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As lawmakers in America continue to consider potential kids’ online safety proposals, a warning sign from Europe has emerged that every American needs to consider. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, while no doubt crafted with good intentions, is already creating a dystopian censorship regime that would make North Korea blush.
The law is leading to unintended consequences that are undermining its own mission, rendering it wildly ineffective. It is a worst case scenario that threatens not only freedom of speech and the welfare of everyone, but is a flashing red warning sign for those considering similar legislation here in America.
The law, designed to restrict minors’ access to “harmful content,” requires every website operating in the UK to verify users’ ages with a government ID. But what qualifies as harmful content is so poorly defined that it has swept in pizza delivery apps, journalism on current events, and even Spotify, Xbox, and potentially Wikipedia. Forums for those recovering from addiction, abuse, or other traumatic events also fall under the act, meaning people seeking help online will now have a harder time finding it. Alcoholics Anonymous? Likely harmful content.
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To add insult to injury, the act is also demonstrably ineffective. Within 24 hours of taking effect, UK users discovered that many verification schemes could be bypassed with nothing more than video game screenshots, or circumvented entirely in seconds with a VPN. As VPN use skyrocketed and users sought to avoid exposing their personal information to bad actors, many were driven away from once safe online forums and into the murkiest corners of the net. The result is that using the Internet today is far less safe than before the Act.
If this does not alarm you, consider that the UK government can wield its newly found censorship power however and against whomever it wishes. Given the already spotty state of free speech in many parts of Europe, including some where citizens can be arrested for a tweet, this law is an unnerving power grab. It takes little imagination to picture how such powers can be weaponized for nefarious political ends.
Thankfully, the United States is not Europe, and this law here would clearly be unconstitutional thanks to our First Amendment. Still, that has not deterred some in Washington and even in South Carolina from pushing UK style age verification laws anyway. Lawmakers may mean well, but good faith is not enough when the effect is to erode rights and push children into more dangerous online spaces. There may not be a perfect fix yet, every proposal has loopholes and flaws, but we must find a solution that truly protects children while upholding the mission, instead of making the root cause worse.
The disastrous Online Safety Act should serve as a cautionary tale of big government overreach that stifles innovation, damages the economy, and threatens our most fundamental freedoms.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Jackson Gosnell is a political and news commentator from Greenville, South Carolina. He has built a growing media platform that reaches thousands daily through TikTok and national outlets including Fox News, Inside Edition, and NewsNation.
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1 comment
The law is overzealous, and ineffectual at the same time? So you’re saying the thing you don’t like is both weak and strong? Ironically, allowing (or more appropriately in today’s time, expecting) sites to self-regulate and ban bad actors from using their webpage would largely prevent governments from having to step in to curb hate.
Vivek can’t even post a picture of his kids in their Halloween costumes without the hordes of Trump Youths and Young Republicans “being boys” or whatever you guys say to defend vile hate nowadays. But hey, that’s the price of “free speech absolutism”, if you are even remotely non-Aryan you can expect to get dogged on relentlessly.
I’ve always compared the far right to edgy teenagers fighting against the tyranny of mom telling them to clean their own room. The moment the “dictator” is gone it’s just nothing but knee deep fast food containers and soda bottles with a little path carved out between the computer and the bathroom.