Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has attempted to explain the online safety bill by performing a rap on Tiktok - and it’s gone as well as can be expected. The internet gave its verdict on the attempt to be ‘down wit da kidz’ - and a typical response was ‘I cringed so hard I pulled a muscle’.
In a video on the Tiktok platform packed with ‘happening’ overlays, the culture secretary embarks on a rap song explaining why the online safety bill is important and what it does. The bill which has been branded ‘illiberal’ requires social media platforms, search engines and other apps and websites to protect children and tackle illegal activity, all while maintaining freedom of speech.
Ofcom, the industry regulator, will be given the power to fine companies up to 10 per cent of their annual global turnover if they do not comply with the laws. Some claim it will allow government-sanctioned surveillance of user-created content, including private communications.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries disagrees with the criticism and took to Tiktok to put her point across in the video which can be viewed above.
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Twitter users gave their verdict: Laura Kuenssberg Translator said: “BREAKING: Making a rap video is actually the least cringeworthy thing Nadine Dorries has done recently, but to be fair the competition is extremely stiff x”
Steve Bray said: “WTAF??? Ladies & Gentleman....Our zero culture Secretary! Nadine Dorries”
Chris Brookmyre said: “Nadine Dorries’ comms people must genuinely detest her. It takes a deep and cold kind of hatred to be complicit in letting a person humiliate herself like that, and I totally respect them for it.”
Nicholas Guyatt: “The morning was going perfectly well until my wife leaned over the table and said ‘Nadine Dorries has done a rap’”
Buckers added: “Very brave of Nadine Dorries to ruin rap music, poetry and TikTok, as well as me having eyes and ears all in one go.”
Ruth Ware: “I just watched Nadine Dorries’ Tiktok rap and I cringed so hard I pulled a muscle. It’s too late for me but please, save yourselves. Log off before it gets you too.”
Colleen Hawkins: “I don’t think the word “atrocity” should be used lightly, which is why it is entirely appropriate to call that @NadineDorries rap TikTok “an atrocity’.”
Rebecca Seal went in for some literary criticism: “Nadine Dorries has made a truly awful, fabulously out-of-date rap about internet safety. She rhymes “freedom of expression” with “legal protections in the nineteenth section”. Her special advisors must really, really hate her.”
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