The Online Safety Bill has passed in the UK, here's what you need to know
Before I start, I am not a lawyer. Please don't use this for legal advice.
The UK has now passed the highly controversial Online Safety Bill, which will change how we interact with the internet forever.
This bill is mainly designed to protect the children, as always. Just look at the statement the government made on their announcement post1, they literally stated that they were in touching distance of delivering the most powerful child protection laws in a generation.
But, unfortunately, this comes at a cost. I'd recommend reading the guide2 to the Online Safety Bill that the Government put out, but I'll share a few key points which is problematic.
First of all, if you're accessing a site hosting adult content, a website that depicts/encourages serious violence, a website that encourages/provides instructions for an eating disorder (as well as suicide and self-harm), or bulling content, you'll have to verify your age to access it.
This sounds good at first glance, until you look at the part where websites providing instructions for eating disorders are age restricted. I'm sorry, but I do not get why instructions (those that are trying to help people get over their eating disorder to be specific) are age restricted. Anyone should be able to access this information, regardless of age.
Age restriction for all of these categories are pretty scary, since in most cases, this'll mean sending a picture of your ID (I know Google and some other sites support credit cards, but not all sites do support this) to a company. Sharing your ID to someone is sensitive information, and it contains various details about you. Plus, not all sites secure ID information in the same way, so if a site that you've sent ID to ever gets breached, you could be more likely to be a victim of identity theft.
Next, let's scroll down a bit further to the part where the Government wants to keep underage children off of platforms. This happens a lot, and I'm pretty sure we're all guilty of lying about our age at times. The Government wants sites to put in age assurance systems so that underage children do not set up an account on social media sites.
I can't wait to see the chaos that unfolds from this. These systems are not 100% accurate, and they will never be.
Some children under 13 will find a way to bypass this. You cannot convince me that they won't find a way. It's also pretty likely that this’ll flag a lot of over 13s. I assume sites will allow people to ID verify if they get falsely flagged, but like I said earlier, you can't really trust a site with your ID.
Another thing I'd like to point out that if sites don't comply, the government will have control to stop advertisers from advertising on a site, stop payment providers from working with a site and ban users in the UK from accessing a site.
The fact that the government has the power to restrict payment providers from working with a site is extremely scary. I don't know how the hell they're going to enforce this with Bitcoin and whatever crypto is going to the moon right now. I don't exactly know what this even means, but potentially this could stop a site from even renewing their domains (if the domain registrar is registered in the UK).
It's interesting to see how this law has changed from a general Online Safety Bill (in the past there were parts to reduce the amount of scams on the internet), to a bill that is literally designed to protect the children.
Just as a reminder, the Government isn't your nanny. Sure, they'd like to think that with the millions of surveillance cameras across the country, but they are not your nanny.
The Government has no right to try and protect the children, that's a parent's job, not a government's job.
Just before I close out completely, I'd just like to mention that the Government is actively trying to stop Meta from adding end to end encryption in Facebook Messenger, probably so they can scan all your messages. Apps like Signal and WhatsApp were also in danger a while ago before the Government made certain amendments. They threatened to leave the UK.
It's going to be a wild ride, and I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I missed out.
Take care.
I'm writing this on mobile so I can't link properly with Substack, but you can find it at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-makes-internet-safer-as-online-safety-bill-finished-and-ready-to-become-law
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/a-guide-to-the-online-safety-bill