>>43152154 ("In memoriam (onlinesafetyact.co.uk)"—147 comments)
>>42433044 ("Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced) (lfgss.com)"—555 comments)
>>43152178 ("Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act"—87 comments)
Canada and Australia are jumping in [2] [3].
[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
[1]: https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/france/la-loi-sren...
[2]:https://facia.ai/news/canada-proposes-age-checks-for-online-...
[3]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords and so on.
Think it as a bit like GDPR but 1) much more expensive 2) with criminal liability 3) Makes even less sense than GDPR as it does nothing to prevent harm for minors 4) derimental for user experience and users.
"Funnily enough" the companies who lobbied for Online Safety Act, and former Ofcom employees, are now selling age verification check services and compliance services related to Online Safety Act. They have pretty good profit margins there, making even Google and Facebook look poor.
More here:
So, going forward, will similar pieces of art be blocked in the British Museum as well? Like physically?
In the case of E2E encryption, it's definitely a hill to die on, there is no way to make a backdoor "only the good guys" can access. But in this case, the long standing refusal for the tech industry to engage in even the lightest of lobbying towards having legal regulation for standards seems to bite us in the ass every now and then. We've seen it time and time even for things that are non controversial and would clearly benefit everyone: why is BCP 38 not mandated by law in any country? Why is IPv6 at the ISP consumer edge not mandated by law?
All of this could have had the same effect if instead of putting the onus of age verification on millions of websites, you instead put it onto the "customer end device", with some definition as to have it only apply to anyone who sells devices used to access online content with more than X% market share (meaning effectively Microsoft, Google on behalf of all Android OEMs and Apple, plus TVs and console makers).
You'd also put into law what content providers need to do to become compliant. It drops from "having a robust system of age verification" into "if you're serving content over HTTP and your content is for over 18, you need to send a specific over 18 header". If you're publishing an app on a walled garden app store, you need to specify the age rating (as one does already). If you state your page is good for under 18s when it's actually over 18, you then incur a fine.
Then it's really just up to OS makers to build support for the above into the parental controls functions that mostly already exist. Implement the header checking on the browser. Then restrict over 18 apps and outside app store that aren't explicitly authorised: this ensures no alternate browsers could be installed or ran by a child, while leaving them freedom to roam the web and install under 18 apps. The issue with existing parental controls is twofold: the web is a wild place and manually vetting every single app your kid wants to install is overbearing so everyone gives up on parental controls.
Then it's a matter of, when you buy a phone for your kid, you click a button "the user is a child, enable parental controls, set the grown up password". If parents fail to even do this, then clearly it's their own fault?
You'd specifically leave out non-HTTP protocols and leave a bunch of technical loopholes that could be exploited by technically minded people. It would both limit the amount of wreckage to things the common people doesn't even know it exists and make sure this wouldn't creep into places it doesn't belong. Sure, teenager who downloads Arch into a USB pen drive and boots off it can then access whatever they want, or someone who finds they can get into IRC and XDCC a bot for hot JPEGs, but at that point they clearly earned it.
I get the feeling that we've fucked it, left very important regulations up to people who have no clue and now we get the most onerous and worst implementation possible of things every single time put into law. We could have done the same with cookies, there's like, three browsers. Remember P3P? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P
The Online Safety Act has to be understood as a regulation of the Big Tech platforms that form what we might call the NormieNet. Your web page is unlikely to come to the attention of politicians, Ofcom (the relevant regulator) or the wider public, so you almost certainly would not suffer any adverse consequences, even if you were a resident of the UK.
Britain has a long history of libertarianism - it's where American libertarianism came from - but British libertarians don't make florid speeches about how free they are, they just quietly do whatever it is they want to do without telling anyone who might object. During the coronavirus pandemic, the UK had particularly strict lockdown regulations, because the Johnson government believed that most people wouldn't take any notice of them.
I'm sure someone will come along soon to tell me that this is a terrible principle on which to run a country, but the truth is that Britain is governed entirely by realpolitik, because the historical record shows that strongly principled government does not endure[1].
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/region_rankings_current.jsp?reg...
> And for everybody out there who's thinking about using VPNs, let me just say to you directly, verifying your age keeps a child safe. Keeps children safe in our country. So let's just not try and find a way around. Just prove your age. Make the internet safer for children. Make it a better experience for everyone. That's surely what we should aspire to in this country.
It's a grave insult to think someone would even believe this.
EDIT: Pictured in the video is Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kyle
https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/most-crime-has-...
Given we know from comparing e.g. Crime Survey data to polls about peoples beliefs about crimes that peoples beliefs about crime rates in the UK are not remotely well correlated with actual crime rates, that page doesn't tell us what you claim it does.
It tells us that out of visitors to Numbeo, people who claim to live in 3 British cities report that they are more worried than most others.
For Bradford, the data is based on just 131 contributors in the last 5 years:
[1] https://x.com/GregHadfield/status/1878113938593730650?lang=e...
As things stand, it's coming:
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/...
Reform UK will repeal the Online Safety Act.
Zia Yusuf, tech entrepreneur and head of Reform UK Department of Government Efficiency explains this here:
Crimes (like phone, expensive items in a bag snatching) happen in rich areas, too.[1]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/26/mobile-ph...
If you do not like The Guardian, search for "central london phone snatching".
Wearing a nice watch in Soho, Liverpool Street, Tower Bridge is super sketchy and you're likely to get comments about how 'brave' (stupid) you are. These are just the places I've been to, West London is meant to be much worse.
Edit: Here are some links I found
- "Machete-ban petition launched as London watch robberies rise" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64991862
- Statistics for stolen watches from 2018 to 2023 https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclos...
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50
"All providers of regulated user-to-user services that are likely to be accessed by children must comply with the following duties in relation to each such service which they provide—
(a)the duties about children’s risk assessments set out in section 11, and
(b)the duties to protect children’s online safety set out in section 12(2) to (13)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#W...
The UK law is basically a "go figure it out", which inevitably leads to making shady deals with third parties that are now handling the data of citizens... privacy and data leakage issues abound.
The EU meanwhile is working on a whitelabel application that can confirm nothing other than "this user is above 18" (which they can do because the EU has national ID for basically anyone living in it. It also works for another set of age ranges, as the idea is to also use this to confirm stuff like buying alcohol) and is designed to be easy to implement for anyone without having to get approval from the EU first. (Technical specification is available here[0]). It's not perfect (last I saw, they're apparently tying it to Google Play Services for device verification), but it's a far better attempt than the UK/Australia are doing.
I have since had another look. Lee Anderson was in power (as a Conservative), and abstained from https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1416#notr... – though I'm not sure what this vote was actually on, and this doesn't support my original claim (that Reform MPs voted in favour of the Online Safety Act). Perhaps someone with more understanding of British Parliamentary Procedure could look through the relevant votes and see whether my claim was actually correct.
If age restriction technology is now being introduced to prevent kids *viewing* "inappropriate" websites, then why are gambling websites being given a free pass?
The answer is to follow the money:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gambling%20industry%20lobb...
Trying to find an international version leads me to ICVS and this[0] publication which likewise ranks London at the very top. By that data, the UK ranks average at per-capita crime but is second at the same people being victimized more than once, which I take points towards that the majority of the country is likely relatively normal, but a handful of cities have very concentrated crime rates that are raising statistics.
Do you have any other sources to show or do you just like pointing out that all of them are bad if they don't agree with you?
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282573613_Criminal_...
Blocked due to UK Online Safety Act
You appear to be connecting from an IP address in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately this site is no longer available to UK users. This is due to the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which are not practical for this site to comply with. If you feel this is unjustified, I can only suggest that you write to your Member of Parliament. This site remains in operation for non-UK users, as they are outside the scope of the Act.
For more information see Ofcom's official site, and an unofficial guide.
Other web interfaces to Usenet are available, and may continue to allow UK users, see Wikipedia.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "WebPage",
"contentRating": "18+",
"isFamilyFriendly": false,
"audience": {
"@type": "PeopleAudience",
"suggestedMinAge": 18,
"requiredMinAge": 18
},
}
That was what, N = 4?
So are you saying what I posted has no merit?
> According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales 2024, an estimated 78,000 people had phones or bags snatched from them on the street in the year ending March 2024.[1]
> This is equivalent to 200 'snatch thefts' a day and is a 153% increase on the number of incidents in the year ending March 2023. London is regarded as the “epicentre” of phone thefts with £50 million worth of phones reported stolen in London in 2024.[1]
This is coming from your own Government, for crying out loud.
And 1-10 people saying "oh it's perfectly safe" does not mean anything. It is an actual issue, and you may not believe me until it happens to you, or someone you know, which is kind of typical, so I get it.
[1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-...
If they’re not willing to listen to actual Londoners then the discussion is unlikely to be productive.
And I consumed many people's "unsafe" experiences, similar to YOUR "safe" experiences.
As I said, N = ~4 saying "it's safe" means fuck all, just like N = ~4 saying the opposite.
So... you appear to be another person who invalidates and completely disregards other people's experiences (and your own Government's publishing) in favor of yours, because somehow yours is more valid. It is not.
You need to stop painting London as a safe place, because that it is not. Maybe it is on the routes you take in your car, but in general, no, not really. Hell, even Budapest is safer than London.
> Hungary's national crime rate in 2021 was approximately 0.77 crimes per 100 residents. This figure represents a significant decline from 0.82 in 2020, indicating a 5.86% decrease . Specific data for Budapest is limited, but the city's overall crime index is reported at 33.99 out of 100, which is considered low.[1]
> In contrast, London's crime rate is significantly higher. The annual crime rate in the London region is approximately 30.1 crimes per 1,000 people, which is about 86% of the national average for England and Wales . Violent crime constitutes 22.6% of all reported crimes in London . Notably, Westminster, a central borough in London, recorded a staggering 432.3 crimes per 1,000 residents, largely due to its high daytime population from tourism.[2]
So, by the available numbers, Budapest has about 0.77 crimes per 100 people, while London has 3.01 per 100. That makes London's crime rate ~3.9x higher, meaning Budapest is roughly 74% safer per capita.
[1] https://diaklakas.hu/en/blog/public-safety-budapest/
[2] https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-violent-crime-statistics.h...
> using their own anecdotal experiences over data in order to confirm your own pre conceived notions
I am not doing this, at all, in fact, you are dead wrong. You think I am not aware of any of these fallacies / biases? I am self-aware enough.
Address this, tired of repeating myself: >>44905149 .
> I consumed https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-...
Official sources.
> And I consumed many people's "unsafe" experiences, similar to YOUR "safe" experiences.
I am considering both sides here.
> As I said, N = ~4 saying "it's safe" means fuck all, just like N = ~4 saying the opposite.
This should alone should strengthen the claim that I am considering both sides, and it means jack shit.
> So... you appear to be another person who invalidates and completely disregards other people's experiences (and your own Government's publishing) in favor of yours, because somehow yours is more valid. It is not.
---
Next time please do it without any personal attacks, that does not favor your case (wait, do you actually have any?) that is already standing on weak legs. If you have no case apart from personal attacks, then yeah, I am in the wrong here, with regarding to you.
If you are not interested in actually doing your research, do not even bother, I am tired of the old story that "but muh experiences matter more!!11!". They DO NOT. Your experiences are not the universal truth, and it goes both ways.
https://www.onlondon.co.uk/dave-hill-lets-get-the-london-kni...
(Note that the identification of Westminster as a knife-crime hotspot in the second chart is misleading, as this is an area of central London with lots of tourists and workers, thus inflating the number of crimes per the relatively small number of residents.)
Knife crime is a serious problem, but it’s not something that I worry about at all in my day to day life in London. It would be no more rational for me to do so (in fact, less rational) than it would be for a New Yorker to worry about being shot.
What I still don’t understand about this thread is why someone who doesn’t live in London has repeatedly being telling people who do live in London to “go out and see for themselves”. You seem very attached to a narrative about London found in certain sections of right wing online media, and unless you’re not telling us something, this can’t be because you have any personal interest in life in London. I feel like there’s some kind of agenda here, but I don’t care to speculate exactly what it is.
This is consistent with my personal experience and that of others who've posted here. You have not posted any data indicating otherwise.
>the discussion should be about whether those numbers are accurate and what they show, not about where I live or my motivation
You must understand that if you dismissively tell people to "go out and see for yourself", and then it turns out that you don't even live in London, people are going to wonder how you ended up holding such strong opinions on crime in London.
"I hunt phone thieves professionally – I was still targeted on Oxford Street Former detective turned private investigator warns some London areas have become ‘lawless’" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/15/phone-thieves-ox...
"Some 78,000 people had phones or bags snatched from them on the street in the year ending March 2024, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
That is equivalent to 200 “snatch thefts” a day and is a 153 per cent increase on the number of incidents in the year ending March 2023.
London is seen as the “epicentre” of phone thefts with £50 million worth of handsets reported stolen in the capital in 2024.
In a blitz on the “scourge of mobile phone theft” in February, Met officers arrested 230 people in just a week and recovered 1,000 handsets by targeting hotspots such as Westminster and the West End."