The UK Online Safety Act is about censorship, not safety
- Reference: 1755759006
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/21/the_uk_online_safety_act/
- Source link:
The [1]new OSA rules require all online services accessible in the UK – [2]social media , [3]search engines , [4]music sites , and adult content providers — to enforce age checks to keep children from seeing [5]"harmful content" . Online services also must change their algorithms and moderation systems to keep such content from young people.
Social media platforms [6]Reddit , [7]Bluesky , [8]Discord , and [9]X all introduced age checks to block children from seeing harmful content; adult websites implemented age assurance checks on their sites asking users to either upload government-issued ID, provide an email address for comparison against use on other sites, or submit personal information to a third-party vendor for age verification. Sites like Spotify are [10]requiring users to submit face scans to third-party digital identity company Yoti to access content labelled 18+.
[11]
The scope of so-called "harmful content" is [12]subjective and arbitrary , and often sweeps up content that governments and CEOs of online services might not want online — regardless of whether this is legal content or not. Add to this the law threatening large fines or even jail time for non-compliance, and platforms pre-emptively over-censor content to ensure they won't be held liable.
[13]
[14]
And reports from the UK are already showing how age checks are being used to censor content that falls outside the OSA across the internet. This includes [15]footage of police attacking pro-Palestinian protestors being blocked on X, multiple subreddits blocked, including r/IsraelExposed, r/safesexPH and r/stopsmoking, and some smaller websites [16]closing down entirely.
No one — no matter their age, no matter what country they live in — should have to hand over their passport or driver's license just to access legal information and speak freely. And users in the UK know this: Days after age checks went into effect, VPN apps —"virtual private networks" that protect your internet connection and privacy online — became among the [17]most downloaded apps in Apple's App Store in the UK.
[18]
A similar spike in searches for VPNs [19]occurred in January when Florida joined an ever-growing list of [20]US states implementing age verification laws. But while VPNs may be able to disguise internet activity's source, they are neither foolproof nor [21]a solution to age verification laws. Ofcom has started discouraging their use, and some Labour Party politicians have even argued for a ban on VPNs — a terrifying effort to excercise authoritarian control on accessing information.
This censorship regime also extends to the physical realm, with the arrogant and inaccurate assumption that every person has an official identification document or their own smartphone. Millions of people both in the [22]UK and the [23]US lack official ID, and many might [24]share a device with family members or use public devices at libraries or internet cafes . These millions — often lower-income or older people who are already marginalized, and for whom the internet may be a critical lifeline — will be excluded from online speech and will lose access to much of the internet, further restricting access to information and the possibility to engage online.
Some US officials seem to see the writing on the wall. "The UK now requires ID to read about Middle East politics, visit r/stopsmoking and listen to almost any hip hop music online," US Senator Ron Wyden, (D-OR), wrote on X, adding that after the Wikimedia Foundation lost its court challenge to the OSA, "using Wikipedia could be next. Once sites require age verification for the UK, there's little stopping them doing the same in the US"
[25]
That sentiment is bipartisan. After visiting the UK in late July, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, [26]issued a statement saying the OSA helps "create a serious chilling effect on free expression and threaten the First Amendment rights of American citizens and companies."
"We absolutely need to protect children and keep harmful, illegal content off these platforms — but when governments or bureaucracies suppress speech in the name of safety or regulation, it sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the core of Western democratic values," Jordan said.
Yet other state and federal US lawmakers are moving full-speed ahead. [27]Twenty-four states already have passed some sort of age verification censorship law, and more are considering doing so while some bipartisan bills in Congress would do the same.
The UK's scramble to find an effective age verification method underscores that there isn't one, and it's high time for politicians around the world to take that seriously – especially those pondering similar laws in the US Rather than [28]weakening rights for already vulnerable communities online , governments everywhere must acknowledge these shortcomings and explore less invasive approaches – such as comprehensive privacy legislation – to protect all people from online harms, especially as authoritarianism spreads around the globe.
Politicians in the UK, the US, and beyond must consider what's best, not what's easiest.
Paige Collings is a Senior Speech and Privacy Activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital civil liberties group based in San Francisco.
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[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/no-uks-online-safety-act-doesnt-make-children-safer-online
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4ep1znk4zo
[3] https://support.google.com/legal/contact/UK_Online_Safety_Act_Form?hl=en
[4] https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/age-restricted-content-age-check/
[5] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/62
[6] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4ep1znk4zo
[7] https://bsky.social/about/blog/07-10-2025-age-assurance
[8] https://discord.com/safety/adapting-discord-for-the-uk-online-safety-act
[9] https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/age-assurance
[10] https://www.404media.co/spotify-uk-age-check-verification-yoti/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aKbuNxQsUo37S8glt1uWiAAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/impact-age-verification-measures-goes-beyond-porn-sites
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aKbuNxQsUo37S8glt1uWiAAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aKbuNxQsUo37S8glt1uWiAAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://x.com/BenBarryJones/status/1948839759356572012
[16] https://www.blocked.org.uk/osa-blocks
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/28/uk_vpn_demand_soars/
[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aKbuNxQsUo37S8glt1uWiAAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/05/pornhub_vpn_demand_surge/
[20] https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-bills/
[21] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/vpns-are-not-solution-age-verification-laws
[22] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/more-three-million-uk-voters-have-no-form-photo-id
[23] https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/
[24] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-use-of-mobile-technology-and-home-broadband/
[25] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aKbuNxQsUo37S8glt1uWiAAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[26] https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/chairman-jim-jordan-leads-delegation-free-speech-europe
[27] https://avpassociation.com/4271-2/
[28] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/metas-new-content-policy-will-harm-vulnerable-users-if-it-really-valued-free
[29] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "adult content providers"
Adult content is more than just porn.
Re: "adult content providers"
I dispute that.
Nobody is saying that [1]Blade , [2]Die Hard or [3]Predator are adult content films. They are for mature audiences, for sure, but they have no adult content.
Adult content is porn.
Just look at the other posts.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120611/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_2
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1
[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_2
Re: "adult content providers"
Did you see the part where discussions of Middle Eastern politics and stopping smoking were affected?
Re: "adult content providers"
Do you think children should not be allowed to know whats going on in the Middle East, or that only adults smoke ? Adult Content may include some other things, but most are already illegal anyway.
Freedom of speech, this is not
Re: "adult content providers"
Nobody's avoiding the word porn. Simply saying that the breadth and scale of the content being restricted goes far beyond it.
What can you say that already hasn't been said about this stupidity?
Suggesting banning VPNs shows how little the politicians know about computing. Let's silence people and start destroying democracy in the name of the children!
The Australian government is about to climb aboard the stupid wagon with its ban on kids accessing social media.
There is no fecking way in hell that I'm providing a photo of my license or a face scan to access YouTube etc. Not gonna happen.
Looks like I'll be using Tor a lot more in future.
Everyone needs to pushback on this, atleast it look like the UK OSA has waken up alot of people.
Calling it “stupidity” is comforting but wrong. Politicians aren’t clueless about tech - they’ve got advisers who map out every implication. They know full well what VPN bans and ID checks mean. The “protect the children” line is just bait for the cognitively deficient; the real target is control.
Saying “I’ll never upload my licence or face scan” is just bravado. Give it a year or two and you’ll have no practical choice. That’s the playbook: voluntary → normalised → mandatory. Sure, a minority will keep using Tor or workarounds, but that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. In authoritarian logic, those who refuse to comply self-identify. They already have your personal data - if you’re not in the age-checker system, congratulations, you’ve just flagged yourself as a potential dissident.
"Saying “I’ll never upload my licence or face scan” is just bravado. Give it a year or two and you’ll have no practical choice."
It's more than bravado. I never will. End of story. But you go ahead and upload your photo. Become a sheep. Everyone needs to push back on this shit
Oh, and I'm happy to be flagged as a "potential dissident", because I absolutely refuse to play by their stupid rules.
But You Could Use The Photo Of Your MP!!!
See https://use-their-id.com/
Not for the children
The majority of people using paid porn sites are adults.
The majority of people now using paid VPNs to access those paid porn sites are adults.
The pachyderm on the premises is that the majority of unsavoury content seen by children is on social media, which somehow seems to escape this regulation.
Re: Not for the children
"The pachyderm on the premises"
I am nicking that. TVM
It's not about censorship, it's about privacy...
It's about you handing over all of your personal data...
You CAN have access to a website... so technically it is NOT censored... but they want to know who you are first...
Re: It's not about censorship, it's about privacy...
It’s not just about data. Imagine someone in an abusive household: the abuser keeps hold of their documents, or they’ve been advised to hide them for safety. Now every time an ID check is required, the abuser has one more lever of control - deciding what sites they can or cannot access.
The system paints it as ‘not censorship’ because the sites are technically still accessible - but in reality it slams the door on the most vulnerable.
In principle, I like the idea of age checks to protect children from seeing pornographic content online. It’s easy to say that it should be up to the parents to carry out this protection, but many parents don’t have the capability to do so.
But there’s an enormous gulf between principle and practice - and, in practice, this is a bloody stupid idea that won’t work. It isn’t even necessary to use a VPN to access pornography in the UK - the ‘respectable’ sites, the ones that follow the law about content that may be shown, have age verification. But what about the sites on the ‘normal web’ which are a little more lax about what they carry? They don’t have any kind of age verification.
We can’t stop children, and especially teens, from trying to access this content. Pushing boundaries is their raison d’être. But we can at least ensure that it’s easier for them to access safeish content that they aren’t supposed to see than possibly really vile content that no one should see.
Unintended consequences. Age verification is a bloody stupid idea.
> It’s easy to say that it should be up to the parents to carry out this protection, but many parents don’t have the capability to do so.
If we keep excusing parents from their responsibilities, and force them onto the government, then the situation becomes ever worse, not better. Turning on parental controls is not difficult, the real problem is that too many parents don’t want to parent their children, they want to be their best friends, and are unwilling to be the ones to put any restrictions at all on them.
The last 3 broadband providers I've used have all had this turned on by default
but many parents don’t have the capability to do so.
They have capability. Every parent has capability.
They should have the capability, but they may not. At best this might be due to their own lack of education in technology. At worst it might be that they’re shitty parents - as witnessed by the number of children with, for example, poor dental hygiene (picking that as a proxy for any number of symptoms of neglect).
And, particularly if they crack down on VPNs, we are raising a generation who all know how to use Tor and use it routinely!
So they won't just be seeing legal pornography but the most vile, illegal and hateful sites. And from there... how to earn or steal bitcoin (including sex work, selling pics of family members, buying and selling drugs, ...) and maybe even knives, guns and violence.
Wonderful
In principle, I like the idea of age checks to protect children from seeing pornographic content online. It’s easy to say that it should be up to the parents to carry out this protection, but many parents don’t have the capability to do so.
In my case, I treated my adolescent kids with the respect they merited and simply told them "Every device you can log into on my network goes through MY firewall to access the net. Yes, I know VPNs exist but I'm the sysadmin as well as the network admin and I'm already inside that loop. I am not blocking anything from you, not filtering anything apart from sites I filter for everybody because I know they are malicious. Just remember that I could , theoretically, go back and see everywhere you go from my net. It would be a pain in the arse so I will be extremely pissed off at you if you give me a reason to go look. Don't give me that reason."
Oddly enough, they ended up learning better digital hygiene than 90% of their peers and never did give me any reason to go check up on "where they'd been."
Snap. I did exactly the same thing. And sometimes I’d see my fifteen year old (as he was then) searching for a particular clothes-off starlet, and when I looked I’d see it was no worse than what I was looking at at his age. So I ignored the “transgression”.
Imagine the tragedy. The starlets spend fortune on designer, the best of the best, clothes and yet people still don't want to see them.
Wait, are you saying that educating your kids is somehow more effective than policing their every movement? An unbeliever! Persecute! Kill the heretic!
On the plus side
When the databases of the age-verification services used by popular pr0n sites get hacked -- as we all know they will -- and the identities of prominent U.K. politicians listed in those databases are leaked to the media, the schadenfreude will be SO satisfying.
Re: On the plus side
They'll argue that this was done "by their office" and for "essential research". Back in 2014/2015, around a quarter of a million attempts were made annually to access porn from parliamentary computers. Damian Green and Neil Parrish both got caught, but given those porn access attempts have reportedly fallen by 90%, what do we think has happened?
a) MPs have suddenly become New Model Citizens, and ceased watching grumble on the tax payers tab
b) They suddenly become technically astute and learned how to use VPNs and proxies
c) They've ensured that the monitoring of parliamentary computers is less stringent
d) They're now using personal devices and expensing those
My money's on a mix of c and d. Certainly isn't a or b.
Re: On the plus side
A leak won’t hurt them - data breaches are so normalised now they’ll just shrug: ‘our data’s out there like everyone else’s, we’re responsible adults complying with the law.’
Re: On the plus side
Why wait for a hack? The ‘age verification service’ itself could be a front for miscreants or a foreign intelligence op. Why break in when you can just own the system from day one?
Just lure businesses needing age-check with lax T&C and bargain fees.
Re: On the plus side
Dear David Harper,
Do you really thimk we are that stupid that spelling PORN as pr0n is going to confuse and mislead us ?
Get a grip !
Regards,
Your friendly local IT SysAdmin (soon to be replaced by just as capable AI, although less likely to misspell PORN. Or need to)
Calling it censorship is partisan bullshit
Censorship is not what the UK is doing. It's trying to stop kids looking at Porn because Porn is bad for women and that's bad for society. (Argue that point all you like, you'll still be wrong.)
So something needs to be done since nobody is attempting to legislate against porn, or control porn. And nobody is trying to address the rapid collapse of respect for women globally.
So what do we do about that?
UK Gov tried age controls. It was dumb, malformed, ill informed etc. But it isn't censorship, it's incompetence. Governments are good at that.
In my opinion, the 'Senior Speech and Privacy Activist' at the EFF avoided or completely missed the actual issue, picked up an ill informed and partisan political point and ultimately offered no suggestions to solve the problem from any perspective. If I was in charge there, this would be his last day.
Since no one else has any suggestions as to how to fix this - and Governments definitely won't figure it out - I have one: Stand up for women. Tell your kids, friends, colleagues and politicians to stand up for women. And don't stop telling them. This is the fight of our age.
Re: Calling it censorship is partisan bullshit
Porn is a plague, the rot of civilisation - so half measures won’t do. Every citizen must be fitted with biometric chastity locks at puberty, with arousal levels monitored in real time by the Ministry of Morality. Only those granted an Offspring Licence may access VR training modules in state-approved positions, under strict supervision.
The rest will undergo quarterly Arousal Audits, with neighbours encouraged to report suspicious moans, sighs, or prolonged bathroom visits. Any deviation means ration cuts, housing downgrades, and mandatory re-education in Corrective Intimacy Centres.
Naturally, exceptions must be made for the nation’s elites. They will be permitted access to controlled adult entertainment zones - designated islands where they can indulge freely, far from the eyes of the common citizen. After all, safeguarding is for the masses, not for those tasked with ruling them.
The p*rn that I watch has no women in it. If any appear, I promptly switch to something else.
Me too. If it's not a steam train I lose interest.
Re: Calling it censorship is partisan bullshit
Im sure the woman who make thousands every week on the likes of Only Friends would oppose that statement
Re: Calling it censorship is partisan bullshit
You say that "Since no one else has any suggestions as to how to fix this" but I disagree.
An awful lot of pornographic and other loathsome content is already barred under existing legislation but with Section 230 in the USA and equivalent "Get out of jail free" cards available to Faecesbook and the letter formerly known as Twatter in the UK and elsewhere enabling them to pretend that they're not publishers the law is largely unenforceable (even were PC Plod to be capable or interested in doing anything about it).
I agree that an awfully large amount of pornographic content is poisoning society (as is "social" media and the use of "AI" LLMs) and should be prevented from general circulation (yes, there will always be people who use TOR to access disgusting material but most of the gen pop can't be bothered with anything that requires pressing more than a button) through the removal of publishers such as Meta from the current get-out. Give them a week of massive fines for every single infringement and they'll either stop business in the UK (a good thing IMO) or actually start doing something about the problem. Rachel from Accounts would probably also be happy with this as there's a large hole in the public finances that needs filling and you've got to start somewhere.
"This includes [1]footage of police attacking pro-Palestinian protestors being blocked on X"
I'm not sure if the editor intended to mis-state, but the linked 'footage' on Kiera Diss's account isn't police attacking pro-Palestinian protestors; it's police flattening an anti-migrant protestor who had been shouting at the pro-Palestine mob up in a tree behind him.
https://x.com/KieraDiss/status/1948804332960579816
[1] https://x.com/BenBarryJones/status/1948839759356572012
Seems to let right wing propaganda thought though
Presumably a feature not a bug ?
Odd for a Labour government;
They already know
If I log into Reddit, for instance using a third party service, eg. a gmail or apple account, surely they already know my date of birth? I'm not going to send my passport to some sketchy company out of the country I haven't heard of. The first rule of internet safety was always don't send sensitive information to an untrusted third party.
"adult content providers"
I love how far we all go to avoid the word "PORN".
It's PORN.
PORN.
If you're an actual adult, you should be able to deal with the word.