Online Safety Act – shutdowns and site blocks

> Speaking as a Brit, I wish Wikipedia would just go black for the UK. That might focus some minds.

Likewise. People (organisations/companies), as far as possible, shouldn't be pandering to this stuff, it's not the answer, it doesn't help them or us.

In fact that would likely devastate Labour’s already slim chances of reelection. And would make the argument for repealing that idiotic law wholesale something else than “let my constituents watch porn”

Even if they don't, maybe go black for all weekends.

Or you can simply block people under 18 from the museum. That's what Hungary did - no minors allowed in places where homosexuality could be on display.

I like it - request that greek statues cover up in case children see

We have a near perfect system for finding the location of phone thieves, yet the police will not go and knock on the doors of criminals even when explicitly shown proof of "this is where the thief is currently".

I always hear this but it seems to mostly be made up? Like yeah, there’s crime in London, but less than in most European or American cities… seems like a narrative that keeps being pushed without merit

They don't want you to be able to talk about their incompetence or organize protests.

I think maybe if people stopped fear mongering about crime where there is no actually massive raise of crime, there would be overall less paranoia.

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The idea that the uk is a remotely dangerous country is probably why it's now seeing more and more nanny state laws. It's also probably part of why Brexit happened.

sites have been allowed to estimate age based on account age and digital fingerprinting.

They didn't block it. The site owners have chosen to not show the site to UK users for Legal Reasons.

If I am right it is the opposite. It's because website owners block the UK IP addresses, as otherwise they could face criminal charges unless they buy an expensive compliance-as-a-service solution to check the age of all visitors and hire lawyers to craft "compliance policy" Ofcom can read. Otherwise you have a criminal liability.

Think it as a bit like GDPR but 1) much more expensive 2) with criminal liability 3) Makes even less sense than GDPR as it does nothing to prevent harm for minors 4) derimental for user experience and users.

"Funnily enough" the companies who lobbied for Online Safety Act, and former Ofcom employees, are now selling age verification check services and compliance services related to Online Safety Act. They have pretty good profit margins there, making even Google and Facebook look poor.

More here:

https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209

Lobsters hasn't been blocked here in the UK.

Under the main link (the big, bold one) there is a link to what precisely has been blocked. Apparently, it's enough for them to just geoblock specific subreddits, like: dark humour, bowel surgeries, some porn stuff, etc.

True, but certianly doesn't make me feel any better about it. If we started getting school shootings in the UK, and someone said ah but the US has that too, I wouldn't feel much better.

I think it is based on tags, so if you tag stuff as NSFW then you get an age challenge.

The Reddit link works fine with old.reddit. New Reddit has always required an account for nsfw subs.

On this note, how does this work? Do they terminate TLS now?

Judging from how most of the reports are phrased, the shutdowns and blocks are initiated by the content providers. Some are for legal reasons, some because they are legitimately concerned that they may be covered by the act, and some to protest the act. Those who are claiming that the government shut down these sites are spreading disinformation. It is more accurate to describe it as a chilling effect.