Labour and TikTok are ‘silencing’ Zia Yusuf through Online Safety Act — according to Zia Yusuf

Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman has alleged that the Labour government is using the Online Safety Act to silence political dissent. Zia Yusuf holds that Labour are using the law, authored by a Tory-Reform turncoat, to make social media platform TikTok take down his videos.

On 17 May, as part of a rambling 200+word tweet, Yusuf posted that:

Labour is using the “Online Safety Act” to silence political opponents, and TikTok is doing their dirty work.

You know, TikTok, the social media platform quite famously owned by China and Trump allies in the US. Widely known for their support of the Starmer regime, are that lot.

Zia Yusuf styles himself as the “Shadow Home Secretary”. This is a lie. Reform are not the opposition party of the UK, which appoints the shadow cabinet. That dubious honour falls to the Tories. In spite of Reform being chock-full of Tory rejects, I’m reliably informed that they are in fact separate parties. Any evidence that Labour is behind TikTok’s policies? None whatsoever, obviously.

‘Draconian legislation’

Carrying on, Zia Yusuf complained that:

First, TikTok removed my video announcing Reform UK’s new policy to place secure illegal migrant detention centres in non-Reform constituencies, prioritising Green ones.

TikTok explicitly cited the Online Safety Act as the reason for its removal.

This is hard evidence of this draconian legislation being weaponised to silence political opponents.

That ‘draconian legislation’ was introduced under the Tory government and championed by then-digital-secretary Nadine Dorries, by the way. And what party is Dorries part of now? Oh yeah… it’s Reform UK.

The act itself places duties on online content platforms to “manage the risks of harm” from “illegal content and activity”. Likewise, the act specifically calls out that this includes:

risks which particularly affect individuals with a certain characteristic

Now, what characteristics might Reform policies constitute a risk of harm towards? Oh yeah, literally all of them — the party wants to rip up the Equality Act.

Likewise, as Willem Moore previously explained for the Canary, if a court agrees that Reform’s detention centre policy represents a threat, it would be illegal under the Representation of the People Act 1983 (Punitive Coercion):

Believe it or not, [the UK has] had to think about this sort of thing in the past, and we realised we can’t have political parties achieving power by threatening to punish anyone who doesn’t vote for them. The reason for this is obvious; it’s because if voters feel like a party has a strong chance of getting in, they will potentially vote for them solely to avoid reprisals.

‘Hate speech and hateful behaviour’

But wait, it gets worse. Zia Yusuf revealed that: 

Today, the censorship escalated.

TikTok has now removed my video outlining the key policies I would implement as Home Secretary, claiming it is “Hate Speech and Hateful Behaviour.”

They warned me that any further “violations” will result in a strike, potentially leading to being de-platformed altogether.

Back on 23 February, Zia Yusuf gave his first speech in his new role as Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman.

He unveiled a proposal to create a UK ‘Deportation Command’ modelled on the US ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — agency. This agency would conduct ‘Operation Restoring Justice’, which would involve detaining ‘illegal’ immigrants in pre-fab structures before rapidly deporting them.

Likewise, he also voiced an intention to impose a visa ban on six different countries. These included Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan, all of which just happen to have majority-Muslim populations.

On top of all this, Zia Yusuf also stated that Reform would task Prevent, part of the UK’s anti-terrorism scheme, to refocus on Islamist extremism. It just so happens that the reallocation would necessitate a decrease in Prevent’s attention on extreme right-wing terrorism. Currently, far-right referrals outnumber Islamist referrals 2-to-1, according to government data.

Do we reckon that lot adds up to “hateful behaviour” yet?

Calling for Nigel Farage’s assassination is illegal

Yusuf then gave some distressing news:

This is all the more staggering given TikTok happily hosts hundreds of videos of people calling for the assassination of Nigel Farage.

My TikTok videos had received 18 million views over the previous 28 days.

Gee, I wonder if those two statements are related to each other?

TikTok relies of user reports to flag illegal content. The more people see a video, the more chance it has of being reported. Either users aren’t seeing the calls to assassinate Farage, or they aren’t reporting the content.

Disclaimer: Calling for the assassination of politicians is illegal.

‘Direct political interference’

Zia Yusuf finished up by calling TikTok taking down two of his videos:

a chilling attempt to silence one of the biggest and fastest-growing UK political accounts on the platform.

TikTok is engaging in direct political interference in the midst of the most pivotal elections in our country’s history.

All under the auspice of the “Online Safety Act” that the Tories and Labour claimed to be about protecting children.

It is, and always will be about silencing voices the open-borders political establishment don’t like.

@TikTokComms
have decided to try and suppress Reform.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Again: Reform’s policies are “hateful behaviour.” The only surprise is TikTok actually treating them as such.

Again: now-Reform-politician Nadine Dorries sold the Online Safety Act as protecting children. However, that’s far from its only stated aim.

And again: TikTok has nothing to do with the “open-borders political establishment.” Neither, for that matter, do Labour or the Conservatives.

‘Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind’

Lastly, “Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind” is an interesting note to end on. Originating in the Old Testament book of Hosea, it was famously used by RAF commander Arthur Harris to justify the bombing of German population centers during WWII.

More recently, the phrase appeared in the tweets of suspended Reform councillor Nathaniel Menday, after he blamed “Jews in the West” for the antisemitism they receive because they “overwhelmingly favour open borders.”

However, we’re sure that’s purely a coincidence. Far-right, anti-open-borders politician Zia Yusuf definitely meant “reap the whirlwind” in an anti-fascist way, right?

Featured image via Carl Court/Getty Images