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U.K.’s Online Safety Act Censors the Internet—A Preview of U.S. Proposals | R Street Institute
Ofcom hates SpongeBob GIFs & videos: It even includes “[c]ontent which realistically depicts serious violence against a fictional creature.” Such a definition would not only prohibit minors from accessing historical and newsworthy content about wars—but many episodes of SpongeBob (if posted to social media), including but not limited to “No Weenies Allowed.” This is not
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Could Wikipedia be censored in the UK? | John Lubbock
They spent years and multiple consultations trying to figure out how to do Age Verification, and were repeatedly told that it would have negative consequences for privacy, and be easy to bypass. ‘We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!’ we were told by its supporters. Well, this is the result. Subreddits
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The Facial-Recognition Sham | The Atlantic
Losing anonymous internet access means giving companies and government agencies more power than ever to track our activities online. It means transforming the American conception of the open internet into something reminiscent of the centralized tracking systems we’ve long opposed in China and similar countries. At this moment, the prospect of an internet linked to
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18 days ago: “The main change is only for users in the UK. Version 1.105 introduces legally-required Age Assurance for users in the United Kingdom to access certain moderation settings and DMs”
Reminder: we are currently the only country in the world having this illiberal, misconceived, ignorantly architected stupidity thrust upon us.
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Social media giants face fines for curbing free speech | Telegraph
The act does not reflect how internet platforms have lawfully segregated and controlled access to content for 20+ years, and in attempting to shoehorn their vision onto the extant internet the politicians have broken the UK experience of the internet; but instead they claim: “The Act is not designed to censor political debate and does
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How I believe Terry Pratchett would likely view those activists who promote Age Verification to support the Online Safety Act
I am speculating, of course, but absolutely everybody who has a clue — adults, kids, whomever — is circumventing the age verification controls with a VPN because it’s a one-step fix to a better life, and the wonks who didn’t understand that this would happen, because they were too busy projecting their erroneous presumption of
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Oh this is glorious: Journalist @zoecrowther.bsky.social using Bluesky seeks DMs from people impacted by the Online Safety Act… but impacted people cannot use DM on Bluesky
I mean, great, thanks Zoë, glad to have you investigating. But, yeah, this is kinda the point. Maybe post a Signal handle, instead? Via:
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“If Ofcom decides that Wikipedia is not a Category 1 service, then no further issue will arise” | …Wikipedia OSA Judgement kicked into the long grass
The UK Regulatory infrastructure is working as desired, keeping the Government from having to legislate on hard issues when instead they can blame the regulator… https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedia-Foundation-and-another-v-Secretary-of-State-for-Science-Innovation-and-Technology.pdf See also: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/08/11/wikimedia-foundation-challenges-uk-online-safety-act-regulations
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Chris Stokel-Walker at the Guardian on issues with the Online Safety Act
The Guardian have done a TikTok video edit of Chris’s which lays out the issues quite frankly:
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Five Themes Discussed at Princeton’s Workshop on Decentralized Social Media – Freedom to Tinker – THIS NEEDS A PROPER ANALYSIS
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2024/03/19/five-themes-discussed-at-princetons-workshop-on-decentralized-social-media/
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Bristol LibDems: “Following the lead of @liberal_reform, we are submitting an emergency motion to the Young Liberals conference, aiming to make the **repeal** of the Online Safety Act official policy”
I am mildly concerned about the upstream thread and its framing, but at least this could turn into the first serious pushback against the OSA: Hadrian’s Firewall will be breached. We will not remain silent, nor will we allow our party to do so.
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