The investigation lands with the timing of a well-rehearsed cue.
CAM WAKEFIELD
It was only a matter of time before Elon Musk’s X became the designated piñata for Britain’s shiny new censorship law, the Online Safety Act.
The regulator, Ofcom, has now waddled into the room with the ceremonial clipboard and a trembling sense of purpose, launching a formal investigation into the platform.
It follows reports that Grok, X’s resident AI, has been used to create non-consensual images of women and minors in bikinis.
Ofcom hasn’t yet proved anything, but the tone in Westminster already suggests they’ve got the torches and pitchforks ready.
Tech Secretary Liz Kendall arrived with a statement to make the morning news. “I welcome Ofcom’s urgency,” she beamed. “The public, and most importantly the victims, will not accept any delay.”
And sure enough, the “ban” word has been thrown into the air like confetti. If X fails to comply, Ofcom says it could be booted from Britain entirely. A platform with over half a billion users and where the Labour government’s biggest critics have a voice would be gone. Blocked like a dodgy Russian gambling site. All because of a content moderation “crisis” that (and here’s the punchline) is happening on pretty much every AI tool, but apparently only X deserves the guillotine.
You can’t really say what you think on Facebook anymore unless you enjoy being suspended for “context missing.” Instagram? That’s for lifestyle influencers and performance art. TikTok’s run by an algorithm that buries anything more controversial than a dancing dog. LinkedIn is basically a corporate cult. But X? On X, people talk.
Not because they’re all radicals, but because they care, and because they’re allowed to.
And that’s what makes it dangerous. Not Grok. Not memes. Not edgy posts. But freedom.
The kind of freedom where the wrong story can go viral before the BBC’s morning meeting. Where a health minister’s mistake doesn’t disappear into committee minutes but gets clipped, posted, and scrutinized by thousands. Where the narrative can’t be managed by press officers and their PowerPoint decks.
Under the Online Safety Act, the UK’s censors can fine companies up to 10 percent of their global revenue.
For X, that’s hundreds of millions of pounds, enough to make even Elon blink. But what happens if they actually push the button?
Imagine the optics: Britain becomes the first Western democracy to ban a major global platform. It would, at least, be in keeping with its recent rapid decline in civil liberties over the last few years.
Of course, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman said at a lobby briefing of journalists on Monday that the government would support a ban if that’s what Ofcom calls for.
“Ofcom has a back stop power to apply to the courts to block services in the UK where they refuse to uphold our law. If Ofcom deems that to be necessary, they will have our full support,” the spokesperson said.
This article (UK Regulator Ofcom Opens Official Investigation Into X) was created and published by Reclaim the Net and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Cam Wakefield
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