UK MPs give ministers powers to restrict Internet for under 18s | Hacker News Reader

UK MPs give ministers powers to restrict Internet for under 18s

openrightsgroup.org

80 pointsrobtherobber68 comments

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In effect, this is the power to restrict internet to anyone.

It is, and I have no doubt that is the entire point, despite them "thinking of the children."

The Canadian version of this is especially cynical: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c309y25prnlo

That article was about people suing openAI.

It contains "The plaintiffs allege no age verification took place on the site."

As if this is a problem.

As if parents aren't responsible for the actions of their children

To be clear: this is civil action by a family, not the position of the Government of Canada.

There is no meaningful distinction, which is why a civil case in a foreign country is picked up by the BBC.

Furthermore, the Gov are trying to deflect on to OpenAI (and the internet) because a huge part of the failings in that case involve them seizing the weapons from the perpetrator, and then giving them back.

Im sure the likes of prince andrew and keir starmers advisors think way to much the children

I fail to see how this is technically possible. Virgin Media already censors chunks of the internet, but not in a way that currently would allow age verification.

Beyond my ISP I'm virtually anonymous unless I log in. If it's blocked at the network level I cannot login. If it's not blocked by the network, then it doesn't know exactly which individual is using my network connection. Theoretically they could put an interstitial page to check credentials but we'd just end up sharing the login rather than sharing all our personal details in separate accounts, or more likely I'd just not bother and accept the 'child' experience.

If I lose access to social media so be it. All that will do is change the landscape as the diaspora find a new uncensored social media.

This all falls apart when it affects genuine work, then it's already too late. The only real option at this point is VPN.

If they cared about children they'd just ban phones for children. Would be dead easy to enforce and wouldn't have any effect on the rights of adults.

Unfortunately I think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though.

I think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though.

By design.

We're not smart enough to make our own decisions but we're smart enough to vote for the best people to make decisions for us?

Make it make sense.

Yep, just throw them kids under the bus.

This is fine.

The internet is going to be filled with bots anyway so might as well restrict it to this age group. They should be outdoors with no access to the internet.

Why not extend this to under 25s or the elderly?

I'm sure the online safety act also needs to extend this to chatbots and anything that can heavily manipulate and distort this age group.

You forgot the /s for the sarcasm challenged

They won't be restricting the age group from the internet. They will be restricting the internet. That's not fine. There is no feasible way to restrict the internet for an exclusive group, it's the internet!

So now consider that the same government want to extend voting rights to 16 year olds.

So you can vote but you can't control the media you use to learn about who you're potentially voting for. There is something not quite right about that.

Catch-22. They want to censor and not let you learn about the opposite opposition restricting your vote to the current opposition at the same time pissing you off from voting for the current opposition for restricting your rights to learn about the opposite opposition.

There’s plenty of that everywhere. You can sign up to die in a war at 18 but can’t drink alcohol until 21. That’s why laws exist, to codify and resolve edge cases.

What's the text of the amendment and why doesn't this page link to it?

So the UK is now China it seems. What a shining light for democracy and justice. There is no way this will be abused by petty little tyrant minister right?

That's deeply unfair.

China's economy is growing.

Yeah ive been watching whats happening with the URKL (United Robot Knockout League). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62dK3Av334

Musk's jokes basically disassemble when doing a backflip. Fucking joke. Whereas the Chinese bots are doing Mui Thai, karate, and loads more.

But... China is copying us <LAUGH>

Sadly it's not only the UK. There is a global push to restrict communication world-wide. The future is very bleak for fundamental freedoms.

I’m not convinced anymore that we can handle freedom. Many children grow up glued to a phone or tablet watching AI videos and are targets of dis-information from foreign and/or hostile actors.

We can't handle unchecked pursuit of profit, freedom isn't the issue.

The people who want unchecked pursuit of profit simply beat you to the punch by manipulating the social zeitgeist to accept that the unchecked pursuit of profit is the very definition of freedom.

It is a cynical view of humanity, but one that seems most correct.

If for example there is a deadly virus going around people will quickly restrict freedoms to prevent its spread. And even in the case they don't people that believe in freedom over precautions are evolutionary culled.

So what happens when the issue is actually infohazards? One of the common assumptions the freedom group makes is with all the information they have, anyone else would come to the same set of decisions they have. Of course I see two problems with this.

1. The freedom group is quite often hypocritical. That is, freedom is defined however they think, and anything outside of how they thing is "Not true freedom™". Elon Musk is a common source of this kind of freedom.

2. The individuals personal definition of freedom is anecdotal (We'll call this set A). Set A individual thinks by telling another individual with set B ideas on freedom that set A will win somehow? (A + B = A). That when you put ideas out there, by some magic process the best ideas win and take over and everything is happily ever after.

Of course where number 2 commonly fails is if an infohazard is more addictive than actual knowledge, and where the inoculation to said addiction takes a long time to reach herd immunity. And example would be that it's faster to destroy a nation due to ragebait faster than open democracy can adjust, hence democracy always fails in these conditions. Nice catch-22 situation.

If "dis-information" is the core of the issue, then perhaps we ought to start banning religions? Despite doing that, China is a champion of spreading "dis-information" within their own walls. Hostile actors are not foreign, most often they are domestic. The biggest offenders are governments. Only freedom opposes their power, which is why they want to restrict it.

Meh it’s accessing and posting stuff on the internet, not that big of a deal. I’d like to see a much bigger humdrum around the ubiquitous surveillance cameras that will eventually be fed to some sort of LLM to create an omniscient eye that follows everyone everywhere.

They are going to be missing out on top content https://www.instagram.com/popular/ai-generated-video-shorts/

The UK already arrests more than 1,000 a month people for online "hate speech". Higher than the official numbers for China, whatever those are worth. They'll probably reach the unofficial, real number soon enough. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

Sounds interesting..Paywalled.

Can you give some examples of the speech the UK arrests people for?

https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/wales-engl...

You can get arrested for grossly offensive (completely subjective).

Also they have a category called non-crime hate incidents (Hello Kafka) where they come to "intimidate" you without any charges being filed.

That non crime hate incident goes on your criminal record and if you need an enhanced criminal records check, it will show up, and can be used to deny you employment. Its not just intimidation.

You mean police acting is a non authoritative capacity to maintain public order?

there's many to choose from, you can google for more. But here's what got Lucy Connolly a 31 month sentence:

"Mass deportations, now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, if that makes me a racist, so be it".

Racist maybe, although she doesn't seem to care about race.

Offensive, yeah, seems that it could be interpreted as offensive, but thats not technically illegal (the high court has repeatedly affirmed to right to be offensive).

Inciting violence (the offense she was convicted of) no, not at all, she was stating her political opinion and her belief that the lives of immigrants is worth less than british children.

Although people will point out she admitted guilt, but the threat of significant pre-trail imprisonment was used a lot at this time to force guilty pleas.

She called for hotels housing immigrants to be burned in the middle of a riot. Hotels suspected of housing immigrants were, in fact, burned during the course of that riot.

She clearly understood that her actions were wrong, and went on to try to cover her tracks and "play the mental health card".

The appeal judgment is very clear and is worth reading: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Lucy-Con...

This is a really poor example to use of censorship - there are very few countries in the world where this wouldn't have been against the law. Even the USA, with it's famed first amendment rights, makes it unlawful to "organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot".

If you're rights are contingent on circumstance, they're not rights.

I don't see anything there encouraging a riot. There is no call to action.

We should know this isn't enough to convict, since a Labour councillor who called for far-right activists' throats to be cut at an anti-racism rally [0], actually inciting violence, was cleared of wrong doing.

From the article, you'll notice politicians calling out situation:

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said of the decision: "It is astonishing that this Labour councillor, who was caught on video calling for throats to be slit, is let off scot-free, whereas Lucy Connolly got 31 months prison for posting something no worse."

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjeykklwn7vo

I agree, both should have been charged. Only one was. You could argue that the MP is making the greater offence as he/she is in a position of authority.

There's a lot of misinformation being spread about this, but it's worth sticking to the facts.

And, in fact, both were charged and both were prosecuted.

Connolly admitted guilt but appealed against her sentence. This appeal was denied for the reasons given in the judgment above.

Jones was unanimously found not guilty by a jury at trial.

Thanks for the info. What disturbs me most is the polarization and increasing intolerance of different/opposing ideas and opinions. I'm referring to "slit their throats" kinds of reactions and "set [it] on fire". There's no "lets agree to disagree and meet half way". No compromise. That's seen as weak.

Agree to disagree with who, about what?

Lucy Connolly, used very poor speech in haste and deleted the tweet. Pressured to plead guilty: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce83pj1ggmeo

Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine "Parents arrested for complaining about school in WhatsApp group": https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/parents-arre...

Chelsea Russell, "a 19-year-old woman from Liverpool, was sentenced to an eight-week community order, a curfew from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., and an electronic ankle tag after being found guilty of sending a grossly offensive message by posting rap lyrics on her Instagram account." The lyrics were in homage to her friend who had died and this was their favourite song. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/woman-wh...

Jamie Michael, Royal Marine, expressing unhappiness with mass-immigration https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75zke1l7ylo

Sam Melia, two years for distributing stickers saying “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066”, “Mass immigration is white genocide”, “intolerance is a virtue”: https://www.gbnews.com/news/sam-melia-free-speech-activists-...

Some of these people might be saying unpalatable things, but criminalising them or arresting them is having a huge effect on free speech. Once we give these rights away, they can and will be used any other government that gets in power, and at some point there will be one you don't agree with. These rights are hard won, and easily lost.

Here's an article from right after the original one that I posted giving 12 examples. https://web.archive.org/web/20250903165214/https://www.teleg...

Some of these people are certainly not saying kind things, and are saying things that I object to. That being said, objectionable speech is the only kind of speech that needs robust legal protection. A democratic society cannot endure under a regime that can, at the discretion of any given officer, decide you have said something objectionable and are now subject to the law.

The article says

"The acts make it illegal to cause distress by sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character” on an electronic communications network."

Offensive messages cover a lot of contexts and don't sound as if they are necessarily hate speech.

You should read the whole article: "A spokeswoman for Leicestershire police said crimes under Section 127 and Section 1 include “any form of communication” such as phone calls, letters, emails and hoax calls to emergency services." ".

> So the UK is now China it seems

Western governments have been looking enviously at China's authoritarianism (notoriously Trudeau blurted out he admired their "basic dictatorship" back in 2013) while completely ignoring any elements that might actually improve the lives of the citizens.

Our politicians are determined to implement the worst of our respective systems.

The UK has been China forever, they have the most surveillance cameras and police home visits per capita of any developed country and their people like it this way.

Do you have a source on that? All I could find was this that said America has the most, behind China: https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/the-worlds-most-surveille...

Idk I’ve been watching the occasional BBC archives or some other old archive source, and the UK has seemed relatively authoritarian compared to Europe or the US for a while.

UK absolutely needs to be thought of in the same way we think about Russia or Belorussia, or China.

Reading some of the comments here, HN seems to have been invaded by Twitter users spouting their opinion as if it's fact.

Good

Too bad your internet access is not restricted.

But just a month ago everyone in the discussion about freedom.gov was saying that Europe doesn't restrict internet!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270

but now the definition of europe becomes europe but not UK, since it's convenient to maintain the argument rather than discuss the real underlying issue!

Shrodinger's continent. You don't know what it contains until you know what policy position you need to argue for/against.

Big exaggeration. Opened the link and with the dozen comments or so that I've seen there is no rhetoric of the kind your asserting.

We know from France, UK, Spain, Italy that censorship is ramping up rather than down.

Still not a good enough excuse for freedom.gov when the current US agenda is to support the right wing organizations in Europe.

Well, UK is just one small part of Europe. You probably also confuse Europe and the EU.

Oh, no, not that Europe. You were of course talking about the Europe with Spain (oh wait, La Liga has a cloudflare kill switch). You were of course talking about the Europe with Italy (oh wait, the Piracy Shield). You were of course talking about the Europe with Turkyie (oh wait, ...

"Oh wait, I cannot download porn, stolen software, and stolen media". Censorship! /s

That definitionally is censorship, whether you think its effects are just or not.

Ok go on finish your sentence.

I shouldn't need to - if it doesn't foundationally offend you that Spain has endorsed a private entity with the ability to routinely turn off part of the Internet for their own private convenience then fundamentally we have a different view about how this whole thing should work.

Out of curiosity, do you expect that freedom.gov will contain socialist, communist, extreme left-wing or islamist point of views?

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