That surprises me. The legislation in the form I last saw it says that they're not allowed to show user generated content to children without an age-gated login.

Thanks for your replies.

How was Saudi law enforced on Jamal Khasogghi? How was Indian law enforced on Hardeep Nijjar?

If the law won't be enforced on you in particular, it's because the UK government does not care enough to enforce it on you in particular. It has very little to do with where you live or what courts have "jurisdiction" over you.

I doubt that social media execs would avoid traveling to the UK of all places in order to not piss off the handful (and I say this as a long-time EFF member) of people who really care about this law. To make things worse, major services tend to have presence in almost every country, especially the UK, and leadership tend to have personal connections and property in these places. They will just comply (as long as not offering their service in certain locations is an acceptabpe form of compliance, they might opt to do that if the financial calculus works out, but it's not necessarily an option at all). They don't even have to go straight to physical or financial punishment: if a service accept any kind of payment, they can get compliance by ezerting influence through various international card networks as well. If they don't have to comply, and can keep offering their service anyway, it's only because the UK didn't squeeze hard enough: but they could, and if they do, there'll be nothing your government or geographical location will do to protect you.

There is no such thing as a sovereign entity "not having jurisdiction" over you: that would be an oxymoron, they do as they please by definition. If they don't make you comply with their orders, it's only because some economic factor prevents them from doing so.

If you're not in the UK and not using major services, yes, you don't have to care. The problem is basically that the major services will likely have to comply, because they do have a sizeable UK presence they'll want to maintain, hence they will introduce anti-features that basically ruin it for everyone. And if they do comply, it gives rope for the government to go after smaller players that don't.

As a UK resident, I hope this will go the way of anti-piracy legislation - i.e. enforced against big services only while everyone else just continues to do whatever they want.

All it'll do is kill off small businesses and hobby projects in the UK. I'm furious about it; the idiots just made BBSes, MUDs, Git and Telnet illegal. The big companies get regulatory capture of all social communications.

The same way the US prevents me from buying cuban cigars here in Germany over the internet:

* execs are liable for breaches of the law if/when they travel to the US. * companies in the US are forbidden to do business with companies in Germany that breach the US law

There are a handful of small companies doing direct sales that are small enough that they do not have US partners. The rest complies because doing otherwise is financially disadvantageous.

They block your site at the ISP level. They’ve been doing that for years.

They’d fine you as well but that’s probably less enforceable.