Online Safety Act: What went wrong?
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I mostly disagree with it. I don't want prepubescent children watching porn of course, but the vast majority of them aren't doing that with any regularity, nor do they have any desire to. It isn't a problem that demands a robust solution with serious downsides.
I do think an HTTP header saying "no adult content" that can be turned on via both simple browser settings and password-protected parental controls is a good idea. That would reduce accidental or casual exposure to porn and have no meaningful downsides.
This is perhaps a better example than porn. I'd be much more worried about my 14-year old spending all of their (or my) money on gambling than having a wank every once in a while.
That said, I have accidentally landed on porn sites over the years (including in a demo in front of the entire company haha). I'm not part of the hyper-prudish American contingent where any form of nudity does irreparable trauma to a child, but ... there's some pretty wild stuff out there. It's not like when I was young and stay up late to sneakily watch a soft-core porn at midnight.
But in principle, I still agree. As someone who has managed some adult-oriented spaces online, I would love to have a way to put a sign on the door that, in effect, says "adults only", and have it be technically enforced for users who have chosen to do so.
This genuinely needs qualification and I suspect, based on discussions I have had with friends who are teachers and teaching assistants, that you would be horrified by how often very young children (seven, eight, nine years old) are viewing material that only a couple of generations ago would not have been seen in any legal publication in the UK.
> It isn't a problem that demands a robust solution with serious downsides.
This is an opinion, not a fact. I think I disagree, but I also disagree that websites asking you to verify you can access a particular link on a mobile device is a particularly serious downside (since that is one of the valid ways of age attestation in the UK -- it requires only that your mobile phone provider knows you are an adult, which they can establish in a number of ways).
We don't necessarily need governmental or even technical solutions to everything. Sometimes the solution is "parties involved, figure it out". Ultimately, these aren't my kids, and I don't care much.
If it is really a big problem, then the people who care, i.e. each individual parent, should be taking up the problem. But, they're not. Which signals, to me, it's not actually that big of a problem.
Censorship is one of the advantages they like: https://freespeechunion.org/protest-footage-blocked-as-onlin...
The uniparty strikes again.
No it is the prelude to a global elite conspiracy program to do anything they want with impunity.
No indeed, but it might be the beginning of a political campaign.
Unfortunately I have zero faith in UK government having a moment of introspection here.
Instead of realizing it's not fit for purpose they'll double down on the broken approach. Fully expecting the "solution" here to be more regulation, more punishment, more cost, more killing small sites, more inconvenience, more technically unfeasible things (vpn ban).
Have written to my MP about it and unsurprisingly zero response. Useless government
I understand Boris Johnson. I understand Tony Blair. I even understand Liz Truss, mad as she may be. I just don't get Starmer at all. I almost suspect he's somehow in league with Nigel Farage to make him the next prime minister.
You do in fact understand Starmer. You just hope you're wrong.
The UK's aristos have decided that Farage should be the next PM, which is why he's been all over the media.
Starmer is wholly owned by business interests which exist for the benefit of said aristos, and his job is to pander to those interests. He is absolutely indifferent to what the public wants, and he is willing to force through incredibly unpopular pointless abusive policies to make that point.
The end game is similar to the one in the US - the end of democratic accountability and public service government, an AI-administered online surveillance state run for oligarchs and corporations, all marketed with rhetoric that combines fake patriotism, violent hysteria against outsiders and noncomformists, the illusion of personal responsibility, and religious grift.
Yet none of those far more problematic things comes with an age check, a fence, government controls or any special kinds of locks. We just educate children, and parents pay attention. Children that are too young to understand are put in special places like kindergarten, and even at a later age are often supervised by responsible adults.
I don't see why the internet should suddenly be all of that in reverse: Things like the online safety act require a whole world full of child-safe sites, and a child-impenetrable fence put around the few ones considered unsafe. This is totally ass-backwards.
I was thinking about this the other day: everyone has knives at home. Sharp and deadly. Yet I've never heard of somebody putting a lock on their knife drawer. Instead, the knives are almost always easily accessible to anyone, including kids. Yet somehow that is not a hugely dangerous safety issue that must be taken care of.
Results: An estimated 8,250,914 (95% confidence interval [CI] 7,149,074-9,352,755) knife-related injuries were treated in US EDs from 1990 to 2008, averaging 434,259 (95% CI 427,198-441,322) injuries annually, or 1190 per day. The injury rate was 1.56 injuries per 1000 US resident population per year. Fingers/thumbs (66%; 5,447,467 of 8,249,410) were injured most often, and lacerations (94%; 7,793,487 of 8,249,553) were the most common type of injury. Pocket/utility knives were associated with injury most often (47%; 1,169,960 of 2,481,994), followed by cooking/kitchen knives (36%; 900,812 of 2,481,994).
Children were more likely than adults to be injured while playing with a knife or during horseplay (p < 0.01; odds ratio 9.57; 95% CI 8.10-11.30).
One percent of patients were admitted to the hospital, and altercation-related stabbings to the trunk accounted for 52% of these admissions.
Many UK MPs don't understand this. I've heard of MPs making (moronic) suggestions such as selling kitchen knives without the point on it. I've literally seen this advertised as a solution on the news.
For whatever reason they don't seem to understand that literally anyone can make a shiv.
But really, with 650 MPs there's bound to be a few that are a bit silly at least some of the time. You can hear some wild takes at the local pub too (or nextdoor), but that doesn't mean everyone in your area is a moron.
While I don't believe everyone in Parliament is a moron. I think more than enough of them are moronic, out of touch, malicious or home combination of the three for it to be a problem.
Generally the only solution presented for any issue in the UK is banning something. There is no other course of action that they can envisage. So you end up in a false dichotomy, discussing whether something should be banned or not. There is no discussion why the issue is happening in the first place, only whether <thing> should be banned or not.
For anyone doubting the veracity of that.
As someone who is clumsy and easily distracted, I have such a kitchen knife. They are commonly available. It works absolutely fine and it has three times minimised an injury that would have been nasty because I am an easily-distracted tired old idiot.
The point of a knife is only needed in a handful of kitchen applications. Most knives do not need to be able to stab at all. Only cut.
And combined with rules on the sales of longer blades that do have a point, this idea could genuinely be part of reducing knife crime (especially among the very youngest).
Because it does reduce access to knives that would be useful for stabbing, and it reduces the severity of injuries caused by the youngest in knife crime incidents. Without meaningfully affecting the kitchen usefulness of most small blades at all.
If I go to a supermarket and buy a long enough knife with a point on it, in theory I am asked to prove my age (in practice they laugh at the idea that I might not be young enough). The same is true for many (not all) products on Amazon, in fact.
The knife without a point on it did not trigger age verification. Nor does a boxcutter type thing, in practice; only retractible blades that don't snap off are on the list, AFAIK. (And only flick-knife-type mechanisms are banned).
I anticipate being downvoted for simply writing about this, but harm reduction through knife sales controls is not something that just stupid MPs think: it is supported by expert opinion.
Knife crime in the UK is a problem. It is still not a problem as severe per-capita as it is elsewhere, but we are trying measures to dissuade it.
Behaviour modification is not always stupid or evil; cultures do it all the time.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rounded-knif...
Let's Be Blunt have more data: https://www.letsbeblunt.co.uk
Yes if you wear enough cloth it can block blunt stabs okay, but I very much doubt peoples regular clothes are going to do anything except drag some dirty cloth into the wound unless they walk around with thick work bibs on all the time or 3-4 layers of denim. And even that is still very limited protection to someone actively trying to stab through it. A screwdriver is even more blunt than these blunted knives and it would have no problem going through any clothes except maybe a reenactors linen gambeson.
But this isn't about what "most knives" need to be able to do.
This is about what everyone in the UK will be permitted to buy.
"I don't need to do X often, so why should I worry about it?" is a really, really bad attitude to take when your government is considering banning X for the entire country.
It's about what everyone not old enough will be permitted to buy.
Nobody is saying that pointed knives shouldn't be sold; they are saying two things:
1) children shouldn't be able to buy them (they can't)
2) behaviour modification might suggest that fewer such knives even have to be made, because they aren't as important as they seem, and that might keep more convenient knives out of the hands of very young misguided children
The law has created a situation where I as an adult can:
1) buy a pointed knife if it looks like I am an adult (or it doesn't and I can prove I am)
2) buy a non-pointed knife without proving it.
This seems acceptable to me. I expect to be downvoted without a meaningful reply for saying so, because that is the way of things here.
I appreciate your policing my attitude but I don't know where you get the complete nonsense that the government is considering banning X for the entire country for this X or any other. Because they are not.
We in Europe try not to assume that Marjorie Taylor-Greene speaks for all Americans. There are 650 MPs in the UK Parliament, and some of them are silly or misinformed. One or two are as stupid as she is. Try to take that in.
Please edit out such swipes from your comments. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Repeatedly sending someone a link to the rules do not in anyway stop this from being a statement of fact.
This guy (a chef and a long-serving royal marine) has a different opinion, for instance:
https://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/news/2025/may/commando-chef-...
This former circuit judge who now works for a knife crime unit:
https://www.fightingknifecrime.london/news-posts/the-need-fo...
This research unit proved that they are less dangerous: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rounded-knif...
The Ben Kinsella Trust supports this, and Let's Be Blunt has done good research on the number of impulse crimes that involve kitchen knives:
Quite a lot of research is being done on this, quite a lot of police forces support it, and more to the point, British retailers already distinguish between these knives in terms of what young people can buy.
So it's not just one MP and one guy on HN is it?
But I am delusional, for sure, because I believe that experts deserve a hearing.
Could you please review the site guidleines and stick to them when commenting? We'd appreciate it.
I can't think of any application where the point of the knive is particularly essential for fruit or veg, and I can think of several veg where using the point of a tool is actually quite likely to cause an accident. Sweet potato being one of them.
There is one true application: deboning or filleting. But most people simply don't do this in a kitchen anyway, because they are buying deboned and filleted meat.
I don't see a particular problem with asking people who do want to cook to that level to prove they are adults before buying knives that have such obvious dual use as a weapon. Because you're asking people who already know they should be responsible with knives (and not for example use kitchen knives to get into plastic packaging, like an idiot).
You really don't need the point of a kitchen knife all that much in a kitchen, and the fact that the counterexamples raised are misuse (stabbing into packaging etc.) is pretty illustrative.
But you quite possibly cannot buy it on Amazon or in any UK shop already without proving you are an adult if your age is in doubt. Do you have a problem with their terms on that page?
"Age Verification Required on Delivery: This product is not for sale to people under the age of 18. To confirm the recipient is over 18 years, valid photographic ID with a date of birth may be required upon delivery. The driver will input your year of birth into their device and may then require an ID check to complete the age verification process. The driver will not be able to access your information once the delivery is complete."
(The "may" here is crucial. I've never been asked to prove I am an adult this way either, because I look like one)
I personally do not find that the skin of fruit ever needs a particularly pointed blade, and I think that is usually an unsafe use of a knife.
I don't mean to suggest you don't need a knife for cutting things, but I would have thought that was an obvious bad faith interpretation.
It's completely compatible with age restrictions on long pointed blades, though, isn't it?
A really interesting question would be to ask Aylo -- the world's largest pornographer -- why they are complying with the UK law and working with the regulator (population ~70M), but blocking whole states in response to the French law (population ~70M also) and Texas (population ~30M).
Because there obviously is some nuance and realpolitik here, when Aylo could very easily just block the UK too.
Has anyone done this journalism?
> For years Aylo has publicly called for effective and enforceable age assurance solutions that protect minors online, while ensuring the safety and privacy of all users. The United Kingdom is the first country to present these same priorities demonstrably.
At least according to their release, the UK worked with them on it.
They also have an updated statement on France [2].
[1]: https://www.aylo.com/newsroom/aylo-upgrades-age-assurance-me...
[2]: https://www.aylo.com/newsroom/aylo-suspends-access-to-pornhu...
But the fact remains here that the world's largest porn company is not presenting this as a big civil liberties issue; they have moved on from that.
I think it's important to understand that Ofcom isn't just imposing nonsense policies without any consultation with the very people they are trying to regulate.
They may not be succeeding, and people can disagree with the policy outcome, but there's a huge amount of misinformation suggesting that this is simple thoughtless autocratic censorious wishful thinking, when it is in fact an attempt at a policy of industry self-regulation backed by penalties, which is how the ombudsman system is meant to work.
Also I think a lot of US commentators don't understand that mobile phone providers in the UK block adult content by default and have been moving to that position over the long term because it is the only practical parental control mechanism that exists in a market of devices with different operating systems, menus, and often absence of on-device parental control mechanisms at all.
They have an age verification business.
But they also have a policy position about this and I'm not sure anyone has asked them to talk about those three decisions in the same sentence, as it were.
People will happily demand these policies in the abstract, and then some will be unhappy with the implementation but not all.
The government should require sites with "unsafe" content to make "safe" versions available (eg force safe mode, readonly, no signup). Sites that are wholly inappropriate for children should self-report so they can be made unresolvable by child-safe DNS.
I'm not saying this specific implementation is the one true way, there's alternatives and ways to work around it. My real point is that the government should have forced sites to implement a consistent method of enforcing child safe mode, that can be easily set in a blanket fashion by the parent.
I'm sure whatever approach will be "too technical" for many parents at first, but once a consistent safe-mode method becomes clear, I'm sure UIs and parental controls will evolve to make it easy to enable.
In fact I thought they did.
These parental controls rather suck though; see e.g. [1]. This basically matches my own experience.
I do agree with the general gist of it, but it's not as simple as "these tools already exist, we just need to educate people". There is real work to be done here before this is usable.
And why isn't there a "Content-Rating: sex" or "Content-Rating: gambling" HTTP header? Or something along those lines? Why isn't there one easy "under 12" button on a phone to lock down tons of stuff, from PornHub to gambling sites to what-have-you? All of this is also a failing of the technical community to actually build reasonable and usable standards and tools, too.
[1]: Parental controls? What parental controls? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38314224 - Nov 2023 (archive, since site is down: https://web.archive.org/web/20231119003608/https://gabrielsi...)
The mobile app world solved this years ago, and successfully generates age ratings for different countries based on developer interviews. (It's part of the app submission process).
There are problems with the mobile app world, but that isn't one of them.
There kind of was one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...
Technological solutions against humans' sex drives seem to be doomed to failure. For one we're largely talking about teenagers who are infamously horny and tech savvy, but even if we weren't, one glance at the history of MPs utterly failing to keep their trousers on (even when they know the stakes for being discovered arr ludicrously high) would put paid to that idea that people won't do stupid things for their libido.
However...porn does damage young minds. It does move the overton window to dangerous places (witness the rise in nonconsensual sexual choking, for example). Coupled with a generalized incapacity (or sense of hopelessness in the face of 24x7 algorithms?) for parents to keep their kids away from this stuff, what should be done? For Something Must Be Done.
That is all.
I think the Online Safety Act is just setting a precedent that will be used further down the line to ban personal VPN usage.
"Children are using encrypted VPN tunnels to see porn online! Criminals also use those same VPN networks!"
Let me guess... There will be a law requiring ISPs to block VPN traffic if the VPN server's hostname isn't registered to a business and approved by the government.
UK: "Do you have a license for that VPN?!"
Anyway, download i2p, or Hyphanet/freenet
People like you and I don't truly matter in the grand scheme of things, because if the government ban VPNs, we will use i2p or TOR, or Hyphanet/freenet.
Surveillance states care about numbers. The more people who lose VPN access, the better (from their POV).
Instead it's clearly about control and being able to tiptoe their way to a totalitarian state.
Your prior 3 ideas all end up at "potential government surveillance of the people".
There is no way to implement verification like this without surveiling everyone, even if you don't plan to use the data - the possibility will always be there.
That's quite separate to "verify with your government ID" to visit a website having nothing to do with government services.
And it should be apparent that the lack of the former did not stop people asking for the latter. And they did ask for it.
For complete safety you need complete surveillance which contradicts complete safety.
The true test of policy should be the desired outcome behind that policy.
> In reality, this wouldn’t happen, because, generally, people understand that stabbings are a cultural issue, rather than a technical one. The issue is less the existence of knives and more the factors that drive people to use them aggressively.
I think this may be true but also nearly impossible to address.
Generally, legal minors won't become raging trauma victims if exposed to some nudity and sex as part of the non-disney real world they inhabit.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
More people have signed this than the membership of the labour party(!)
They frequently ignore these petitions, especially when it comes to privacy, freedom of speech, surveillance etc.
When you do get a response back from these petitions, they are frequently either don't address the issue properly or you get some gaslighting response back.
My pessimism has be undefeated thus far.
> More pressure is needed and politicians will have to face journalists asking unpleasant questions when people continue to complain.
I am sorry this is utterly naive. Have you've seen the responses from Politicians so far? They basically call anyone that opposes them a paedophile.
I wouldn't put any faith in the journalists either. Most either work for the state directly or they have corporate masters.
The introduction to any level of this degenerated amalgam, from lowly bureaucrats to top level asshole in command is to read 1984 and then pass a test where you have to describe how to recreate such a system but make it even worse. Supplementary extracurriculars is to be close friends with rapists and pedophiles.
"Surely you're exaggerating this you online troll"
No I don't, you just haven't scratched the surface to the modern Belgian Congo that is the UK, vile doesn't even begin to describe it.
They have collected some personal data from law abiding pornography consumers: obvious perverts who should know better anyway. If their information gets released it will be their own fault. Some other stuff got hidden, but that's no problem as the BBC will tell you anything that you need to know anyway.
They can, and will, readily ban VPNs later, since those have no legitimate purpose for individuals, and will only be allowed for licensed operators like banks, hospitals, and defence manufacturers.
If you think this is sarcasm you haven't been paying attention to what the people pushing these laws actually say.
Who is "they"?
Why are these perverts obvious?
> They can, and will, readily ban VPNs later, since those have no legitimate purpose for individuals, and will only be allowed for licensed operators like banks, hospitals, and defence manufacturers.
This is not true. All kinds of companies and private people use VPNs to safeguard their computer infrastructure.
https://www.aylo.com/assets/files/age_verification_fact_shee...
And I think this is right. If Apple and Google can add a thing that lets us track Covid exposure they can surely figure out secure age attestation.
As it is, you can use your mobile phone for simple age attestation in the UK anyway, since mobile phone companies block adult content by default until they are unblocked, as a parental control measure.
The people voting them into office certainly are.
I agree with the preface that the online safety act is a big dumpster fire. Regulators and lawmakers can and often do fail to effectively regulate.
I disagree that calling it a cultural problem and saying “oh well, can’t do anything” is a legitimate conclusion. I mean governments aren’t supposed to attack cultural problems, only protect the safety and wellbeing of its citizens. Nobody wants the government telling you what clothes to wear and what shows to watch.
The rhetorical “example” given is just plain false. It’s not like the government sending someone to your house to age check you when you pick up a knife. It’s like them requiring a bouncer at the door of a knife store.
We ID people for purchase of alcohol. It’s not perfect. Older kids get around it. And it’s definitely a “cultural problem” to some degree. But there isn't harm being caused by requiring an age check to purchase.
So often lately I see people letting perfect be the enemy of good.
If you wanted to fix problems with the implementation of the online safety act you would loosen the burden imposed on user content driven communities by exposing the individuals posting to legal liability for their posts rather than imposing unimplementable moderation requirements on the service operators. You would attack institutional porn not message boards where someone uploads a nsfw photo. Regulators don’t understand the stratification of the internet. You’d require sites that fall under regulation to use digital ID documents. You make it illegal for that data to be stored at all and simply tell sites to update a column in the user db “age verified: true”. You would not use IP address-based or credit card based filtering.
There are many ways this could have been not a regulatory dumpster fire and still moved the needle towards sustainable and effective online ID document presentation. One example of failure doesn’t damn the whole concept.
In this instance, though, the online safety act should definitely be repealed and reworked.
Also no parental controls are not readily and widely available nor are they easy to configure and install, not least because of lack of a digital ID story.