The UK’s Online Safety Act officially came into force two weeks ago, and they have wasted no time using it.
Alternative social media network Gab has already been threatened with a massive fine for its supposed failures to “police speech” on its platform. Anecdotes are piling up, small forums and communities blocking access from the UK for fear of attracting OfCom’s ire and the like.
But rest assured, an OfCom spokesperson promised the Telegraph they would “only take action where it is proportionate and appropriate”. So that’s alright.
The Financial Times headlines…
It’s a bland piece of dishonesty by omission, pretending to objectivity even as it hides behind language. They only specifically mention child porn and terrorism and other criminal behaviour as “illegal content”, but don’t mention that the act is about far more than child porn and drugs.
It has entire sections dedicated to “false communication offenses” – meaning publishing material the state has deemed “misinformation”, and a second section specifically and explicitly giving newspapers and media companies immunity from those offences.
Nobody is talking about any of that, though, because fortunately enough Adolescence came out at the exact same time the act came into force, and has totally steered the national conversation on this topic while flooding social media with “concerned mothers” who really want the government to “take action”.
That’s right, the formerly-creeping now-galloping authoritarianism is a great thing because we need to save our children from…whatever.
It also allows for editorials like this one in the Guardian, headlining “The Guardian view on online safety: don’t let Trump dictate the terms of debate”. Now Keir Starmer can “stand up to the bully Trump” by refusing to “water down” the “protections”.
Now Keir Starmer can “stand up to the bully Trump” by refusing to “water down” the “protections”.
The predictable charities and pundits are all “appalled” at the idea of “watering down” the OSA “protections”, and their suggested alternative – which won’t happen – is a complete social media ban for children.
They’ve tried that gambit in Australia already, and it’s not really a social media ban so much as it’s an excuse to end online anonymity.
How do you ban children? You can’t, not without making everyone prove their age.
The “compromise” option is that we don’t ban children, but then we would need to know who is and isn’t a child in order to best protect them from radicalization and hate speech…so everyone better prove their age.
And, of course, all this needing to prove your age stuff flows neatly into a government-issued digital identity.
Some people even suggest that it should be illegal for anyone under 16 to own a smartphone.
How do you enforce that? Well, you’d need to prove your age (and therefore your identity) to own a cell phone, so buh-bye pre-paid anonymous phones. (They really don’t mind leaning into the “Oi mate, you got a license for that?” meme, apparently.)
Usually I would dismiss this as one of those ridiculously extreme positions designed to make the actual goal seem more palatable, but I could actually see this one going ahead. After all, we don’t want kids wandering around with access to the internet 24/7, where they could fact-check teachers in real time for example.
And because it’s just rules, and they love having more rules.
That’s our “new normal” in a nutshell, isn’t it? More and more rules for rules’ sake.
OffGuardian will carry on warning anyone who’ll listen while we can, but with the Online Safety Act out in force and taking no prisoners, who can say how long that might be?