Everything the right - and the left – are getting wrong about the Online Safety Act (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 4 days ago by Olap@lemmy.world to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

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Dubbed the UK censorship act these days, will it survive the political backlash we are witnessing? Will big tech work to get it right rather than cut off the UK? Can the UK put a stopper back in the bottle? Is this really about social media when it is pornhub doing the blocking? No mention of the fediverse in this article either sadly, but a good read nevertheless. And he has got something right: the US megas have been extreme amplifiers. But Pornhub is Canadian

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[-] ctry21@sh.itjust.works 8 points 4 days ago

Also in the guardian today is an article on how the combo of proscribing Palestine Action and introducing the online safety act is causing platforms to censor information about Gaza. His counter-argument in this article is that Meta were censoring information on Palestine already, but Meta had always been overzealous in their content moderation, now it's every platform.

He says in this that he's worried being too specific would be more authoritarian but I would say the opposite is true - if what needs censoring is too vague, platforms are gonna be extreme in what they block and put behind age verification because the fines are so high. And vague guidance can be used to justify blocking anything. It only entrenches big tech further because small sites can't afford the age verification or the risk of a £10 million fines.

this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025

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