The Critic – The perverse outcomes of the Online Safety Act

“ID, please” is not a demand many people would expect when opening up a Reddit thread of pun fantasy football team names. Yet when looking for inspiration ahead of what has turned out to be another dismal start to my season as a wannabe Pep Guardiola I was faced with a digital bouncer and given the choice to identify myself, or be turned away.

Wordplay riffing off Mo Salah or Bruno Fernandes is clearly not the cutting edge of free speech. No matter how bad the jokes are, nobody is getting a knock at the door for calling their team “Blink 1-Et’oo” — but the digital age gate on the thread is an alarming example of how the Online Safety Act’s age verification rules are severely limiting what Brits can freely browse online. Off-colour would be a generous description of some of the darker jokes in the thread, but slapping an age gate on it is clearly an overreaction.

Rights groups like Big Brother Watch warned that the Online Safety Act would be a censor’s charter when it was introduced three Prime Ministers ago. Under pressure the previous government pulled the draconian requirement for platforms to take down “legal but harmful” content for adults and children — but the law remains a serious threat to free expression.

As passed, the law only requires websites to verify the ages of people accessing pornography, or content around suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. However, as the Act came into force in July we saw swathes of other content hit with restrictions.

Whole subreddits covering a whole range of ridiculous subjects from the reasonably benign topics of homebrewing beer or loving cider to people ranting about the music played on Heart Radio now require users to verify their ages before accessing them. The UK has now reached the point where teenagers can have a cider with a meal out, if an adult buys it for them, two years before they can read a Reddit thread about fermented apple juice.

As well as the trivial examples, important threads are now behind age gates too. Discussion channels about ongoing atrocities in Ukraine and Gaza, the subreddit dedicated to the news channel Al Jazeera are all now inaccessible to anyone who cannot or will not give Reddit their ID or a face scan to prove their age.

The restriction of access to content, whether vital or vapid, is not limited to Reddit. Over on X images of Francisco Goya’s 1820s masterpiece “Saturn Devouring His Son” and parts of a thread quoting the Roman historian Livy on the general Aulus Cornelius Cossus were unavailable to users thought to be under 18.

Like Reddit, X also blocked politically important speech — with an admittedly graphic clip from a House of Commons speech by Conservative MP Katie Lam about the grooming gangs scandal being restricted by the platform.

Technology Secretary Peter Kyle’s claim that critics of the OSA are “on the side of predators” like the vile Jimmy Saville was troubling. The OSA is failing so hard it became a joke in days, with countless memes mocking the demand for ID to browse reasonably innocent parts of the web and VPN downloads going through the roof.

Very few of us would say the aims of the Online Safety Act are not laudable — keeping children safe is something every society should strive for. However that goal is not carte blanche to undermine privacy and freedom of expression, and criticising the impact of the Act is not siding with predators — despite what Peter Kyle claims.

Tory MPs who introduced the Online Safety Act (OSA) and the Labour government who have overseen its implementation have tried to argue that the law is not a censors’ charter, but a boon for children’s safety. They cite free speech obligations in the act as their evidence. The reality is that heavy-handed content that goes way beyond the scope of the law is now being restricted.

A mischievous, almost conspiratorial take is that the big social media platforms are being trigger-happy with their restrictions to stir the public up against the OSA. More likely however, is they are being cautious due to the threat of stiff legal consequences for non-compliance. Huge fines for tech companies or even prison time for senior staff are some of the punishments laid out for breaching parts of the Act.

The post The Critic – The perverse outcomes of the Online Safety Act appeared first on Big Brother Watch.