UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

https://bsky.app/profile/tupped.bsky.social/post/3lwgcmswmy222

by JoshTriplett • 11 months ago

202 286 11 months ago

It is interesting. I care and I don't at the same time. There is a part of me that watches it all from a distance. We have all seen some of those dances before including government grasping at whatever explanation sounds plausible enough to let it go through. I don't know if it is the morning or what, but maybe UKsians need a morning kick with their coffee. Who knows. Maybe they even want to be protected from unsanctioned discourse.

wizzwizz4• 11 months ago

Direct link: https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/online-s...

A_D_E_P_T• 11 months ago

+ Readable version: https://archive.ph/3pave

icarouse5• 11 months ago

This sounds like a misinterpretation. The OSA is primarily about making online service providers responsible for age verification, if they supply adult content. No different in principle from having to prove one's age to buy cigarettes, alcohol, knives, etc.

No-one says "cigarettes are censored!", because, obviously, they're not. Same for adult content online. It can still be accessed, as long as proof of age is provided.

IanCal4• 11 months ago

That’s not what it’s primarily about, but is the more visible aspect. Lots of the rest is ensuring moderation and the like is supported, scanning for csam, etc. where the risks are higher.

icarouse5• 11 months ago

I see much of the rest of it as being similar to alcohol licensing laws. Pubs and bars have restrictions on how they operate, for the good of the community and society.

khalic33• 11 months ago

False equivalence, the local pub doesn’t keep track of your identity.

jddj• 11 months ago

Not to take away from your general point (which I agree with), but that depends where local is.

Identity technology used at a county's pubs and nightclubs since 2023 is to be extended for a further three years.
Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC) Danielle Stone has agreed to provide funding to keep the scheme at 25 venues that open beyond 01:00.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgm28lmk474o

icarouse5• 11 months ago

Your local pub will have CCTV and some have names and photos of banned patrons behind the bar. Some bars and clubs have digital ID scanners upon entry.

Most online service providers who verify age are using third-party suppliers who don't provide any details of one's identity, just whether the user has been age verified or not. And much of that is done by recording a selfie, not handing over identity documents.

mdp20219• 11 months ago

It's not about accessing pubs. It's about deciding what is a pub.

arichard1232• 11 months ago

My local knows exactly who I am, that I'm over 18, where I live, who my kids are, how old they are, what I like to drink etc.

mdp20219• 11 months ago

obviously, they're not

No, you are just tracked when you access them - «cigarettes» being, of course, all """controversial""" expressions.

(Already putting children as an excuse for that...)

*** They have censored lobste.rs . The "for adults only site" lobste.rs ***

https://www.blocked.org.uk/osa-blocks

icarouse5• 11 months ago

The owner of lobste.rs decided to censor lobste.rs. And then changed his mind. It's accessible from the UK as it was before.

dustincoates• 11 months ago

Without passing judgment on the act, this is incredibly misleading. I found the source of the original quotes[0], and they are taken quite out of context.

From the article:

First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act.

From the source (emphasis mine):

On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children _(which were dealt with by other parts of the Act)_. Rather, the aim of Category 1 was to capture services that have a significant influence over public discourse. The submission offered, as a possible option, requesting information from Ofcom as to _how content recommender systems function on different types of service_.

The quote leaves out "which were dealt with by other parts of the Act" and the fact that the subject was specifically "Category 1 duties" not the Act in its entirety. It also doesn't mention that the subject was on content recommender systems.

_Again_ this is not a judgment on the Act itself, but providing the full context, which does change the message.

0: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v_Secret...

CommanderData• 11 months ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3l0e4vr0ko

I strongly suspect it's also meant to curtail growing support among youth for Palestine in the Israel/Gaza conflict.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/665564933022223

Essentially creating an internet for children/teens that echos the government narrative.

spacebanana72• 11 months ago

The online safety act was drafted long before Oct 2023.

But broadly I agree, in the sense that the government are uncomfortable with political movements they lack the ability to shape or control.

In hindsight it's incredible just how much influence the British government has historically had over media. The largest TV and radio stations were often directly government owned (BBC, Radio 1, Channel 4) and many newspapers are vulnerable to defamation / contempt of court accusations / injunctions when they sway too far from the official narratives. Especially on any issue adjacent to criminal justice.

Of course, they'll say all of the state owned media operated without political direction. And that regulators / prosecutors operated in a politically neutral fashion with due process and impartiality.

nrawe8• 11 months ago

So, here's the thing, the BBC has a whole section of its news site dedicated to the conflict, including documentation of alleged atrocities committed by Israel and Hamas. Its produced documentaries detailing the settlers movement. The BBC is paid for by the taxpayers. LBC regularly has pro-Israel and pro-Palestine people on. GBNews, Sky and the Murdock-verse have their views mostly from a pro-Israel POV, more left-leaning papers like the Guardian continue to report in favour of the Palestinian people (not Hamas).

So if the government had a major problem with the a free speech, its doing a pretty good job of not showing that.

In the Commons, the argument hasn't been against the humanitarian crisis faced. However, the situation is more complicated when Hamas and a significant portion of the Israeli government want to eradicate each other and end any hopes of the two-state solution, and act accordingly violent.

The situation with Palestine Action being made proscribed also isn't because of their beliefs, but their actions. You can't commit criminal activity like destruction of property and violence against people for political reasons and not come under the remit of anti-terror legislation. The same has happened to environmentalist groups that have taken their actions too far, and for groups like the IRA pre-Good Friday agreement.

I could walk to my local town centre with a placard for either saying: "Stop Genocide in Palestine" or "Down with Hamas" this weekend and not be arrested.

icarouse5• 11 months ago

This is unfortunately quite a common tactic being used by people opposed to the OSA. Recently there was an article in the i newspaper which claimed you have to show ID to order pizza online, and it's because of the OSA. Turns out their source was a misleading tweet by a political activist who had ordered from Deliveroo or similar and were seeing the usual message shown to people who order alcohol. Nothing to do with the OSA at all.

Mindwipe• 11 months ago

Hmm. New account, no history before this thread. Not at all suspicious.

So, DSIT, Age Verification Industry Association or Molly Rose astroturfer?

crtasm2• 11 months ago

So the journalist or their editor didn't do any basic fact checking, that's also a sadly common tactic.

NoboruWataya• 11 months ago

Doesn't this just mean that it is about "protecting children" and influence over public discourse? The fact remains that the Category 1 rules impose onerous duties on websites that have a significant influence over public discourse, with the effect that many of them will see their influence significantly reduced and may have to fold altogether if they cannot afford to comply.

In fact it is pretty obvious from the OSA itself that the definition of Category 1 is not primarily about capturing porn sites.

exasperaited2• 11 months ago

In fact it is pretty obvious from the OSA itself that the definition of Category 1 is not primarily about capturing porn sites.

Indeed it is not.

The main focus of the Category 1 stuff is evidently whether big sites are actually doing enough to allow children (and parents) to report threats and danger and not see content they don't want to see.

It is for example about trying to reduce harms to children from pro-suicide and pro-anorexia content as well, and about compelling the Category 1 services to provide mechanisms so children can report bullying, grooming and online sexual exploitation from other users.

And also to provide some access to oversight and reporting from to those mechanisms.

That is to say: if a Category 1 service is open to children, it needs to have workable mechanisms to allow children to report threatening and disturbing content and messaging from other users, it needs to at least provide context/warnings around and probably filter pro-suicide and pro-anorexia content, and it is required to be able to present evidence of how those tools are being used and whether they are effective.

If you've ever tried to get Facebook to take down a scam ad (like, for example, the plethora of ads now using an AI-generated Martin Lewis) you will understand that there are genuine concerns about whether the tools available to non-adult users are effective for anything at all.

Category 1 regulations have not yet been finalised and they are not merely being imposed; the likely Category 1 services are being consulted.

roenxi• 11 months ago

I think the original paraphrase is actually pretty reasonable even with the full context - what is Section 1 doing in the Act if it is primarily aimed at protecting children? There is a lot more public discourse going on than there are unsafe children. If the act deals with both it is, practically, an act aimed primarily at influencing the public discourse with some child-related rules tacked on. Something like 80% of a persons life on the internet is engaging with public discourse and 20% is as a child.

mcjiggerlog• 11 months ago

There oddly seems to be a concerted effort online to paint the UK as some kind of failing police state recently. This narrative seems to have really taken off with some Americans, who now seem completely convinced that the UK government is some kind of totalitarian oppressor who are snatching people off the streets.

Meanwhile, Brits just look on at this narrative wondering what the hell they're talking about. Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.

summerdown2• 11 months ago

I suspect it's projection as a defense, because a number of Brits do see the US as some sort of failing police state that's snatching people off the streets.

I guess if you get your attack in first you'll be able to go "we're not the fascists, you're the fascists."

None of that is to excuse the legislation, of course, which is not very good and will have a lot of poor consequences.

crinkly4• 11 months ago

If it was a police state, JD Vance wouldn’t be getting it on his holiday here from protesters and video vans driving around and being refused service in a pub.

It could end up that way but we’re not there yet. If we do get there we tend to make the French look like amateur protestors (look up poll tax riots).

I’m less worried about a police state than a corporate dystopia. The attendee list at Trump’s inauguration would be far scarier to me than the OSA is.

nxm• 11 months ago

What is happening in Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech, which is of course subjective, subject to abuse, and open to totalitarian oppression. This is why the First Amendment in the US constitution is so important

crote• 11 months ago

who now seem completely convinced that the UK government is some kind of totalitarian oppressor who are snatching people off the streets

It's a bit hard to argue otherwise when the draconian arrests are well-documented by pretty much every single media outlet.

Yeul• 11 months ago

I'm not American and I find the English legal system hilarious.

In practically all countries a bunch of smart people got together in the 19th century to write a constitution but the British thought that they were above such petty concerns.

kristianc• 11 months ago

Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.

The censorship in the UK isn't that overt. There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street, what there are is government "nudge" units, media talking heads and government-aligned media trying to push you toward points of view acceptable to the establishment. We're the world leaders in manufactured consensus.

holoduke• 11 months ago

The problem in the UK is that politics are not in any way looking after its citizens. Its a group of elitists that serve large financial institutes. If you look at the UK now it really is much worse than lets say 30 years ago. Infrastructure is in a bad shape. Poverty is pretty visible. Loads of people living paycheck by paycheck. The mighty UK empire is gone.

dgroshev6• 11 months ago

It's not even internally consistent, although propaganda rarely needs to be consistent. The UK government is somehow both entirely powerless (can't do anything about crime at all), and exceptionally powerful (tightly policing the speech and thoughts of 70 million people).

Very little odd about this btw. Those efforts are intentional and blatant, e.g. [0]. In that case, you can even see that the accounts listed in the article flaunt what they are, their first posts after the blackout are about Israel.

[0] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/dozens-of-pro-indy-accounts-...

Xelbair• 11 months ago

Look, I've been visiting Britain as a tourist for years(since more than 10 years ago) - mostly to visit my friends who live there.

Each time i come there it's worse than previous trip, and your whole infrastructure feels oppressive. Constant reminders to be vigilant because something bad might happen(train and metro jingles come to mind) - implying a terrorist attack. Constant reminders that you're watched by cameras, while crime itself is rampant.

I come from Eastern Europe, yet visiting UK genuinely feels like visiting oppressive police state.

I am aware about your history(first The Troubles, then terrorist scare of 2000s, now domestic problems) but this is NOT the normal state for modern western country. Most likely perspective of Brits who have been living through this since ww2 is heavily culturally skewed, rather than then outside observer's one.

vidarh6• 11 months ago

As someone who does live in the UK, and has for 25 years, while I too see the distortion you talk about, things have taken a distinct turn towards authoritarianism to the point that I watch what I write under my own name.

ants_everywhere• 11 months ago

it's become fashionable for people to just lie about things in order to shock the audience into their point of view.

What's more, they try to bully other people into lying about things to get their way. For example, I can't tell you many times I've read comments saying we'll never get anywhere if we insist on playing by the rules.

Playing by the rules here means things like being honest.

jjgreen2• 11 months ago

This country where 80-year old vicars are arrested for holding up a small piece of paper expressing support for a non-violent proscribed organisation? Everything is fine citizen, move along...

exe342• 11 months ago

I think it's fair to say that the maggats will say whatever they need to achieve their aim, not what they believe to be true. They have the national guard deployed in their capital to stifle dissent by the same orange taint who said he wasn't allowed to do that when it was his people trying to stage a violent self-coup (and he has since pardoned those criminals).

What they want is a similar fascist group in the UK to do well in the next election - and freedom of speech is one of the easiest things to moan about when criminals are getting nabbed.

gadders5• 11 months ago

> some kind of totalitarian oppressor

Well, it's only really happening for people on the Right. If you're firmly within the left wing Overton Window (apart from perhaps Israel/Palestine), you don't have much to fear from Two Tier Kear.

redeyedtreefrog2• 11 months ago

Yup entirely this. The biggest sign of this is Tommy Robinson, who has blatantly committed outrageous cases of stalking, harassment, and contempt of court, for which he has been convicted. But because his schtick is complaining about Muslims he is then treated as a hero of the US right, gets invited on right-wing talk shows and gets bigged up by Elon Musk. I recently had a guy sit next to me on a plane bring him up as supposed proof of the UK being an authoritarian state.

I go absolutely out of my way to avoid politics nowadays, which makes it all the more frustrating when this nonsense is shoved in my face by idiots on HackerNews or dimwits sitting next to me on the plane.

Oarch• 11 months ago

Am British, don't agree with you in the slightest.

Our media is absurdly distorted itself. Sometimes it's more objective to look from the outside in.

fleebee• 11 months ago

The reading of the quote that the tweeter provided is even worse.

I'd rather not be subjected to fake news on HN.

skeezyboy8• 11 months ago

instead of posting the journalists story, HN posted some randomers tweet. thats the problem

closewith5• 11 months ago

Simon McGarr is an Irish solicitor who is a widely respected expert in privacy law and how it impacts online services, so not exactly a randomer. He also has a track record of being right about the unintended consequences of online regulation.

fmajid• 11 months ago

The numbering as Category 1 does suggest that is the first and foremost purpose of the Act.

happymellon2• 11 months ago

Normally if there is something they want, but don't think the public would approve then it gets wrapped up as clause f, section 232, paragraph 9.

Aka, this rule does not apply to all current and former members of parliament clause.

pyrale2• 11 months ago

I'm going to say something that many here won't like given the usual reaction to European regulation, but social media platforms have enabled multiple foreign influence political campaign operations during election times in Europe, and notably led to the invalidation of the 2024 Romanian presidential election [1].

As of recently, probably bolstered by the new US admin, US social media platforms have taken a more confrontational towards regulators in EU countries where they operate. For instance, Twitter refused to cooperate with a French investigation [2].

It really is unsurprising that European countries muscle up their legislative response to what they see increasingly as media platforms going rogue in support of operations aimed to distort political debate in Europe. The only alternative would be to outright ban US social media and build EU platforms.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lection_pr%C3%A9sidentie...

[2] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/07/21/x-refuse...

_heimdall• 11 months ago

I wouldn't expect many to take issue with your point here. The problem at hand isn't whether or not social media has been a net positive or net negative, the problem is whether the government should be in the business of arresting those who say things the government doesn't want said.

We can deal with social media directly without government censorship and arresting the public. Remove any legal protections that give social media a free pass regarding what is posted on their sites. If we want people's speech to be censored, at a minimum that should be done by the private company who is financially on the hook for what content they allow.

varispeed• 11 months ago

OSA has nothing to do with prevention of influence though. It's about building scaffolding for mass surveillance.

If it was about influence, there are better ways to handle it, without forcing entire population to give up their personal data to some dodgy "age-check" companies. Many run by foreign hostile intelligence agencies.

dgroshev6• 11 months ago

It's a misleading quote from a misleading article. It's remarkable how the article never mentions that the Act was passed by the Tories, blaming "civil servants" for it. The author did frame the Act very differently back in 2023 when it was passed [0]:

It is high time the government took action, by which I do not mean passing the Online Safety Bill, an approach that is like putting a new filter in the opium pipe.

[0] https://archive.ph/TCnTf

wzdd• 11 months ago

The source includes a direct comment from the secretary of state that Category 1 of the OSA is about regulating sites with a significant influence over public discourse.

Therefore it makes perfect sense to say that the OSA is at least in part about regulating sites with a significant influence over public discourse. I find that at least somewhat alarming; is the "incredibly misleading" part that this is not all that the OSA is about?

(For reference, a rough description of the Categories are: you use a recommender system or allow sharing the site's content (1), you're a general-purpose search engine (2A), or you allow DMs between users (2B). Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174 )

IanCal4• 11 months ago

You can argue the intentions here but this isn’t different from what’s been said by them before - the public line is that it’s about safety, and while children add additional things to do, its not a child safety bill and it’s focussed on larger entities that deal with user to user services.

khalic33• 11 months ago

What’s with england and its complete lack of response to this kind of power grabs?

mdp20219• 11 months ago

They wait for the next election.

yungporko• 11 months ago

there's really nothing anybody can do. protests dont work, riots dont work, petitions dont work, and theres nobody else to vote for who isn't also a cunt.

chii• 11 months ago

mass civil disobedience. Not riots.

khalic33• 11 months ago

I’m just going to say it: you are wrong, protests, public pressure and civil disobedience are why you have many of the right you have today. I get you don’t have the will/energy/possibility to do anything, but don’t go around telling lies about the usefulness of public intervention.

gambiting2• 11 months ago

I really recommend a book called "Moral Ambition" which outlines many examples from history where societal change was made possible through people not protesting or rioting, but through people organising into political organisations which could then implement change - the very first example is of a man who lead the effort for abolition of slavery across the British empire, growing from a single man with an idea to a political force that made the change possible. And that doesn't mean you have to win elections - just grow enough that you are at least consulted on changes like this and treated like a partner not like a pest that has to be squashed and arrested.

extraisland9• 11 months ago

Voting for the alternatives won't make any difference either.

The power structure is designed in such a way that it is difficult for the Government itself to do change anything.

tomatocracy• 11 months ago

I think the most effective solution is to work to ensure that people who have sensible views and are able to think in a reasoned way on topics like this stand for election themselves.

As much as many people have distaste for the existing parties, a few people getting involved and changing the parties from the inside on one or two topics like this (which are not party political in nature) is likely to be much more effective than standing as or voting for an independent, complaining or protesting.

L0in3• 11 months ago

They work. But they don't work if your objective is to replace a political party with another one... The problem is the system itself. It needs uprooting.

To quote someone: "You give us rights, only because we gave you riots"

dgroshev6• 11 months ago

We just had the government backtrack on stopping giving money to better off pensioners (WFA) and tightening regulations on disability benefits (PIP) under pressure from the backbenchers and the media.

If your preferred cause is not cutting through in that way, it's worth asking what's different about the cause.

gambiting2• 11 months ago

I've lived in the UK for 15 years now and the complete political apathy is probably what bothers me the most about this country. Few years back when they made it so that every ISP had to log your entire browsing history and keep it for a year and 17 different government agencies(including DEFRA, the agriculture ministry!) can access it without a warrant, barely anyone cared. Wasn't really mentioned in public media, other than the standard "we're finally making the internet a safer place against pedos!". When I mentioned it to my friends here the reactions were mostly "meh" to "I don't browse any dodgy sites so why should I care".

The other example is when the government changed the student loan rules by raising the allowed annual cost from 3k to about 9k, and also linked the interest to inflation, and increased the number of years that have to pass before the loan gets written off. So just for comparison - I paid 12k for a 4 year MSc Computer Science course, and it had 1.1% interest attached to it. So I paid mine off within few years of starting to work. My sister did her degree just few years after me, and her degree cost her 40k + her interest is 8%. She has a job but her payments barely cover the interest. She will never pay it off, so it will get written off at some point, maybe - but until then it's a permament 10% tax on all of her earnings. It's bonkers.

My point is - I feel like in any other country, this kind of economic assassination of entire generation of people would be met with people marching on the capital and burning down cars and setting tyres on fire in front of government buildings in protest. In UK barely anyone cared. Still no one cares. There is no political party that even suggests doing anything about it.

So with this new act - it's more of the same. You've heard our government already anyway - saying openly that if you are against this act you are on the same side as Jimmy Saville(one of the worst child rapists this country has ever produced). Essentially you can't be against it in public or you're compared to actual pedophiles. The only politician who even suggests that hey maybe this isn't right is Farage who is a despicable individual for many other reasons.

If you want my personal opinion on why that is - British society is extremely comfortable with the status quo. People would rather shrug their arms than actually do something about anything, we're surrounded by history, by buildings standing for the last 1000 years, stability is like the paramount value here. That's not to say Britain hasn't has some of the greatest civil movements in history - but right now, in 2025, the feeling I see everywhere is just apathy.

khalic33• 11 months ago

Thank you for the insight, I thought the economic hardship after brexit would make them realise the importance of civic duty…

andai3• 11 months ago

this kind of economic assassination of entire generation of people

It's worldwide, is the issue. A national government cannot solve the problems created by multinational investment firms.

On a related note, central banks have expressed their desire to increase unemployment.

alexisread• 11 months ago

For the most part I'd agree, but the Iraq war had a million people (1/60th of the country) who made the effort to protest in London (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2765041.stm), and similarly every month supporting Palestine (150K-800K).

The legal mechanisms in place don't appear to be adequate as when that number of activists are ignored. Certainly in parallel with the online regulation, the legal right to protest has been restricted by the previous Tory government, and this current one.

What's also concerning is the lack of oversight with MPs, they follow guidelines, which seem to let them off from regular laws (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68503255 using taxpayers money in a private dispute- fraud) (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68841840 reads like fiction).

Why MPs are not FCA regulated is beyond me, corruption should be stamped out.

foldr7• 11 months ago

Few years back when they made it so that every ISP had to log your entire browsing history and keep it for a year

This is a significant exaggeration in two respects.

First, SSL ensures that ISPs cannot log your literal browser history. They can log which domains you visit, how often you visit them, how much data was transferred, etc. etc.

Second, the law requires ISPs to be able to retain this data on a specific individual for up to a year if specifically ordered to by the Home Secretary. So it is not the case the ISPs in general are all recording this information for all of their customers. From their point of view they have no interest in doing so. I suspect that ISPs would in fact lack the capacity to store all of this data for all of their customers all of the time.

I don't support the IPA because I don't think the Home Secretary should be able to directly order surveillance of specific individuals. However, I don't think it is necessary to exaggerate the scope of the legislation in order to make a case against it.

jjgreen2• 11 months ago

student loan rules by raising the allowed annual cost from 3k to about 9k, and also linked the interest to inflation

Not quite, "inflation" is CPI, as the government will tell you endlessly if you work for it and ask for a pay rise. Student loans go up by RPI (which is almost always higher).

swarnie2• 11 months ago

Why single out England particularly?

khalic33• 11 months ago

Because the rest of Europe has much stronger reaction to unpopular political decisions

kindkang2024• 11 months ago

How to rig freedom?

It’s simple: you only need the wille to rig and the power to freely manifest that will. No matter how elegant the design of a democratic system, or how many procedural safeguards exist, nothing can stop you.

Sad but true—if there isn’t enough power to balance that wille.

May all who value freedom also have the power to defend it.

jbjbjbjb2• 11 months ago

All the main parties are behind it, some say it doesn’t go far enough.

The vast majority of the British public absolutely love to ban things. If you listen to talk radio or daytime tv most of the time they’ll be having a discussion on banning something. We have a nanny state and the public like it that way.

Personally I use an allow list for my kids internet access and don’t rely on the state to parent them. I guess that’s too much bother for most people.

omnicognate3• 11 months ago

allow list for my kids

I do the same but let's not pretend that's within the technical ability of the average parent. Of course, it should be and that would be a far better place for the government to direct its efforts.

nrawe8• 11 months ago

I appreciate that with recent articles shared here it might look that way. What is difficult as a Brit reading this is that so little has actually changed that I can't quite grasp what you mean.

Firstly, the paper reporting the "power grab" is a national newspaper read by millions. Secondly, as noted in several other places, the spin the newspaper has put on the judgement is deeply cynical. Lastly, this legislation has been in debate for years under multiple governments with a decent (by no means unilateral) amount of public support for some (but distinctly not all) the provisions.

password54321• 11 months ago

That requires coordination and corporation in a society that is fragmented. It is hard to have a non-hostile interaction these days let alone unity over an online related issue.

khalic33• 11 months ago

Couldn’t agree more, I try my best but sometimes it’s better to just walk away. We have limited capabilities, and the world has an infinite supply of bad faith it would seem

andy_ppp• 11 months ago

This conversation seems like politics not technology. The act (which is awful) has already been done to death on here.

ap99• 11 months ago

For the Americans looking at this act, you're maybe putting it in the context of American politics and thinking who cares if the porn sites have my face or id.

But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.

JFingleton• 11 months ago

Here is more information about the arrests that are currently taking place:

https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...

jphoward• 11 months ago

Why does that link say the current director of public prosecutions is Sir Kier Starmer? It's hard to take it seriously.

toyg3• 11 months ago

Britain has always been very hypocritical about freedom of speech. Take for example "Speaker's Corner", an area of Hyde Park were police will tolerate any sort of speech - except that, if there are complaints and the speech is considered potentially unlawful, they will arrest the speaker right after he's done speaking.

polshaw• 11 months ago

So there is not a magical space where the law does not apply? that is what you call hypocritical.

vidarh6• 11 months ago

Speaker's Corner has never been a place "were police will tolerate any sort of speech". It's a place where anyone can speak.

You're still subjected to exactly the same legal restrictions on the speech itself as anywhere else in public, and that's nothing new.

_joel2• 11 months ago

Please cite examples of someone being jailed for offending someone (that doesn't include incitement to violence).

liveoneggs5• 11 months ago

Held for eight hours + other abuse: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/10/retired-police-o...

matthewmacleod4• 11 months ago

I'm sure you realise this, but you are of course massively and deliberately oversimplifying to the point of being misleading.

Like… it's okay to complain about bad legislation without misrepresenting it. It's bad enough that you don't need to make shit up about it.

esskay5• 11 months ago

But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.

It's hard to take this seriously, especially when if I ask for citations it'll likely be a couple of extremely obscure cases where the details are being conveniently glossed over.

abtinf3• 11 months ago

Wikipedia literally has an extended section on this issue. No one is going to give you citations for something trivially googlable.

In September 2022, a British woman was arrested and charged for holding up an "abolish monarchy" sign at a proclamation ceremony for King Charles III in Edinburgh. Similar arrests throughout the country around this period over anti-monarchy republican sentiment have alarmed human rights groups.

gadders5• 11 months ago

You can get arrested for offending people in Whatsapp group chats: https://news.sky.com/story/grenfell-tower-model-paul-busetti...

liveoneggs5• 11 months ago

30 arrests per day and increasing

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

liveoneggs5• 11 months ago

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/10/retired-police-o...

KaiserPro7• 11 months ago

But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.

actually no. its grossly offensive. Not someone finding it offense. And normally its a legal garnish, for something like trying to get someone else killed or injured via text.

However you can be arrested for organising a protest that someone might reasonably find annoying. That has much less legal oversight.

liveoneggs5• 11 months ago

All sides of all governments desperately want to install every oppressive thought-policing and free-speech limiting technology possible. They lust after China's "social credit score" and will do anything to control you.

throwaway_dang• 11 months ago

From my perspective, the UK is a failing state and not worth thinking about. Not much can be learned from the UK except what to avoid doing if you don't want to become them.

nickslaughter023• 11 months ago

List:

1. Don't handcuff 90-year-olds with dementia and put a hood over their heads (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-66317636)

2. Don't take inspiration from Minority Report / Black Mirror - "AI to help police catch criminals before they strike" (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ai-to-help-police-catch-c...)

angusturner• 11 months ago

As an Aussie, I was feeling somewhat consoled about the state of the US by the fact that the EU and UK still seem to have their heads screwed on.

OSA and chat control have made me seriously rethink that…

Has everyone lost their mind?

redeyedtreefrog2• 11 months ago

Black Mirror is the new 1984. Right wing people think "this is a parable of what left-of-centre politics gets you, look how clever I am". Left-of-centre people know that the author of 1984 fought for the socialists in the Spanish Civil War and that the author of Black Mirror is a Guardian journalist.

btdmaster• 11 months ago

The Times is more or less lying here.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi...

On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children (which were dealt with by other parts of the Act).

Notice this is under Sunak, not Starmer. The Times chooses when to support and opposite the Online Safety Act based on which party is in government, and provides evidence for its view by lying through omission.

The Online Safety Act is undeniably terrible legislation, but you won't find good-faith criticism of it from the Times.

perihelions2• 11 months ago

In the Oxford philosophy-exam thread from yesterday, I was distracted by question #3: "Should anonymous posting online be forbidden?"[0] Never mind the quality of essay you (or your machine surrogate) could write about that. The striking thing is this is now within firmly within the Overton Window in British academia—this is what they seemingly teach their cultural elites in their elite schools. In place of Enlightenment* values, they're normalizing the inversion of them—normalizing thinking as an autocrat, in viewing the general public as an unsafe factor and as an adversary.

[0] https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c...

*(A not-small body of which were famously published anonymously in order to escape ostracization. Were these Oxford philosophers to take their own advice, they would forbid all volumes mentioning Voltaire or Spinoza from their libraries).

skeezyboy8• 11 months ago

british nanny state has been in parlance the 60's, its not a new idea really

pama• 11 months ago

What was that thread? Oxford philosophy exams never suggest a particular stance on a question so you are free to argue on either direction of this argument and bring about your strongest points based on the current philosophical thinking on the subject. It is not normalizing lack of anonymity (nor horror movies, or the pursuit of happiness), but helps make people hone their argument skills. (And as another user mentioned, the discussion of the british nanny state is not new; it was old when Orwell wrote 1984.)

perihelions2• 11 months ago

It was in a thread discussing LLM's,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44893522 ("All Souls exam questions and the limits of machine reasoning (resobscura.substack.com)"—35 comments)

https://resobscura.substack.com/p/all-souls-exam-questions-a...

exasperaited2• 11 months ago

Small note that this refers to the previous Tory government, not the current Labour government, for whatever that is worth.

So the title should at least be "Previous UK administration stated that...".

cobbzilla• 11 months ago

It’s like someone got really into “A Clockwork Orange” and then thought: No, this is woefully inefficient, just one person at a time. It’ll be slower but we can do everyone all at once!

pera• 11 months ago

Since this is in relation to "Category 1 services" of the OSA:

Category 1: should apply to services which meet either of the following conditions:
Condition 1 – uses a content recommender system; and has more than 34 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service, representing around 50% of the UK population;
Condition 2 – allows users to forward or reshare user-generated content; and uses a content recommender system; and has more than 7 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service, representing c.10% of the UK population.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...

UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

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