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This article was clearly written by someone who has no idea how technology works, but knows how to spin up buzzwords.
This is also the man who wrote the law.
It's not about censorship. If I can still access everything then it's not being censored, it's about being able to use the internet without having to hand over personal information. If I walk into a shop to buy a porn mag the shopkeeper doesn't take a photo of me and my ID and promise to get rid of it later.
But the shopkeeper can check your ID, and could remember your name and face. How do you propose doing that instead online? Because like it or not, the UK government were elected to do this
like it or not, the UK government were elected to do this
that feels a bit of an overstatement ... the OSA is a Tory invention, so not electing Labour would not have changed that
It's not like there would have been any point voting for the Pirate Party or some other party just because you didn't want the OSA to come into force.
Labour have been authoritarian and anti-freedom for many many years. ID cards were Blairites dream for years, but the Lords threatened to rebel every time. Section 44 anti-terror legislation was under Brown, and is still a shit-show. RIPA also a Blair act. And now this
Labour are not champions of freedom
Also in the guardian today is an article on how the combo of proscribing Palestine Action and introducing the online safety act is causing platforms to censor information about Gaza. His counter-argument in this article is that Meta were censoring information on Palestine already, but Meta had always been overzealous in their content moderation, now it's every platform.
He says in this that he's worried being too specific would be more authoritarian but I would say the opposite is true - if what needs censoring is too vague, platforms are gonna be extreme in what they block and put behind age verification because the fines are so high. And vague guidance can be used to justify blocking anything. It only entrenches big tech further because small sites can't afford the age verification or the risk of a £10 million fines.
I mean, if small forums are having to shut down, it isn't a big tech issue. It's an overreach of regulation issue.
I agree. But I suspect most small forums are still exempt reading this article and the law. If you don't have potential to cause harm (no porn essentially) you don't need to do anything. But this has yet to be tested in a court to set any case law yet and so forums are understandably being very cautious
User to user communication is considered a risk - so any forum falls under this law.
Small sites are not exempted (see reply for petition to remove this legislation).
No leg to stand on there - it's a solid unworkable overreach.
And yet, if you read act: there is a reasonable argument within the legislation. And the article posted mentions it too, from the architect. So you are correct in the fact the size of the site matters not. But if you are reasonably not about questionable matetial, you are likely exempt. Which is essentially what wikipedia are testing. So call it an overreach all you want; but this is yet to be proven
I wouldnt be so confident in that. The wikimedia foundation are already in legal proceedings arguing against the act being drawn so widely that they would be included with the likes of instagram and twitter as a large scale social media company just due to their talk pages.
An interesting test case. Wikipedia contains vast amounts of information about harmful items, and children will use it. Ultimately libraries don't restrict lending and so I suspect the article here illustrates that they shall emerge victorious