The UK’s new online safety laws are already a disaster

The UK’s new Online Safety Act, which was implemented on July 25, is already a disaster. There’s plenty to criticise about the stated aims of the act, which is primarily intended to prevent under-18s from accessing pornography and content related to self-harm, eating disorders and suicide. Not only is it a privacy nightmare, but as writer Eli Cugini argued in Dazed earlier this week, it risks exacerbating “a punishment and surveillance-heavy sexual culture”, which makes children more vulnerable to harm in the first place. As campaigners have warned, the act is already putting sex workers’ lives at risk by removing their online adverts and forcing them into dangerous situations. 

These problems are the result of the legislation working as it’s supposed to, but we have already seen a number of unintended effects (or maybe not so unintended, depending on how cynical you are about the government’s motives). On July 29, I tried to read a tweet by the Palestinian activist and No Other Land filmmaker Basel Adra, in which he paid tribute to his colleague Awdah Hathaleen, who had just been murdered by an Israeli settler. There was nothing graphic about the post itself or the accompanying image (a shot of Owdra and Hathaleen together in Italy), but I was blocked from viewing it because I hadn’t verified my age. I don’t believe that under-18s should be shielded from reading about the crimes being committed against Palestinians; I also don’t think that anyone should have to send their government ID to a third-party verification site (or worse, Elon Musk) simply to access factual information.

There were several other examples of content about Palestine being blocked “due to local laws”, including footage from Gaza, and a video of the late chef Anthony Bourdain saying “Palestinians are not statistics”. I don’t think the British government has introduced the act for the primary purpose of censoring information about the genocide in Gaza, but it’s certainly a convenient side effect at a time when it’s doing everything it can to obscure its own complicity. 

The censorious effects of the Online Safety Act go much further than Palestine. “We’re seeing teenagers being prevented from accessing content about sexual health, politics and news. If adults want to see this content, they are forced to prove how old they are with unregulated age verification companies,” says James Baker, Platform Power Programme Manager at Open Rights Group, a digital rights non-profit, tells Dazed. “Meanwhile, small websites are closing down because they are worried about being fined because of these onerous demands. Ofcom needs to take stock of these threats to freedom of expression and parliament needs to reform the Online Safety Act.” The campaign to repeal the act is building: Wikipedia has now launched a legal challenge, which it argues will threaten the privacy and safety of its volunteer contributors and undermine its ability to operate. 

When I asked on Instagram if anyone had been blocked from viewing non-pornographic content, most of the stories involved Reddit. Molly* wanted to know if it was safe to take codeine at the same time as diazepam ahead of a smear test, but the only answer she could find was on R/Drugs, which is now age-gated. A number of people report having been blocked from certain subreddits about being trans, including r/transdiy, a forum for discussions and advice about transitioning without a doctor’s supervision. This approach isn’t ideal, but when the government is rolling back access to gender-affirming care and it can take over five years just to get an appointment at a gender identity clinic, many trans people consider it a necessity. “The DIY subreddit is currently my only source of hormones, and I can’t access it,” says Issy, 28, who is nonbinary transmasculine.

Reddit forums dedicated to sexual health and sexual assault have also been blocked, which doesn’t really make sense considering you can consent to sex at 16 and be the victim of assault or contract an STI at any age. It should go without saying that r/sexualassault is not aimed at would-be rapists looking for tips, but a space where survivors share their experiences, ask for advice and provide each other with emotional support. Preventing young people from accessing content like this isn’t going to make them safer; it’s more likely to have the opposite effect, making them more vulnerable and isolated. 

One of the stated goals of the act is to prevent young people from accessing content related to self-harm, so it’s no surprise that r/selfharm is blocked. But Reddit, maybe to avoid being fined by the government, seems to have made no distinction between dangerous and useful information. Not every post on r/selfharm is wholesome, but the majority of the discussion concerns recovery and harm reduction: people asking advice on how to stop, how to avoid relapsing, and how to distract themselves from the pain which causes them to self-harm, or simply venting about their problems, empathising with each other and finding solace in a shared experience. By the time someone lands there, it’s highly likely that they are already engaging in self-harm. It doesn’t seem like a victory for mental health if they are denied access to spaces like this, which resemble a group therapy session far more than a sinister exercise in peer pressure and social contagion. 

Even the more ludicrous examples hammer home that the Online Safety Act isn’t working. Some people have encountered barriers while looking up all sorts of innocuous subjects: “On Sunday night I was rewatching Heat because it’s a perfect hungover movie,” says James. “I idly Googled some stuff about it and couldn’t access r/movies because it was mature content.” It is a dark day for Britain if our budding cinephiles can’t access fan theories and trivia about one of the greatest films ever made. Someone else found herself barred from viewing the Reddit forums dedicated to labubus – we can have a serious debate about whether children need to be shielded from labubus and their demonic energy, but do we really trust the UK government to make that decision? Even animals aren’t safe from the act’s draconian effects: Clare tried to use Reddit to look up a “weird lump” she found on her cat, but couldn’t access the information she needed without first verifying her age – all of the relevant photos were marked ‘NSFW’. It turned out just to be a pimple, thankfully, but Keir Starmer is playing fast and loose with the lives of our feline friends. 

While previous polls have found majority support for tougher laws around online safety, the public don’t seem keen on what this looks like in practice: almost 400,000 people have signed a petition demanding the act be overturned and sales of VPNs (which allow you to circumvent the restrictions) have shot through the roof, with one app seeing a 1800 per cent spike in signups. It may turn out that the availability of VPNs renders the Online Safety Act pointless, that policing the internet to this extent is unworkable and does little to protect children from genuine harm.