, using the First Amendment to claim a “Right to Post” on platforms run by private companies  —  Early December might have marked the first time anyone ever asserted a First Amendment right to see the president’s son’s penis …

New York Times:
A look at Germany’s hate speech laws, more restrictive than other Western countries, as 1,000+ are charged or punished since 2018 for online speech crimes  —  Battling far-right extremism, Germany has gone further than any other Western democracy to prosecute individuals for what they say online …