The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law
wired.com
wired.com
> Companies, from Big Tech down to smaller platforms and messaging apps, will need to comply with a long list of new requirements, starting with age verification for their users. (Wikipedia, the eighth-most-visited website in the UK, has said it won’t be able to comply with the rule because it violates the Wikimedia Foundation’s principles on collecting data about its users.)
How would one verify age without checking personal identity.
(And who would use a service which involves identification.)
It doesn't take much effort to find things the British establishment won't want kids seeing even though kids talk about them in school playgrounds (or at least we did when I was last in a school a bit over 23 years ago).
For example, I was given a summary of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by some girl in the same class as me when I was 8 or 9.
And even as an adult, you really don't want to see a real photograph of a newborn with anencephaly, which Wikipedia did have when I was first looking up the condition.
The point of Wikipedia — that it can be edited at any time — absolutely makes it impossible to survive any age rating system other than "adults only".
But fuck that shit. Sure some information is unpleasant (and frankly an image-free wikipedia would be very convenient for some queries), but trying to prevent this with age restrictions is just not the way to go. Trying to prevent this from reaching the school playground is like restricting kids to keep them from scraping their knee, it's futile and likely more harmful than beneficial.
Our world is a big complex mess and people have uglier souls than I'd like; the transition from innocent childhood to the adult realisation of this should be… kind and sympathetic, not just the equivalent of throwing someone in the deep end of a pool to teach them to swim.
Extremely on-brand for the UK.
Oh but when it's news at dinner time showing dead children and weapons firing on and on it's all fine, I guess?
2) I don't know what the rules are for broadcasts at different times of day, but I do know they exist
3) I have always been perplexed as to why violence is considered so much more acceptable than, for example, sexuality. Outright murder? Apparently a suitable topic for children's shows. Nipples, which are the defining characteristic of the class Mammalia to which we belong? Hide them all! Unless it's a famous statue (then it's Classical Art), or a man's vestigial ones (then it's so unremarkable nobody even says anything).
Edit: there was an IG account posting solely picture of nipples, male and female, cropped so it was hard to ascertain the sex of the photographed person.
It existed purely to mess with the IG censorship rules. I don’t recall the name of the account but I think it was a genius idea.
Whereas with wikipedia, unless a dedicated team of editors who are contracted or liable to vet _every_ change. Possibly only for the UK, who get a special 'only with vetted edits' version or some such, I don't think wikipedia would be interested in making such a thing.
Separate from that, wikipedia has various pages on (conditions related to) our sexual organs, as well as lots of articles about politically contentious things. I don't think they are particularly interested in filtering that either.
In contrast to news channels, most of which would have no particular complaints about a bunch of rules about content. As a rule your 9'o clock news isn't going to just casually show frontal nudity (except e.g. Germany because they're fine with it).
One obvious problem is all those words in single quotes: Who gets to decide? Evidently you aren't happy with whomever decided how far you can go with the content shown on the news, and I concur that it goes quite far. But the point isn't about the current standards being applied. The point is whether _any_ standard can be applied at all.
To news: Yes. To wikipedia: Not in a way wiki foundation would accept.
A few other Wikipedias including the Turkish one work in that exact manner.
I would note that there are such things as "children's encyclopaedias"; I might have had an earlier edition of this one myself as a kid: https://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Illustrated-Encyclopedia-DK...
(I wonder if they still put in the cartoon of the Aztec Blood Sacrifice?)
there have been displays on the news even recently of people who find the Arts unacceptable because they may depict genitals (Greek Urns, Renaissance Statues etc.),
so easily you will find around voices that could respond recommending that children be protected from exposure to the Arts.
(And - ironically - not from the obscenity of those very voices.)
The Tories are obsessed with weakening privacy and data protection laws. It's part pro-business/anti-consumer ideology, part dislike of the EU and its goals and a large dash of corruption. See for example giving away NHS data to Palantir, a company literally funded by the CIA.
True, but from the quoted article:
> I'm not sure I've seen anything by way of potential legislation that's had as broadly based a political consensus behind it.
I'm afraid I don't expect anything to change if Labour win the next general election.
I assume it will also be possible to provide a single use proof of age without revealing identity with this kind of system.
I do not get at all why 3rd party companies would be allowed to do something like this. If I need a way to give a digital proof of something like this, I'd much rather have my government handle it.
Governments increasingly use services from private companies: they have specific capabilities and they get access to specific personal information.
> If I need a way to give a digital proof of something like this, I'd much rather have my government handle it
Your government, and your view of your government, and your guesses about your future governments, may vary.
Labour pledged to "toughen" the "weakened and gutted" online safety bill (now the act) [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pl...
Edit: clarification.
I'm sure this will be run by unqualified buddies of politicians with nice juicy contracts
None of these have coherent entities behind them.
Also looks like the UK is about as bad a place to host something as mainland China.
When you finance the source you relatively openly promote the source.
The two activities are dissimilar.
Since when, in human history, was this an implicit critical assumption in anyone's mind?
> The two activities are dissimilar.
Yes they are different activities. The point is still: Wikipedia doesn't worry about integrating with systems that require you to be identified. (Actually, internet is another such system, you can't use it without providing some form of ID in probably most countries.)
Since we discovered Dignity, that has been a fundamental tenet.
(Yes there are also many occasions «in human history» when the principle got instantiated for protection against the ignorant and the malevolent.)
> The point is still: Wikipedia doesn't worry about integrating with systems that require you to be identified
The point is not with the occasional use of those systems in special cases (e.g. donations), but with systematic use in fruition.
So unless you are trolling you would be able to give a rough year or decade when it became an implicit assumption and why exactly, right? ;)
> The point is not with the occasional use of those systems in special cases (e.g. donations), but with systematic use in fruition.
No, the point is "But if Wikimedia is taking broad approach to enforcing their principles, they would refuse to interface with such a privacy destroying service anyway" and frankly your new goalposts are not of much interest to anyone
«But if Wikimedia is taking broad approach to enforcing their principles, they would refuse to interface with such a privacy destroying service anyway»
You replied
«Wikipedia don't refuse to interface with privacy destroying payment systems required to collect donations. They will be fine»
You were replied with observations that attempt to explain to you why your comment is out of context, and try to show you the point:
-- normal people, i.e. dignified people, and prudent people, refuse to be tracked in their consumption of information.
-- Wikipedia seems to be aware of the above.
-- Wikipedia seems to be unavailable to enforce «privacy destroying service[s]», there where relevant: consumption of information.
-- Wikipedia also accepts donations, and the process may involve tracking that somebody promotes Wikipedia financially. This is completely different from tracking individuals in their consumption of information, so it is irrelevant in that context. That an entity accepts non-anonymous donations does not imply anything about the approach such entity holds about the treatment of privacy of its users, of the fruition of its specific services.
You seemed to advance that «Wikipedia don't refuse to interface with privacy destroying payment systems required to collect donations» as in «They will be fine [in employing other «privacy destroying service[s]»]»: no, they may not, that is not good reasoning, because one thing is accepting donations, another is revealing which specific services your customers used - for example, whether they read a page about Kennedy or about Oswald.
Spend the required effort when reading posts.
If you authenticate with OAuth, the OAuth server doesn't get to know what particular subresources you visit. It only gets to know which URL initiated the authentication (and whether it tracks even that is an open implementation question).
In other words sure Wikipedia can tell government what pages you visit, but to say that this law does enable that or require that even as a side effect is pure FUD.
Then the Identity Provider would have information about personal identity (to verify age) and information about who is requesting it. This is still www access without privacy.
> too quick to claim victory
What are you talking about. There are good reasons to guess that readers may be generally reading these as ghastly news, far from any sense of "victory".
I think the problem is exactly that one possible solution is a third party that everyone has to trust with their personal data.
The way thinks work in this country that might mean that a friend of an influential MP sets up a new company as we speak that then will be chosen as the one and only service provider for this verification. For a considerable fee of course. This friend will then find an acquaintance who has worked for a consultancy at some point who will then hire a (maybe British) company to implement the service, they will outsource it to a much cheaper (probably not British) company to implement it. Provided that no one except for the outsourcing company has any idea what they are doing and the money is siphoned off to the Virgin Islands already it might take a while to get the service started and then it does not work.
At this time the government will notice that not only their money is gone, they have to pay more to even get it started and from then on the long chain of contractors need a lot of money on a yearly basis to keep it running.
This is the moment where they turn and explain to the public that from now on they have to pay to use the internet.
Remind you this is a country that only since one year requires identification to vote in elections. But everyone is now supposed to register with a third party probably non government institution to access the internet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They only consolation is that they probably won’t get it off the ground in the foreseeable future.
Wait, you could have internet connection (land line or mobile) without IDing yourself in the UK before? But how would you pay for it?
But just use same logic, surely you can ask someone else to validate age for you when you register just like you could use someone else's connection. Maybe even there will be grey market for this
Just like one can auth without checking password. Ever heard of OAuth?
The problem as I see it is not about government gatekeeping stuff (they already can do it if they want and we can already bypass it if we want, like literally nothing will change) but that third-party sites that profile users can now also add "of age" to fingerprints.
In your block message, make it very clear (a) exactly why the site is blocked, (b) what legal routes people can take (petition their MP etc), and (c) how to get around the block by technical means.
I don't necessarily agree we need this, but to claim it's impossible to do this in a secure way is ridiculous.
You request a one-time-certificate with a smartphone, then copy it on a laptop (already this is not automatic): once per website or page? That is a lot of certification requests. And that would be to access the content in the www? It creates a dependency stronger than DNS. And there should be full warranty that the issuer and the receiver cannot cross information (of the issued and the received - that would identify the user).
Plus, not everybody has a smartphone. Not everyone accepts Android or iOS at their current implementations. Do those people remain without access to the www?
Last week I logged into my e-gov website by confirming a push notification on my authenticator app that's tied to my e-ID card to download my birth certificate. No copy pasting needed. Random websites now even support logging in without passwords by using your smartphone passkeys.
I am sure they can make it work for a simple yes/no (over 18) challenge-request scenario.
> Plus, not everybody has a smartphone. Not everyone accepts Android or iOS at their current implementations. Do those people remain without access to the www?
We are talking about adult content. The alternative is having that content banned. Many democratic countries have already done that, like South Korea. I don't prefer this scenario.
I wonder if there is any chance that British courts would say this goes against basic human rights. I have no idea if there is a "set" of basic rights like the Amendments in the US Constitution.
Wow. Is this more like China, or more like 1984?
I dream of heads of state being prosecuted for "false communication [i.e. communicating something the sender knows to be untrue]".
So this is just pure and simple censoring. And certainly against free speech.
"Prime minister (etc.), you called X "Y" even though it seems Y is not the case. Did you knowingly disseminate what you know was not true?"
I am pointing to the fact that you can witness the practice of lying quite frequently from quite high chairs. I would not mind those crimes (as always justified under the idea of a "greater good", just like this law) to be assessed.
This will get used against joe random who cannot mount a proper defense and does not have the same social capital to defend himself.
... political disinformation with the potential to undermine democracy.
If so, politicians knowingly misleading people in significant ways might run afoul of it. ;)
ah fantasies
(i'm not in the uk so even more fantasy)
.
1. Ask for a credit card number...
Yeah, first hole through this is that all children can get a gift card credit card even if the child is below the majority contract age and that does indeed transform to a real credit card.
2. Ask for state IDs...
Similar problems, as most covert state agencies rely upon holes in state ID systems for stage craft purposes.
An easier solution would be to lock out government users from ] accessing all these sites....has the added bonus of really identifying the children in this conversation about identity and equal access to knowledge.
Politicians who don't consult experts and listen to their advice make fools of themselves. But sadly the consequences of poor laws is that real people will get minced up by ill informed regulation and enforcement programs.
Trying to portray it as a serious response is pretty dishonest. :/
"Make changes we specify to your products, otherwise we will use our new powers under the Online Safety Act to require you to perform impossible feats."
If they ever actually invoke the new powers, it will mean the bill has failed.
How about a playground or park, should you be a certain age to use one, do you need to prove identity to do so also?
Censorship by way of restriction of resources. A cheap shot that will cost dearly in many ways, and far into the future - perhaps this is the kind of bill that guarantees an explosion of revolt in the future.
John Carpenter's "They Live" anyone?
I set up a Matrix homeserver for comms between me and my wife semi-recently. Thank you.
I also expect this law will be revised or just fizzle out eventually anyway like previous impractical digital "laws" made in the UK.
Wouldn't the double criminality rule protect you, at least as long as the US doesn't pass an equivalent law?
I mean shit, if this is the level of crime that entails extradition the airlines are going to be rich.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_trea...
They only seem to mention that technologies exist... what technologies? Can I pop up a porn modal asking if the user is over 18? Do I need to pay for some third party to handle ID scanning (who will definitely be breached within 10 years, even if I could afford it)? Do I have to process and store more PII than I ever wanted to?
Honestly despite being from and in the UK I might just start blocking UK users lmao. Dumbass law.
Lawmakers rarely specify the how. That is left up to the interpretation of companies, regulators, and courts. When sensible, this is a hedge against technological change, but obviously it can be and is abused to create atmospheres of fear for the risk averse.
More discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38044973
Good to know. But 90% is about royal powers.
> [Dupe]
Same topic, not the same article.
An easy test the sanity of measures to combat "misinformation" is to mentally replace that term with "fake news"
Sorry could you point to the referenced passage?
> After the worst of the pandemic was over, those same falsehoods fed into other conspiracy theories that continue to disrupt society. The original white paper that was the bill’s foundation included proposals for compelling platforms to tackle this kind of content—which individually might not be illegal but which en masse creates dangers. That’s not in the final legislation, although the act does create a new offense of “false communications,” criminalizing deliberately causing harm by communicating something the sender knows to be untrue. [...] The act includes strict rules forcing platforms to move swiftly to remove any illegal post—such as terrorist content or child sexual abuse material—but not on disinformation campaigns comprised of a drip-drip of misleading content, failing to understand that “when that turns into things going viral and spreading, then the harm can occur cumulatively.”
In the article, "other conspiracy theories" is a link to an article discussing people who oppose 15-minute cities, apparently because they regard that level of city planning as excessively authoritarian. It definitely seems to be true that the "opposition" here is complaining this bill did not yet give the government remit to ban "misinformation" and "disinformation", which is indeed depressing. I often wonder whether most such people really believe broad categories like this, which historically encompass everything from legitimately insane conspiracy theories to true facts about the world that the ruling class finds annoying, are something the government should be cracking down on...are they not aware "public order" is the excuse every regime has used to suppress speech?
There are very valid criticisms of the "15 minute city" including the widespread surveillance required to enforce certain proposed traffic restrictions (by personally identifying drivers and only allowing access to some areas at certain times). Councils and national governments in the UK have long abused data gathering to the detriment of its citizens. Unfortunately the Guardian and its ilk have derided critics of these plans as far right extremists and conspiracy theories.
If you have valid criticisms of the traffic filter trial in Oxford then that's fair enough, although I imagine Oxonians won't be particularly interested in hearing it unless you're a local resident.
But 15-minutes cities aren't about traffic restrictions. I might be wrong but this seems like people are conflating low traffic zones (which can involve the kind of automated system to limit traffic that you seem to refer to) with 15 minutes cities, which is an idea in urban planning to decentralize services (the "15 minutes" is intended as "you can reach anything you need every day with 15 minutes of walk", not "you won't be allowed to travel more than 15 minutes")
It has absolutely nothing to do with traffic filtering or traffic restrictions, and this is simply misinformation (sadly, misinformation perpetuated by the political party with a majority in the United Kingdom). Nobody is going to be confined to a distance-based-radius of their home, and anyone stupid enough to believe this is a damning indictment of the UK's education system.
You're talking about the "15 minute city" conspiracy theory[0,1], which posits that the design of cities such that amenities are available within a 15 minute walk from citizens (in other words, built for pedestrians rather than cars) is, in reality, an authoritarian plot to restrict freedom of movement and control people en masse, often linked with COVID conspiracy theories which implied pandemic measures were simply a pretext by a cabal of global elites to stage a world takeover.
How is that not a "far-right conspiracy theory?" It's literally every other "new world order" conspiracy theory promulgated by the far right, just applied to whatever new thing Twitter and Reddit decide is a globalist plot this week.
[0]https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-15-minute-city-conspir...
[1]https://www.wired.com/story/15-minute-city-conspiracy-uk-pol...
I'm more than 95% sure that you, a Hacker News commenter, do not have a non-compliant vehicle in the UK which you "need" to visit London, which has the best public transport in Europe. So why spread this FUD except to make it harder to enact these policies to clean the air?
Why, just why, are people against clean air? "Yes, but not like that!"
> councils implementing 15-minute city-aligned schemes which also limit movement.
Just where does this come from. If you want to visit or live in a city, then you appreciate density. Private cars are anathema to density. The logic is not hard.
"ULEZ making travel more expensive" - isn't that what people who claim to love freedom so often want, free markets which adjust things based on monetary incentives?
[1] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/fuel-news/chancellor-facing...
I caveat this with the statement that, were I dictator, all cities would be 15 minute cities, and I would bulldoze all subdivisions and American-style suburbs, which I regard as ridiculous encroachments on my preferred rural home.
And for the record, I tend to agree with the majority of the proposals anyway, but I can still object to the extremely bad faith response to locals exercizing their democratic right to question them. And confused at the number of people who will openly say "fuck cars" and explicitly advocate for making driving more difficult (as a primary goal), then claim it's a conspiracy to say they ever supported that
Those people don’t necessarily believe in COVID vaccine chips and whatnot; their logic, pretty straightforwardly, is that it makes you depend on the government for movement.
Even though I am a staunch opponent of sprawling suburbia and I love a dense walkable city with functioning transport, I have to admit that they have a point.
It’s true that I can’t recall any relevant examples that align with their opinion. Plenty well-planned walkable cities with in democratic regions, and plenty sprawl and chaotic traffic jam hells in dictatorships. Yet I can think of a few recent examples where control over public transportation was used to suppress protests.
To dismiss their argument out of hand and refuse to empathise is to unnecessarily expand an already deep gap.
You already depend on the government for building and maintaining the roads and the traffic lights and all accoutrements, the government can already close roads and restrict you. Public transport doesn't need to be government provided, it can be privatised (although this works badly in the UK). You also depend on the government in various ways for food and water and electricity - from land use and transport to crime prevention to upholding trade and food safety requirements and the value of currency; everyone in a city does, at least. Picking the car as the important thing for "freedom" is a ... weird one. And doesn't address the idea of "freedom from having to have a car".
> "Yet I can think of a few recent examples where control over public transportation was used to suppress protests."
"The PMLN-led federal and Punjab governments have closed several roads leading to Islamabad from various Punjab cities and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province in an effort to stop PTI activists from marching on Islamabad."[3] - there's control over the roads used to suppress something or other (I don't know what PTI activists are, but I'm assuming this isn't in the middle of a war because that probably wouldn't be using shipping containers and talking of 'activists').
What about the COVID lockdowns preventing people from going outside at all? Having a car didn't give you freedom then, and public transport wasn't involved. What about The UK[2] making it legal for the police to shut down protests because the protestors might walk slowly down roads - no control over public transport needed to stop the protest (and on the flip side, car drivers depending on the government to keep cars moving).
In Paris: "Every first Sunday of the month is the new car-free day in Paris. It's an initiative appreciated by many Parisians, who have fallen under the spell of a capital free of motorized vehicles and noise pollution. The capital's first four arrondissements are closed to car traffic on one Sunday a month."[1] - more showing that governments can shut roads and therefore car drivers are dependent on the government for freedom of movement, as well as public transport users are.
[1] https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/news/in-paris/articles/17562... -
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/15/police-to-get-...
[3] https://dailytimes.com.pk/940632/govt-closes-all-roads-leadi...
That is absolutely correct. I use the fact that a car owner would still rely on the government to plan and maintain private road infrastructure as my main counter-argument to those people, with varying success.
This "consequently" is quite a jump and doing a lot of heavy lifting in jumping from policies that are completely neutral to "authoritarianism" to something where a discussion about the implications makes sense
There's nothing benefiting authoritarianism in having efficient public transport and walkable cities. And I fail to see how decrying these policies as authoritarian will help anything.
Especially since the end result seems to be (in the UK's case) the central government planning (or at least posturing) to crack down on local governments' ability to develop their own urban policy. If I had to choose between "being able to walk to the dentist" and "central government threatening the independence of local governments" I'd go with the latter as being more worthy of worry about authoritarianism
A separate conversation can be had about restricting private vehicles should such a restriction occur.
I can maybe see the point when talking about limited traffic zones. But the discussion here was about: 1. Reducing the need (not opportunity or freedom, need) to travel 2. Making public transport more effective
Neither of those is a restriction on cars. Nothing stops you from owning a car even though you don't need it and nothing stops you from using it even if it's inconvenient or unnecessary
I didn't see the point in answering to this comment earlier but since we're here:
> real estate is limited, so the choice between 7-lane road sprawl and walkable 1 or 2 lane streets—sometimes bus-only, sometimes shared with pedestrians, inevitably with heavy restrictions on speed and plenty of traffic lights—is binary
1. Traffic lights or speed bumps do not restrict cars, they restrict their convenience maybe, and they definitely restrict their ability to cause property damage and maimings around them. But you can still own and use your car, you're just not being subsidized as much by the rest of the community in doing so 2. Real estate is indeed limited. In the space you wasted for a 7 lane street plus the parking required you could have had a 2 lane street and an extra building used for apartments, offices, shops or an extra park or both. If making it mildly more uncomfortable to drive a car is a restriction on freedom on movement (your logic, not mine) then making it more expensive to have an apartment (because of reduced supply) and increasing the chance of getting injured by exposure to exhaust fumes or directly by car crashes is an infringement on the right to life itself
Obviously both of those statements are moronic. Making life better for those who don't want to own a car (or can't afford to) is not a restrictions on cars. If people decide that owning a car isn't worth it anymore for them then that's not coercion, it's showing that people were being "forced" into owning a car before when they didn't need to need it
The same government that issues you your driving license in the first place, and sets the standards for examining folks with a provisional license, and determining when licenses are revoked?
It's a bizarre argument in any case given many areas in the UK have public transport provided by private companies.
The very same indeed! Their logic is that license indicates your ability to use roads safely, and is not the means for preventing you from using the roads or owning cars. Presumably, they trust the government on that.
> It's a bizarre argument in any case given many areas in the UK have public transport provided by private companies.
I suspect those companies have to work with local governments—or can you, as a private company, just go around unilaterally setting up bus lanes, bus stops, railways and so on?
I know smart, very adequate people who point out that the automobile, and the planning and building it requires, is a device that benefits authoritarianism. Without it, people are free to walk or ride a horse wherever they feel like, but the automobile makes them dependent on government to be able to get around. And any government that lets them get around could stop them getting around, whenever they feel like it.Good luck walking or riding a horse hundreds of kilometres in one day—or, in fact, just daily commuting to the other side of a typical modern city that was planned for cars almost exclusively.
Ever since about 1215, I'd say
I doubt that any nation has an unchallengeable claim to "moral highground".
However, if the UK had any plausible claim to leadership in democracy, education, or public policy, we can consider the Online Safety Act to be the formal end.
A bill said "to protect children" presented with a language for children.