Beware politicians bearing constraint of speech.

Consider British Labour Party member of Parliament Lucy Powell and her new bill to restrict Facebook from allowing its forums to be set as "secret." The "secret" access option allows group administrators to restrict those outside their forum from seeing the group's name, description, and posts. Powell says this is unacceptable. Allowing for private forums, she says, is to enable "hate."

For the Guardian on Monday, Powell claims that the "impact of these [secret forum] bubbles of hate can be seen, in extreme cases, in terror attacks" but also "in the rise of the far right" (note here that Powell seems unconcerned with the far-left's use of these forums). Regardless, Powell says that banning private discourse on Facebook is necessary because unless non-members can influence forum discussions, some "might begin to think those views are acceptable and even correct." In Parliament on Tuesday, Powell was clear: Her bill means online social media companies can "no longer permit hate...."

This false moral rhetoric is straight out of George Orwell's totalitarian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. There, Orwell cultivates a dystopian world in which totalitarian governments alone decide what speech or "speak" is allowed. Like Powell, Orwell's creations claim to be proscribing a better society. But while Powell's intentions are undoubtedly more noble than "the inner party" of Orwell's masterpiece, noble intent does not necessarily make good policy.

The critical concern here that while some private Facebook groups do promote hateful content, very few promote content that is actually criminal. Moreover, British authorities have wide latitude — far wider than their U.S. counterparts — to access warrants with which to see what is being posted inside a Facebook group. Powell is thus absolutely wrong when she says that Facebook's current policy "locks out" security services. And so, just as a private gathering in a private facility has rights of privacy absent countervailing warrants, so should a Facebook group. The rights of free assembly and political speech are central to a free society, but so is freedom of association — the right of individuals to choose their companions. Powell’s bill would represent a gross government intrusion against individual rights.

Nevertheless, Powell is not alone in her authoritarian activism here. Her bill has support from a number of Conservative MPs such as the normally fastidious guardian of democratic values, Jacob Rees-Mogg. That fact reflects something concerning: In Europe, the political establishment increasingly sees the online social space as a threat worthy of government constraint instead of as an opportunity. While it's true that online criminality is a major problem, such criminality does not find its focal source on social media. Rather, its evil is most prominent in illicit, criminal transactions and engagements on the dark web and on highly encrypted communication platforms.

Ultimately, hateful speech should not be banned simply because most of us regard it as deeply unpleasant. To take that course is to chill speech on matters of public consequence, to limit the expression of ideas, and to drive the most hateful further into narratives of angry resistance. Unfortunately, Britain's absence of a First Amendment-style speech guarantee allows politicians to take misguided actions such as Powell's. Fortunately, Powell's success is not certain. At some point, Facebook may decide that the new constraints it faces are so incompatible with its original mission that they demand it suspend operations in some nations. Considering the number of Facebook users in Britain, I suspect politicians like Powell would alter course when confronted by angry voters who have lost access to one of their favorite websites.