The Online Safety Act's impact on advertising industry

At their invitation, spoke with one of the best-known advertising firms in Sri Lanka on the implications of the Online Safety Act (OSA) for their operations, and industry writ large. Initially scheduled for an hour, the meeting extended beyond two as the implications of what I presented sank in. I noted the OSA was a historically unprecedented legislative framework which severely impacts the country’s advertising industry, and is a hard stop for business as usual (BAU) practices.

Spoke to fundamentally flawed nature of the OSA, evolution of the legislation including basis in Singapore’s POFMA, the risks around, and guaranteed potential for weaponised, hyper-partisan, and parochial legal interpretation, and more generally, the deleterious impact on democracy, and electoral integrity. Also highlighted the over-broad scope of the Act, impacting even personal communications (and diametrically opposed to the Personal Data Protection Act).

During the course of the meeting, ran through several future scenarios in which BAU (i.e., carrying on as if the OSA didn't exist or wasn't relevant) would lead to complete shutdown of, or significant, sustained disruptions to the firm's core operations, including but not limited to criminal proceedings against key staff, and management, and the suspension of critical business backend infrastructure (like email, cloud storage, or comms platforms like Slack).

Mentioned article by Ambika Satkunanathan (No reprieve from Supreme Court: Online Safety Bill and Anti-Terrorism Bill), published yesterday, in which it’s very clearly articulated how even the Supreme Court’s amendments couldn't, and even if miraculously implemented after enactment, don’t fix fundamental flaws of the OSA.

I also passingly noted how the proposed amendments, mentioned in an article by Sri Lanka’s leading investigative journalist Namini Wijedasa recently, do not, in any way, address the OSA’s flaws, and only serve to indemnify the industry around non or partial compliance. I stressed how some of the amendments, incredibly, worsen aspects of the OSA - which is very far removed from those behind it who sell it as “salvaging” the Act.

By way of locating the OSA in a regional, and global context, spoke about Indian regulations, Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, New Zealand’s Code of Practice, Bill C-63 (the Online Harms Act) tabled in the Canadian parliament recently, the Online Safety Act of the UK, Europe’s DSA, and in passing, various legislative instruments in the US around online harms, and some cases in front of SCOTUS.

The emphasis however was on the unprecedented impact of the OSA on all aspects of the firm’s core operations, which by extension reflects the ad industry in Sri Lanka. It’s highly unlikely – if this was the level of awareness (or more accurately, ignorance) around the OSA at one the country’s leading agencies – that others, and especially, smaller firms including single-person, and small team-based operations would have thought through BAU implications.

This is why I stressed the OSA’s a game-changer for the ad industry in Sri Lanka, and is unlike any other legislative framework in the past in how it directly, immediately, retroactively, and henceforth, enduringly impacts all aspects of an ad firm's work - from client servicing, creative output, and copywriting through to all campaign management. To this end, I also outlined ways how the weaponisation of the OSA by non-state actors, including for example proxies of competing advertising firms or political parties, could result in a context where the industry eats its own, and only those with the best lawyers, most powerful connections, and money would survive (in effect, killing startups).

I remain simultaneously saddened, and shocked by how many in the country, arguably best placed to understand the OSA’s dire implications on democracy, and even industry, remain in the dark. ????