If you:
* have a forum or blog that allows readers to see each other's comments
And
* are based in the UK or have users in the UK
Then (the UK government thinks that) the UK online safety act applies to you and you could be fined £18 million+ for ignoring it.
If you’re a blog with a small number of UK users, you’re not obviously appealing to children, and you haven’t allowed people to upload arbitrary images / video / files to your other users, then the realistic odds are you’ll be at no more actual risk here than you are / were from the cookie law or the GPDR.
This law sucks for so many reasons, and is inane, but the risk to micro-bloggers of £18M+ fines is, in reality, nil.
A little naivety methinks. You should say rather
... the risk to micro-bloggers of £18M+ fines is, in reality, nil. ...should the bloggers not publish opinions contrary to the state and its current objectives.
The previous and current UK government have also been steadily hacking away at UK citizen's right to peaceful protest. But I think that it is a different issue, and it doesn't help to conflate the two.
I can't come close to agreeing. The same minister pushing this, who is by his own admission semi literate and can't understand very basic concepts, has basically no understanding of technology (or indeed expertise in any area), has made no secret of the fact this is about censoring online speech he personally does not like[1]. He is a paid up yes man deep in the pockets of companies selling low effort AI solutions to governments for the purposes of enforcing speech[2] who wants, all said and done, to shut down twitter/X because people express opinions there he doesn't like. This has almost literally nothing to do with the old fashioned pearl clutching "think of the children". So much so he's going around holding anyone with reasonable opposition to this bill for child sexual assault, future, past and present[3]. This is obvious overcompensatory zeal. And it is week one.
What he has not done is engage earnestly with legitimate concerns about privacy and the bill. And he never will.
[1] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-peter-ky... | https://archive.is/Snw7y
[2] https://news.starknakedbrief.co.uk/p/we-need-to-talk-about-s...
I despise Farage. But I think equating him with Savile because he didn't agree with a bill, was totally unacceptable and Farage deserves an apology (probably the only time I am ever going to say that).
Everyone else is so great and the UK's been doing well under their "we're great and Farage is the enemy of this paradise continuing"?
However many of the challenges the UK is facing come from the fur-lined, ocean going balls-up that is Brexit. And Farage was the main architect of Brexit. And that is just for starters.
I don't know how to reconcile that with other countries doing fine on their own two feet (especially when that country has very much done fine on its own feet before)
Hold my beer.
I believe it applies equally to text as to images / video / files.
>This law sucks for so many reasons, and is inane, but the risk to micro-bloggers of £18M+ fines is, in reality, nil.
Agreed. But small companies could face substantial fines. Whether any small companies are prosecuted remains to be seen.
The intent of this (admittedly, bad) legislation is stated on its face… it is going to, in reality, fail utterly in protecting children from pornographic media while at the same time failing utterly to protect children from being [ab]used in pornographic media, and it will fail to do so spectacularly because it’s chosen the wrong approach a priori, but I don’t think it’s reasonably portrayed as a great threat to the texting freedoms of small blogs and forum users, either.
If you live in the UK, don't.
At some point this line of thinking is like refusing to drive because driving a car is risking unlimited fines and years in jail... In fact driving a car is probably riskier that ignoring this law if you're not in the UK.