The UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill finally becomes law

Do want to point out the UK act is such a unworkable mess that it is likely to collapse under its own weight just look at the last UK age verification law that was delayed over and over again until it was quietly scraped. And it's likely Ofcom will struggle to get the OSB up and running

For those of you who don't live in the UK and don't keep track of UK politics, well done, don't start it's crap.

But it's important to understand how these things always pan out. The government in its current form are in absolute freefall, the next election is going to be at the absolute latest in early Jan 2025 if not earlier (the UK political system being what it is, it's entirely possible it will be earlier). Current polling shows that if they have any seats left it'll be a miracle for them, basically they're going to get wiped out at the next election.

So they've started doing all this bullshit to make life worse for the new government when they come in, like selling off assets to make future infrastructure projects impossible in a fit of spite. They've also started to pass all sorts of ridiculous laws under the guise of raising taxes or protecting children or counterterrorism, but really it's got nothing to do with any of that stuff and everything to do with just getting as much money out of the system as possible, while at the same time making life as difficult as possible for a new government. This law is just in the vein of that.

They know it won't work, they know it's impossible, and they don't care.

They're just hoping there's going to be some terrorist attack after the new government come in and rescind this ridiculous law, and then they can go and point to it and say, "ah this wouldn't have happened if you still had a good law". And then presumably everyone cheers and then they get reelected.
Of course it won't happen, but these guys are delusional.

So honestly I'd advise everyone just ignore it. No one's getting fined because they're not going to bother putting the infrastructure in to actually enforce the law, if they're going to be out in potentially less than 14 months time.

Failing to comply with the act’s rules could land companies with fines of up to £18 million (around $22 million), or 10 percent of their global annual turnover (whichever is higher), and their bosses could even face prison.

I'm curious how they intend to enforce this on companies that aren't located in the UK.

From the article: "The act has been welcomed by child safety advocates."

Same beeing tried for the EU.

The proposed regulation is excessively “influenced by companies pretending to be NGOs but acting more like tech companies”, said Arda Gerkens, former director of Europe’s oldest hotline for reporting online CSAM.

“Groups like Thorn use everything they can to put this legislation forward, not just because they feel that this is the way forward to combat child sexual abuse, but also because they have a commercial interest in doing so.”

If the regulation undermines encryption, it risks introducing new vulnerabilities, critics argue. “Who will benefit from the legislation?” Gerkens asked. “Not the children.”

“So it’s very clear that whatever their incorporation status is, that they are self-interested in promoting child exploitation as a problem that happens “online,” and then proposing quick (and profitable) technical solutions as a remedy to what is in reality a deep social and cultural problem. (…) I don’t think governments understand just how expensive and fallible these systems are, that we’re not looking at a one-time cost. We’re looking at hundreds of millions of dollars indefinitely due to the scale that this is being proposed at.”

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/

This whole article is worth reading despite its length. This is a mess and the UK is only the start, they are aiming for this being implemented world wide.

I hate the "think of the children" excuse for draconian laws like this. It plays with people's emotions to get them to support or be neutral towards it. Disgusting. As is using children as a shield at all.

"… Importantly, we’ll also take full account of people’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression."

While also being pretty much against end-to-end encryption. Good job.

Is this the one they said you'd need to register with a photo id if you wanted to access porn sites? The one opponents said would do the most good for online safety by teaching the nation to use VPN?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Specific harms the bill aims to address include underage access to online pornography, “anonymous trolls,” scam ads, the nonconsensual sharing of intimate deepfakes, and the spread of child sexual abuse material and terrorism-related content.

The first covers how platforms will have to respond to illegal content like terrorism and child sexual abuse material, and a consultation with proposals on how to handle these duties is due to be published on November 9th.

Ofcom says it expects to publish a list of “categorised services,” which are large or high-risk platforms that will be subject to obligations like producing transparency reports, by the end of next year.

Social media companies will be held to account for the appalling scale of child sexual abuse occurring on their platforms and our children will be safer,” said UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

Meanwhile, the Wikimedia Foundation has said that the bill’s strict obligations for protecting children from inappropriate content could create issues for a service like Wikipedia, which chooses to collect minimal data on its users, including their ages.

In a statement, Ofcom’s chief executive Melanie Dawes pushed back against the idea that the act will make the telecoms regulator a censor.

The original article contains 659 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I actually agree with parts of this law and think they don't go far enough.

Tech firms should 100% be held responsible for the content they choose to tolerate on their platforms.

CSAM is a growing problem on apps like X and Instagram. The latter has particularly been astroturfed by accounts that post links to Telegram channels for the purpose of sharing highly illegal stuff.

Another thing I think the law needs to do is target game publishers who allow toxic, defamatory and harassing behaviour on their platforms. Companies like Riot Games, Blizzard, etc should be held far more accountable for policing their games, especially since kids play them.