Under the original plans, Category 1 services (larger user-to-user services such as Twitter and Facebook) would have to set out in their terms and conditions how they would deal with ‘legal but harmful’ content appearing on their platforms. The removal of this content category will leave illegal content and content that is harmful to children as the Bill’s key focuses.

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has brought tensions between free speech and platform regulation into focus. Musk tweeted “the bird is freed” following his acquisition, with EU Commissioner Thierry Breton responding: “in Europe, the bird will fly by our rules”.

PPA continues to hold concerns that independently regulated specialist publishers are not given equal protections to those of current affairs-focused titles. “Recognised news publishers” will now be given stronger protections than a more general (and ill-defined) category of journalistic content, making it all the more critical that specialist titles that adhere to the same journalistic standards as newspapers are given equal protection. Our position was echoed by the Joint Committee which scrutinised the draft Bill, and senior SNP and Labour MPs put forward amendments to rectify the oversight in the Public Bill Committee.

We will continue to work with Government and legislators to ensure that UK citizens are not denied access to quality journalism from PPA members.