https://www.theadvocates.org/a-license-for-that/
A License for That?
- Will online safety cost us our digital liberties?
Jake Scott
Published in Personal Liberty – 5 mins – Aug 11
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The impacts of a two-year-old law are finally being felt in Britain—and, as the United States looks to pass its own Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), it should watch the unfolding situation with fear.
The Online Safety Act (2023) was passed by the previous Conservative government under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. But the legislative process began in February 2022, under Sunak’s predecessor-but-two, Boris Johnson. Implementation was delayed for an extensive period of time, largely due to controversy and logistics surrounding the law. The Office for Communications (Ofcom) laid out a roadmap for enforcement in October 2024, a full year after the law was passed.
As is usually the case, a law steeped in respectable aims—protecting children from harmful content—has rapidly revealed itself as a nefarious tool of control.
Nobody wants children to view pornographic content. That is hardly a controversial position. Yet so often the tools of authoritarianism are sold under the guise of protection. The echoes of Benjamin Franklin’s warning against sacrificing a little liberty for a little temporary safety ring louder in the Internet era; what was once the digital Wild West has become sanitized, watched, and regulated. And lurking behind the existence of the law itself is the question of who is actually responsible for the content that children view online—the government, the platforms, or—as seems to have been forgotten—their parents?
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Almost the exact same week as the law implementation, the UK saw widespread protests and near-riots in towns such as Epping and Diss, and even in cities like Leeds. These demonstrations, largely led by mothers and local residents over the sexual assault and harassment of young girls by asylum seekers and refugees in nearby hotels, quickly spread, and are still bubbling away in small towns.
Not that you would know this. The Online Safety Act has enabled censorship of footage of such protests on major platforms like X, on the basis that the footage could incite harm or encourage violence. This is not without precedent—the Arab Spring was considered to be the first “digital revolution” due to the role social media played in the spread of the revolution across the MENA region.
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Here we have it. Start from a “good intention” and suddenly we are at “Unintended Consequences”!
Nothing like a “one size fits all” “solution” that just happens to be useful for the Gooferment desire to censor the “news”. Argh!
Of course that’s just a convenient “coincidence”. Yeah, right!
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” Captain Renault in Casablanca
What we see in the UK must not be allowed to “infect” “our” (as if they respond to use as opposed to their donors) politicians and bureaucrats with “good intentions”.
I don’t have solutions but I can see problems when the Gooferment strays outside of its limits.
Maybe “children seeing porn” is a problem for parents to solve?
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Posted by reinkefj 
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