This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

Child safety seems like one of those policy no-brainers. After all, no politician is going to come out and say they don’t support it. Yet remarkably, it has become an incredibly divisive issue when applied to the online space.

Reading articles on the Online Safety Act (OSA), you could be forgiven for thinking it is, as Nigel Farage states, a repressive symptom of a so-called “nanny state”. But this could not be further from the intentions behind the Bill.

The clue is very much in the name – it’s about safety – and its purpose is to block everyone’s access to illegal content, such as Child Sexual Abuse Material, along with restricting access for vulnerable groups, such as children, to harmful content like pornography, suicide, and self-harm promotion.

Unfortunately, this important context is often lost in the Faragian bluster around state overreach, erosion of free speech, and........

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