I honestly can’t decide what to make  of this tech-related news. “A regulator should oversee tech giants like Google and Facebook to ensure their news content is trustworthy, a government-backed report has suggested.” Reading the article, it sounds fairly amiable, and we all know how much bullshit is being spewed these days. An online news regulator could, for instance, prevent people being convinced to vote  for things  totally against their best interests by online sources willing to spout any old  bollocks to achieve their goals. The danger comes, of course, when the regulator oversteps the mark and starts to try to police anything anyone says online. This is ostensibly about policing news websites, but who’s to say what constitutes news these days?

The beauty of the internet is that anyone can say whatever they want on there: you don’t  have to agree with it, and indeed much of what I find really  pisses me off, just as there will be many who don’t agree with some of what I write on my blog; but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t  be allowed to say whatever I like on the web. I realise that  this regulator will only attempt to patrol the web giants like Google and Facebook, but I fear that that will open the door for much stricter online rules governing what everyone can say on the internet,  including on sites like mine.