My arguments are:
* free speech is not a cornerstone of our national identity (despite John Milton's attempts to make it one);
* social media causes genuine harm (but does not do so inherently);
* the Act imposes a legal responsibility on social media platforms to limit harm caused by those platforms; and
* while members of the HN community may have a personal capacity to use social media in such a way that minimises harm to them, the majority of people do not.
> The Act unquestionably causes harm - it makes it effectively impossible for open, anonymous APIs because of the age verification requirements. It requires the vast majority of operators (because the UK's definition of pornography is so impossibly wide it will catch almost anything) to collect a huge tranch of information for age verification, which will cost an astonishing amount of money and prevent many community initiatives from ever getting off the ground. It will lead to many sites simply blocking adult communities entirely for economic reasons, a part of society that is already subject to substantial discrimination from UK authorities.
Alternatively, social media platforms can ban pornography. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok (amongst others) already do this; the problem is they don't enforce these bans. My perspective on this is that if you can't effectively moderate your social media platform in accordance with the social norms of your users' surrounding social context, then you shouldn't be operating a social media platform, and if you strongly disagree with your users' social context (e.g., users in, say, Iran), then you shouldn't offer your platform to them.
Also, commercial social media platforms are increasingly disinterested in providing open APIs, anyway.
> You say that the UK is not a totalitarian state because it's half assed. And it's certainly true that enforcement will be capricious and arbitrary. But that is hardly a defence of the act - it will still have a remarkable chilling effect because you never know if it's you that will be targeted.
This is how offensive speech is policed in meatspace. On a more general note, having the right to say something doesn't mean that saying that thing doesn't make you an arsehole.
> Meanwhile, it will probably have very little effect on any of the things it is supposed to prohibit.
Maybe. Let's wait and see, shall we?
> Many communities are already discriminated against by payment providers, banks and online services, and this legislation will make those effects significantly worse, but at the same time, achieve none of it's goals.
I don't recall the Online Safety Act regulating the financial industry - could you point out which parts of the legislation relate to that? I do, however, agree that we do have excessive restrictions on access to certain financial services.