No-one says "cigarettes are censored!", because, obviously, they're not. Same for adult content online. It can still be accessed, as long as proof of age is provided.
From the article:
>First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act.
From the source (emphasis mine):
> On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children _(which were dealt with by other parts of the Act)_. Rather, the aim of Category 1 was to capture services that have a significant influence over public discourse. The submission offered, as a possible option, requesting information from Ofcom as to _how content recommender systems function on different types of service_.
The quote leaves out "which were dealt with by other parts of the Act" and the fact that the subject was specifically "Category 1 duties" not the Act in its entirety. It also doesn't mention that the subject was on content recommender systems.
_Again_ this is not a judgment on the Act itself, but providing the full context, which does change the message.
0: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v_Secret...
I strongly suspect it's also meant to curtail growing support among youth for Palestine in the Israel/Gaza conflict.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/665564933022223
Essentially creating an internet for children/teens that echos the government narrative.
No, you are just tracked when you access them - «cigarettes» being, of course, all """controversial""" expressions.
(Already putting children as an excuse for that...)
*** They have censored lobste.rs . The "for adults only site" lobste.rs ***
> Identity technology used at a county's pubs and nightclubs since 2023 is to be extended for a further three years.
> Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC) Danielle Stone has agreed to provide funding to keep the scheme at 25 venues that open beyond 01:00.
But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.
Most online service providers who verify age are using third-party suppliers who don't provide any details of one's identity, just whether the user has been age verified or not. And much of that is done by recording a selfie, not handing over identity documents.
So, DSIT, Age Verification Industry Association or Molly Rose astroturfer?
https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
Stop trying to oversimplify the concept, it’s not a pub, it’s not a store, it’s a virtual service. This comparison doesn’t help us at all.
About the face and not ID: good thing we can’t identify someone using their face! /s
In fact it is pretty obvious from the OSA itself that the definition of Category 1 is not primarily about capturing porn sites.
The other example is when the government changed the student loan rules by raising the allowed annual cost from 3k to about 9k, and also linked the interest to inflation, and increased the number of years that have to pass before the loan gets written off. So just for comparison - I paid 12k for a 4 year MSc Computer Science course, and it had 1.1% interest attached to it. So I paid mine off within few years of starting to work. My sister did her degree just few years after me, and her degree cost her 40k + her interest is 8%. She has a job but her payments barely cover the interest. She will never pay it off, so it will get written off at some point, maybe - but until then it's a permament 10% tax on all of her earnings. It's bonkers.
My point is - I feel like in any other country, this kind of economic assassination of entire generation of people would be met with people marching on the capital and burning down cars and setting tyres on fire in front of government buildings in protest. In UK barely anyone cared. Still no one cares. There is no political party that even suggests doing anything about it.
So with this new act - it's more of the same. You've heard our government already anyway - saying openly that if you are against this act you are on the same side as Jimmy Saville(one of the worst child rapists this country has ever produced). Essentially you can't be against it in public or you're compared to actual pedophiles. The only politician who even suggests that hey maybe this isn't right is Farage who is a despicable individual for many other reasons.
If you want my personal opinion on why that is - British society is extremely comfortable with the status quo. People would rather shrug their arms than actually do something about anything, we're surrounded by history, by buildings standing for the last 1000 years, stability is like the paramount value here. That's not to say Britain hasn't has some of the greatest civil movements in history - but right now, in 2025, the feeling I see everywhere is just apathy.
But broadly I agree, in the sense that the government are uncomfortable with political movements they lack the ability to shape or control.
In hindsight it's incredible just how much influence the British government has historically had over media. The largest TV and radio stations were often directly government owned (BBC, Radio 1, Channel 4) and many newspapers are vulnerable to defamation / contempt of court accusations / injunctions when they sway too far from the official narratives. Especially on any issue adjacent to criminal justice.
Of course, they'll say all of the state owned media operated without political direction. And that regulators / prosecutors operated in a politically neutral fashion with due process and impartiality.
Meanwhile, Brits just look on at this narrative wondering what the hell they're talking about. Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.
It seems uncharitable to immediately assume bad faith.
What is it about the content of the comment you disagree with?
I think it provides a further example to the parent post that regardless of what one thinks about the Act, the discourse isn’t entirely neutral.
It's also a perfectly reasonable point, you just don't agree with it.
I'd rather not be subjected to fake news on HN.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi...
> On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children (which were dealt with by other parts of the Act).
Notice this is under Sunak, not Starmer. The Times chooses when to support and opposite the Online Safety Act based on which party is in government, and provides evidence for its view by lying through omission.
The Online Safety Act is undeniably terrible legislation, but you won't find good-faith criticism of it from the Times.
I guess if you get your attack in first you'll be able to go "we're not the fascists, you're the fascists."
None of that is to excuse the legislation, of course, which is not very good and will have a lot of poor consequences.
The power structure is designed in such a way that it is difficult for the Government itself to do change anything.
"The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025 – here's everything we know" (https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/the-eu-co...)
"Chat Control is back & we've got two months to stop the EU CSAM scanning plans" (https://tuta.com/blog/chat-control-criticism)
It could end up that way but we’re not there yet. If we do get there we tend to make the French look like amateur protestors (look up poll tax riots).
I’m less worried about a police state than a corporate dystopia. The attendee list at Trump’s inauguration would be far scarier to me than the OSA is.
It's worldwide, is the issue. A national government cannot solve the problems created by multinational investment firms.
On a related note, central banks have expressed their desire to increase unemployment.
The legal mechanisms in place don't appear to be adequate as when that number of activists are ignored. Certainly in parallel with the online regulation, the legal right to protest has been restricted by the previous Tory government, and this current one.
What's also concerning is the lack of oversight with MPs, they follow guidelines, which seem to let them off from regular laws (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68503255 using taxpayers money in a private dispute- fraud) (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68841840 reads like fiction).
Why MPs are not FCA regulated is beyond me, corruption should be stamped out.
That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking lessons about "totalitarian oppression" when current US government policy is to send gangs of masked thugs to round up brown people.
[0] https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c...
*(A not-small body of which were famously published anonymously in order to escape ostracization. Were these Oxford philosophers to take their own advice, they would forbid all volumes mentioning Voltaire or Spinoza from their libraries).
As much as many people have distaste for the existing parties, a few people getting involved and changing the parties from the inside on one or two topics like this (which are not party political in nature) is likely to be much more effective than standing as or voting for an independent, complaining or protesting.
This hits hard, I never framed the issue like this. We really are living a corpo-fascist cyberpunk nightmare aren’t we? Minus the purple neons sadly
Like… it's okay to complain about bad legislation without misrepresenting it. It's bad enough that you don't need to make shit up about it.
It's a bit hard to argue otherwise when the draconian arrests are well-documented by pretty much every single media outlet.
"Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the USSR, just like in the USA?"
"Yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Ronald Reagan," and you will not be punished."
In practically all countries a bunch of smart people got together in the 19th century to write a constitution but the British thought that they were above such petty concerns.
Once upon a time, yes. But they don't work in the modern world we live in now.
Show me a successful protest that achieved change in the past ten years?
The censorship in the UK isn't that overt. There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street, what there are is government "nudge" units, media talking heads and government-aligned media trying to push you toward points of view acceptable to the establishment. We're the world leaders in manufactured consensus.
It's hard to take this seriously, especially when if I ask for citations it'll likely be a couple of extremely obscure cases where the details are being conveniently glossed over.
Here is an incomplete list of reasons why I would never get involved directly in politics:
1. It takes literally decades to get a political party off the ground without major backing. All the new parties that you hear of are bankrolled by elite backing.
2. The way the Government and the civil service is setup is designed so you can't actually make any changes. Dominic Cummings has many interviews he did in the last year you can find where he explains how Whitehall is fundamentally broken. I suggest you listen to them.
3. I have a chequed past. Most of my adult life I was abusing alcohol, and as a consequence of that I have done and said lots of stupid things. A good portion of my extended family are criminals (which I don't associate with for obvious reasons). If I or anything connected to me gain any public appeal at all, I would have all the muck which I've put behind me dragged up. I don't want to expose myself or my family to that.
"Just start a new party and tell people about it" is perhaps the most misleading and flawed idea you could present unfortunately. There have been new parties, there are new parties at every general election, you never hear about them for good reason.
Providing you accurately define the Irish in question all four are subject to the OSA, none have actively opposed it in any meaningful way.
There is also Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has been remanded in custody for contempt of court for continuing to libel an immigrant even after his claims were proven to be false. And by contempt of court, he literally has produced a movie continuing to slander said immigrant for his own ends.
Another is Palestine Action being made a proscribed terror group. While lots of people, as evidenced by recent protests, see this as problematic, its not particularly different to other groups like environmental activists that commit criminal acts being proscribed and there are numerous examples UK/abroad of that. PA members at the direction of PA leadership have fallen into that category not because of their beliefs, but because of their actions – like breaking into Israeli-owned security research company with a van, and into an RAF base, in both cases committing vandalism and destruction of property.
Some people believe there is a problem, but there really isn't a legislative agenda against free speech.
This is a significant exaggeration in two respects.
First, SSL ensures that ISPs cannot log your literal browser history. They can log which domains you visit, how often you visit them, how much data was transferred, etc. etc.
Second, the law requires ISPs to be able to retain this data on a specific individual for up to a year if specifically ordered to by the Home Secretary. So it is not the case the ISPs in general are all recording this information for all of their customers. From their point of view they have no interest in doing so. I suspect that ISPs would in fact lack the capacity to store all of this data for all of their customers all of the time.
I don't support the IPA because I don't think the Home Secretary should be able to directly order surveillance of specific individuals. However, I don't think it is necessary to exaggerate the scope of the legislation in order to make a case against it.
The French yellow vest
The Dutch farmer protests
I can go on if you want
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...
> there are several reasons why an arrest may not result in a sentence, such as out-of-court resolutions, but said the “most common is “evidential difficulties””, specifically that the victim does not support taking further action.
As mentioned at the top of the above document, there was a debate in the Lords on 17th July on the topic where many of the participants were pretty scathing about the situation: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...
The minister was naturally defensive towards the end, albeit they did say:
> Importantly, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, at the request of the Home Secretary, are currently undertaking a review of how non-crime hate incidents are dealt with. We expect to see some information from the police on that. It is self-evidently important that some of those incidents help us gather intelligence on potential future crime, but, equally, we do not want the police to do things that waste their time and not focus on the type of crime that the noble Lord rightly mentioned in his introduction.
news.ycombinator.com | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com
Reported: 15 August, 2025 at 10:09
Shut down on: 15 August, 2025
Shutting down due to OSA
Discussion site for insufferable nerds.
Submitted1. Listen, yes it’s very hard work, but it’s this or be squeezed until there’s nothing else. And when people start having famines we’ll have a new French Revolution, millions will die, and this will require a lot more energy than doing changes today.
2. Will do, I don’t know enough on that subject to have an opinion on that. But unjust, unmovable systems, like monarchies (wink) have been toppled in the past. Even recently.
3. Sorry I was just using my environment as an example, I meant people that trust you, that you trust. This kind of movement starts small
As that is the country we are talking about here.
Many (most?) western societies have a similar concept for civil and criminal law with common law jurisdictions, where precedent is used rather than an explicit, exhaustive legal code. Effectively, the UK's constitution is to written constitutions as common law is to civil law.
To quote someone: "You give us rights, only because we gave you riots"
Very little odd about this btw. Those efforts are intentional and blatant, e.g. [0]. In that case, you can even see that the accounts listed in the article flaunt what they are, their first posts after the blackout are about Israel.
[0]: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/dozens-of-pro-indy-accounts-...
"As director of public prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer issued..."
Past tense.
So if the government had a major problem with the a free speech, its doing a pretty good job of not showing that.
In the Commons, the argument hasn't been against the humanitarian crisis faced. However, the situation is more complicated when Hamas and a significant portion of the Israeli government want to eradicate each other and end any hopes of the two-state solution, and act accordingly violent.
The situation with Palestine Action being made proscribed also isn't because of their beliefs, but their actions. You can't commit criminal activity like destruction of property and violence against people for political reasons and not come under the remit of anti-terror legislation. The same has happened to environmentalist groups that have taken their actions too far, and for groups like the IRA pre-Good Friday agreement.
I could walk to my local town centre with a placard for either saying: "Stop Genocide in Palestine" or "Down with Hamas" this weekend and not be arrested.
Each time i come there it's worse than previous trip, and your whole infrastructure feels oppressive. Constant reminders to be vigilant because something bad might happen(train and metro jingles come to mind) - implying a terrorist attack. Constant reminders that you're watched by cameras, while crime itself is rampant.
I come from Eastern Europe, yet visiting UK genuinely feels like visiting oppressive police state.
I am aware about your history(first The Troubles, then terrorist scare of 2000s, now domestic problems) but this is NOT the normal state for modern western country. Most likely perspective of Brits who have been living through this since ww2 is heavily culturally skewed, rather than then outside observer's one.
Are they though?
I personally think its a bit of a stretch and will likely be undone. However, to pretend they are simply peaceful protests being unfairly targeted is also incorrect.
It’s simple: you only need the wille to rig and the power to freely manifest that will. No matter how elegant the design of a democratic system, or how many procedural safeguards exist, nothing can stop you.
Sad but true—if there isn’t enough power to balance that wille.
May all who value freedom also have the power to defend it.
Before Brexit I would have said so too. The government regularly clashed with the BBC. And Channel 4 news was a delight. Recently the TV channels have clearly been brought into line via governance and the need to change the funding.
The vast majority of the British public absolutely love to ban things. If you listen to talk radio or daytime tv most of the time they’ll be having a discussion on banning something. We have a nanny state and the public like it that way.
Personally I use an allow list for my kids internet access and don’t rely on the state to parent them. I guess that’s too much bother for most people.
As of recently, probably bolstered by the new US admin, US social media platforms have taken a more confrontational towards regulators in EU countries where they operate. For instance, Twitter refused to cooperate with a French investigation [2].
It really is unsurprising that European countries muscle up their legislative response to what they see increasingly as media platforms going rogue in support of operations aimed to distort political debate in Europe. The only alternative would be to outright ban US social media and build EU platforms.
[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lection_pr%C3%A9sidentie...
[2]: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/07/21/x-refuse...
What's more, they try to bully other people into lying about things to get their way. For example, I can't tell you many times I've read comments saying we'll never get anywhere if we insist on playing by the rules.
Playing by the rules here means things like being honest.
- I've been to many protests in my time and often I believe them to be counter productive e.g. Critical Mass. I travelled to London twice to see what the protest was about. This was in the mid-2000s. I saw lots of annoyed commuters, lots of people getting drunk/high and it was more of a social gathering than a protest.
- Street movements are easily infiltrated by malign actors e.g. The CIA have a term called "initial instigator", this is where you turn a riot into a protest by inserting a person or people that will cause trouble. The CIA (and I would imagine British Intelligence) have handbooks on how to subvert/run a protest/riot. You can find these online.
- Many of the protesters you see maybe part of a rent-a-mob. You can literally go to company, and much like you would for film or TV hire a bunch of people to be in the background.
- I have plenty of will and energy to get involved. However often I find that many leaders make the mistake of being too inclusive. This means that often you will end up with people that will intentionally or unintentionally turn your movement into something else. If you listen to some of the account of people that were at Occupy Wallstreet, this is one of the reasons why the protests failed.
1. Don't handcuff 90-year-olds with dementia and put a hood over their heads (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-66317636)
2. Don't take inspiration from Minority Report / Black Mirror - "AI to help police catch criminals before they strike" (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ai-to-help-police-catch-c...)
This isn't actually new though. The difference is that they'd normally be nicked for breaching the peace, which is loosey goosey enough to be used for most things.
ASBOs are far more totalitarian as they can legally stop people from doing legal things. (ie stop a child playing in a park)
But to tackle your main point, Yes people are being arrested for offensive speech, but thats normally only part of the reason for arrest.
I can call my MP a massive <pejorative that gets the Americans all abother>, I cannot however cause a race riot, as that's not allowed under freedom of expression.
I also cannot give advice on pensions.
I cannot threaten the lives of people
I also cannot claim to be a policeman
etc.
The thing you must understand is that _most_ people (ie not columnists or former PMs) accept that there is a tradeoff between "free speech" and a pleasant society. Sure we did look at your first amendment and think "ooo thats probably nice" but then we have the human rights act that enforces freedom of expression. (which the same columnists/former ministers are decrying freedom of speech are looking to get rid of "because it protects immigrants")
The Online safety act is a mess, because ofcom have not issued proper guidance, and the draft bill was directed by someone who was borderline insane (nadine dorris)
Age assurance is not actually a problem, what is a problem is asking me to hand over personal details so some fly by night US startup who'll get hacked/sell my data to blackmailers.
forcing websites to have moderation policies is fine, not having a flexible approach for smaller sites is not fine.
The act is flawed, but its not _actually_ that different from how Network TV is moderated in the USA.
> In September 2022, a British woman was arrested and charged for holding up an "abolish monarchy" sign at a proclamation ceremony for King Charles III in Edinburgh. Similar arrests throughout the country around this period over anti-monarchy republican sentiment have alarmed human rights groups.
However, the characterisation of terrorist scare in the 2000's, is somewhat off. Over the course of the last two decades, there have been numerous terrorist attacks, most notably 7/9, which have led to increased vigilance and securitisation.
So while travelling in Hungary, Croatia, or Italy over the last few years I've noted the difference, I also appreciate that each country is dealing with its own internal context that can be difficult to grasp from the outside.
Anyway, thank you for visiting our fair shores :)
By a few tech communities with a very limited reach. I refuse to believe at this point that the complete silence on the topic from mainstream media across EU is a coincidence.
I do the same but let's not pretend that's within the technical ability of the average parent. Of course, it should be and that would be a far better place for the government to direct its efforts.
unless im speaking to a 90 year old, nobody thinks browser history means offline copies of the page
> It is high time the government took action, by which I do not mean passing the Online Safety Bill, an approach that is like putting a new filter in the opium pipe.
Well that’s certainly a relief! People are only being _arrested_ for """offensive""" speech, not convicted!
Thanks.
> Listen, yes it’s very hard work, but it’s this or be squeezed until there’s nothing else. And when people start having famines we’ll have a new French Revolution, millions will die, and this will require a lot more energy than doing changes today.
All parties that you would have heard of, will have major backing from a number of wealthy donors. You also have to have the right people involved. Not everyone should be engaged in politics directly.
I am not under the delusion that I can fix the country. I can't even master the mess in my spare room. The best I can do is try to help my family, friends and community.
As for violent conflict. Many people think there is going to be some sort of violent conflict coming to the UK. David Betz has several interviews on YouTube on the subject. I've emailed him personally (about something unrelated) and he is a serious person. I don't know whether he is right or not and only time will tell.
> Will do, I don’t know enough on that subject to have an opinion on that. But unjust, unmovable systems, like monarchies (wink) have been toppled in the past. Even recently.
The monarchy isn't the problem.
I can't find any on [0] - do you have examples?
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror...
That wasn't a thing back then, not really
https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-453005/...
Arrested for "obstructing a policeman"
All of the suffragettes that were caught were normally caused with vandalism
And don't forget the 3-4 decades before that where terrorist attacks were just a fact of life in the UK.
So the title should at least be "Previous UK administration stated that...".
>>44893522 ("All Souls exam questions and the limits of machine reasoning (resobscura.substack.com)"—35 comments)
https://resobscura.substack.com/p/all-souls-exam-questions-a...
Yes, it is.
> There's no masked gangs grabbing people off the street
The British Government is definitely not above masked kidnapping gangs and worse. The Glenanne Gang, MRF, etc.
The telegraph and times are government aligned? so is GB news? Now thats a good joke.
I have actually met the media teams for a number of government departments (including during the drafting of the OSA) They are almost the living embodyment of "the thick of it" clever people trying to do good, surrounded by industrial grade cunts.
Firstly, the paper reporting the "power grab" is a national newspaper read by millions. Secondly, as noted in several other places, the spin the newspaper has put on the judgement is deeply cynical. Lastly, this legislation has been in debate for years under multiple governments with a decent (by no means unilateral) amount of public support for some (but distinctly not all) the provisions.
We can deal with social media directly without government censorship and arresting the public. Remove any legal protections that give social media a free pass regarding what is posted on their sites. If we want people's speech to be censored, at a minimum that should be done by the private company who is financially on the hook for what content they allow.
What I am saying is that protesting is a method of freedom & rebellion that is now flawed for today's modern world. It may work in a few odd countries but overall now achieves nothing.
Protests do not work in these modern times.
It may of worked in the in the 1800's because society was maybe of been more united, less corrupted in power however the power that folks had has been chiseled away and has been decaying ever since.
Adding the fact we are now more divided than ever.
The only kind of protest that would work today are those of who use their wallet. Stop buying from corporations from the likes of Amazon, funding Google. But no, we won't do that; whatever would you do without your Amazon prime.
Instead let's hold a stick with cardboard glued to it and pretend that politicians care. (spoiler: they don't)
Protesting about war and then buying resources to protest about the war off Amazon who back the war is face-palming hilarious.
Otherwise everything is a just waste of time, resources and exposure. But by all means, if it makes yourself feel better then go for it.
And no, I didn't vote for Brexit.
What they want is a similar fascist group in the UK to do well in the next election - and freedom of speech is one of the easiest things to moan about when criminals are getting nabbed.
Have you any proof that these rent a mob thing exists? You used “maybe part”... Please find a specific service for renting a mob, not a single individual or small group. Or proof that this service exists, because this is an awfully convenient way to bend the narrative to your side “they were all faking it” is almost never a valid hypothesis
Most of which were performed by the British Government through police, military, and paramilitary forces against its own citizens.
Indeed it is not.
The main focus of the Category 1 stuff is evidently whether big sites are actually doing enough to allow children (and parents) to report threats and danger and not see content they don't want to see.
It is for example about trying to reduce harms to children from pro-suicide and pro-anorexia content as well, and about compelling the Category 1 services to provide mechanisms so children can report bullying, grooming and online sexual exploitation from other users.
And also to provide some access to oversight and reporting from to those mechanisms.
That is to say: if a Category 1 service is open to children, it needs to have workable mechanisms to allow children to report threatening and disturbing content and messaging from other users, it needs to at least provide context/warnings around and probably filter pro-suicide and pro-anorexia content, and it is required to be able to present evidence of how those tools are being used and whether they are effective.
If you've ever tried to get Facebook to take down a scam ad (like, for example, the plethora of ads now using an AI-generated Martin Lewis) you will understand that there are genuine concerns about whether the tools available to non-adult users are effective for anything at all.
Category 1 regulations have not yet been finalised and they are not merely being imposed; the likely Category 1 services are being consulted.
Well, it's only really happening for people on the Right. If you're firmly within the left wing Overton Window (apart from perhaps Israel/Palestine), you don't have much to fear from Two Tier Kear.
OSA and chat control have made me seriously rethink that…
Has everyone lost their mind?
No we don't. We have what is referred to as an "uncodified constitution".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncodified_constitution
It is a collection of laws and conventions, but there is nothing set up as an overarching set of rules to guide the country. If something were to happen that was deeply unpopular with what the majority of the country feels "makes us British", there is little we could do about it.
Successful court cases against the government have usually been because the government of the day forgot to pass the law that gave them the power to do whatever move they wanted to make. A constitution change is a much bigger deal.
Yes, but only on the right. The leader of Hope not Hate was not charged for his inflammatory tweets, and then you have this guy saying he hoped right wing protestors' throats would be cut being completely let off:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/15/suspended-labour...
Not quite, "inflation" is CPI, as the government will tell you endlessly if you work for it and ask for a pay rise. Student loans go up by RPI (which is almost always higher).
actually no. its grossly offensive. Not someone finding it offense. And normally its a legal garnish, for something like trying to get someone else killed or injured via text.
However you can be arrested for organising a protest that someone might reasonably find annoying. That has much less legal oversight.
Aka, this rule does not apply to all current and former members of parliament clause.
The Ariana Grande concert bombing was only five years ago. You can see a list of those in the 2020's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
If it was about influence, there are better ways to handle it, without forcing entire population to give up their personal data to some dodgy "age-check" companies. Many run by foreign hostile intelligence agencies.
I guess what I mean is this: while I think the PA proscription is probably misjudged, it's not without its precedent.
We don't have the state mechanism. You could argue the four nations could serve a similar purpose, though there's a debate about how democratic that is when England makes up something like 85% of the UK population (and doesn't have its own legislature).
Given the dubbing of Gerry Adams, the coverage of Iraq/Afghanistan war crimes, and anything related to Ireland, I don't know you could possibly have believed this.
It was just that pre-Brexit, you agreed with the propaganda.
If your preferred cause is not cutting through in that way, it's worth asking what's different about the cause.
Therefore it makes perfect sense to say that the OSA is at least in part about regulating sites with a significant influence over public discourse. I find that at least somewhat alarming; is the "incredibly misleading" part that this is not all that the OSA is about?
(For reference, a rough description of the Categories are: you use a recommender system or allow sharing the site's content (1), you're a general-purpose search engine (2A), or you allow DMs between users (2B). Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174 )
I am not analysing things in a vaccum. I gave you some reasons why I don't believe these things are productive today.
One of those is an example from my own personal experience of being at a protest that literally had 1000s of people there.
I don't believe that all of it was CIA plants and never said that.
I explained how street movements are infiltrated by malign actors and how some intelligence agencies have used these techniques.
> Have you any proof that these rent a mob thing exists? You used “maybe part”... Please find a specific service for renting a mob, not a single individual or small group. Or proof that this service exists, because this is an awfully convenient way to bend the narrative to your side “they were all faking it” is almost never a valid hypothesis.
It is well documented. Just not commonly known. TBH you could have looked this up yourself.
It isn't really any different than hiring extras for a TV/Movie production (as I previously stated).
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rent-a-crowd.asp
Companies and political parties have been doing it for quite a while.
e.g.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-aide-says-paid-actors-...
or some of the sites themselves give you examples of where they have done it.
https://www.rentacrowduk.co.uk/hire-a-crowd-case-studies/
Here are some companies that literally offer it as a service, I found these after doing a two minute google:
https://www.envisagepromotions.co.uk/services/crowd-services...
https://www.rentacrowduk.co.uk/
https://dreamsagency.co.uk/hire-a-crowd/
I am sure there are many others.
> Category 1: should apply to services which meet either of the following conditions:
> Condition 1 – uses a content recommender system; and has more than 34 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service, representing around 50% of the UK population;
> Condition 2 – allows users to forward or reshare user-generated content; and uses a content recommender system; and has more than 7 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service, representing c.10% of the UK population.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
I do not see context because this is the beginning of "present an ID to access the web", and I do believe in slippery slopes, especially in a world where societies have lost the basics.
And I do not see content because I am not sure you want to suggest anything relevant with that.
For the rest, we can joke whenever we are both here fondly mate, but you have probably picked the worst topic for it.
--
Edit:
> where societies have lost the basics
And that's why I feel your use of "nerd" is so out of current reality (besides its application to the attending). A world of voluntary subjects, and the term for the sieged would be "nerd"?!
I go absolutely out of my way to avoid politics nowadays, which makes it all the more frustrating when this nonsense is shoved in my face by idiots on HackerNews or dimwits sitting next to me on the plane.
People do this kind of underhanded passive aggressive thing all the time, why would it not be the case for the British government to basically “neg” the VP that has on several occasions now dressed them and all the Europeans down and embarrassed them? I could very easily see this being the very kind of manipulative and passive aggressive thing that the British government would facilitate as a spit in the face of the guy who admonished them for their thought/speech control.
You seem to have a “police state” model in your mind that is akin to a North Korea and less what it will most likely be in the west, far more manipulative and sophisticated, as depicted in Orwell’s 1984.
You might "just" get threatened with arrest:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/17/armed-police-t...
Or you might get arrested:
https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/peter-tatchell-arres...
There are many similar ones, but they are now much harder to find due to the hundreds of arrests over Palestine Action.
You're still subjected to exactly the same legal restrictions on the speech itself as anywhere else in public, and that's nothing new.
1) You asked for evidence of a rent-a-crowd / rent-a-mob service. Something which you could have looked up yourself.
2) I gave you links to companies that offer these services. I understand that these websites aren't the best, I literally listed the first 4 that were spat out by when searching. I suspect they probably don't get most of their business through the website. They look like websites I was making for companies back in the late 2000s.
3) Then you make allusions to to me delusional.
I think you are looking for excuses to dismiss my point of view. Probably because you don't agree with it.
A sign for a proscribed terrorist organisation, which its members are backed by a Russian plant (Fergie Chambers - now hiding in North Africa) and have damaged military aircraft, military facilities and attacked police officers with sledgehammer. Things that, in the US, you would have been shot for.
The protesters could have waved any other sign around in support for the cause without any problems, as hundreds more were doing, but not that specific organisation.
However the 500 people are at best naive victims of their own incompetence and being used as political pawns, not for the cause but instigators.
All this stuff is rather less black and white than it sounds.
Our media is absurdly distorted itself. Sometimes it's more objective to look from the outside in.
You have not addressed the fact that UK policing guidelines now have a third category of “legal but harmful” (which has resulted in real door knocks). This is subject to political outlook and therefore as “loosey goosey” as it gets.
In that circumstance they'd stay out of it and blame it on the citizens while trying to get favour with Vance some other way.
Spend a few months in Azerbaijan if you want to experience a police state. I have :)
I can find two of the agencies on Companies House:
- Dreams Agency - https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
- Envisage Promotions- https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
The other one might be a trading name and I can't find anything that matches directly.
Can I have an apology please?
There’s widespread recognition right up to the Lords that this is a shitty situation, dangerous/chilling, and a waste of police time. We all think it's nonsense, and it’s being called out for being nonsense in parliament. Literally no-one, AFAICT, thinks it’s a good thing that arrest numbers are rising for non-criminal speech.
TBH I would hope when the dust settles that more people will get in shit for wasting police time — either reporting non-crimes to the police, or not actually wanting any (further) action taken. Feels like in many cases the “victims” are just playing the system as it (rapidly) develops, to take an online beef offline, rather than totalitarianism. If it were totalitarianism they’d be locking folk up, or at least convicting them of something, but that’s where we came in — those numbers are falling.
It seems impossible to you that a government and its actors would e.g., not only allow, but even facilitate something like terrorist attacks specifically for the very purpose of making incremental, ratcheting moves towards an authoritarian system more palatable… for your safety of course.
It’s really not any different than how all abusers will incrementally test and press with various cycles of pressure and relief on their target of subjugation and abuse.
All the signs of manipulation, subjugation, and abuse are there in basically all western countries. Have you ever heard of Biderman’s chart of coercion[1]?
[1] https://www.strath.ac.uk/media/1newwebsite/departmentsubject...
It's not a Labour Party's action, the deadline was written into the act two years ago.
And this is also a key argument when people try to justify oppressive laws by appealing to their own good nature: Protecting speech and protecting agaisnt the government isn't always - or even usually - against protecting against the present, but protecting against every future potential government, and especially protecting against those who might be attracted by tools of oppression created in the present to seek power.
I'm quite free-spoken most places, and usually feel more constrained by not wanting to be too controversial for potential employers etc. when writing under my own name.
But the shift in the UK recently has been particularly troubling to a degree I haven't experienced first-hand before, and while it makes me more cautious about how it will be interpreted now, you're right:
It's scarier to consider how these tools will be abused in the future.
But the other one… yeah they seem real. So my apologies indeed
This has been a common theme after the proscription: The police has repeatedly abused the proscription to go after people expressing opposition to Israels actions in Gaza, without mentioning PA.
The excuse for that is that the Terrorism Act is not limited to making direct, overt support illegal. Section 13 makes it illegal to wear an item or clothing or wear, carry or display an article in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.
This has multiple times been interpreted by the police as justification for threatening arrest over expressing support for Palestine, and the government has done nothing to stop the police from drastically overreaching in this way.
I'm not saying that this is happening in the UK now, but every piece of news I hear about it is less than great, to say the least.
I'm not defending his arrest, and quite obviously something went very wrong there, but again, we're talking about jail here. Posting an obscure cockup as if its the norm is pretty disingenuous.
I've closed businesses after they weren't successful. Doesn't mean it was illegitimate? No. It means they didn't make money.
Even if that one wasn't legit there are plenty of others that one can find easily e.g.
It isn't very nice when people dismiss things like this when they can be found on duckduckgo.
Normally these businesses are used for media campaigns.
But there is nothing stopping them from being used by political groups, parties etc.
> But the other one… yeah they seem real. So my apologies indeed
Thank you.
The whole highest order issue in the whole west is that there is not only effectively zero responsibility, zero accountability, but also zero consequences.
The easiest to understand example of this may be how corporations can commit all manner of what are effectively crimes (i.e., it is what you would be charged with) and they not only do not have any effective consequences, the consequences usually instill the lesson that it is extremely profitable to commit the crimes and just pay the meaningless fine as a cost of business.
In most cases corporations even just account for it as an expense and add it to the cost and price they charge. So, for example, all the EU fines they so concisely levied over the last years against American tech companies like Microsoft and Google; they had been charging the various European governments and companies for a reserve to pay such expected fines.
It always baffles me that people do not understand the basic premise that organizations of people are not their own entities, especially when you don’t punish the individuals that make them up in the same way that individuals that are not in corporations are. Is quite literally a kind of new stratified system. Joe if ACME Corp can commit financial crimes and get away with it, but you can’t. He can even commit homicide through negligence with impunity, while you are thrown in jail for decades.
It really should be the other way around, if a corporation commits crimes, if you did or should have known about the crimes, you are collectively also held criminally liable just like a getaway driver of a bank robbery is.
Somehow we have not evolved past the point that the most powerful and responsible are the least accountable and have the least consequences for their actions.
It's a way different set of incentives and outcomes.
You're free to complete saying something unlawful because until you've said something unlawful you haven't committed a crime, but furthermore, English law on what is "unlawful" to say or do is also complicated in that many things are okay to say or do in contexts where they will not cause offence but becomes illegal if done in front of the "wrong" people or with the "wrong" intent.
As such, until there has been a complaint there often will not be a basis for saying that something was unlawful to say unless it is really far over the line.
If you were to start shouting something blatantly illegal such as chanting support for a proscribed organisation, you must certainly would not find police standing there and waiting unless they deemed it likely to be more disruptive to peace and order to stop you right away.
This expends past speech - e.g. public nudity is in the same category that isn't illegal in itself but where intent or the effect on others can make it unlawful - and this notion on relying on intent and whether or not someone present took offense rather than clearly delineating where the boundary is, is a challenge with English law because of the huge gray areas it creates.
[used "English law" as shorthand here - really it is the law of England & Wales, and much of it will be the same in Scotland, but Scotland does have a separate legal system, hence why it isn't "UK law"]
I will just link instead of re-typing the same points: >>44711336
>>effectively facilitated by the British government through its actions and policies.
Nothing justifies blowing up teenage girls you deluded psychopath.
Gotta work a little more on those assumptions
I'm sorry but the police always have had that. Again, ASBOs, public order offences, "please move along now", town dispersal orders.
Specifically ASBOs give the police the power to stop someone doing almost any action, the courts have deemed antisocial.
A good example of that is street preachers being stopped from using megaphones, which must have happened as early as ~2005
> which has resulted in real door knocks
from the OSA, I'm not aware of any cases yet?
> This is subject to political outlook and therefore as “loosey goosey” as it gets.
The law is always subject to political outlook. Even a constitution is no match for a concerted effort to undermine it. For example: article 124/125 of the 1936 USSR constitution allowed freedom of press, religion and the right to gather.
Look, unless we get someone extreme in power, and they are uniquely competent, they we are mostly safe. What will change that is the steady drip drip drip, of both economic hardship, and a willing medium to blame that on minorities.
So 2028 is around the time that jenrick will attempt to lock us all up.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/31/kent-police-20k-...
> Look, unless we get someone extreme in power, and they are uniquely competent, they we are mostly safe. What will change that is the steady drip drip drip, of both economic hardship, and a willing medium to blame that on minorities. So 2028 is around the time that jenrick will attempt to lock us all up.
Sigh, I was half expecting drivel like that.
> Sigh, I was half expecting drivel like that.
Look I have been railing against this shit for _years_ the Public Order Act 2023 is the latest in a looooong line of laws that have actually and practically curtailed our rights to protest.
I have organise, I have petitioned, I have shouted and screamed, and yet here we are. I have given up.
I look over at the states and just have to hope that it reeks enough that it puts people off the badenoch/jenrick/farage wank fest.
Sadly with the underfunding of courts, and the move to bench trials, means that we are probably fucked, no recourse unless you're rich
I'll say this: history, certainly British history, shows that bad actors are real and that power is simultaneously unavoidable, useful, and deeply dangerous, particularly for those who seek it out. I'm certainly not oblivious to that or "lack the sophistication" to see that the world is complex.
However, for all its ills, I'd rather live here, now, than anywhere else at any other time in history and I think there's better things ahead if we can stop see those who have different viewpoints as inferior, or as enemies, and find some common ground. I'd certainly rather be here than in Gaza, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Afganistan, China, etc.
Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but given the same outrage flew during the Snoopers Charter debacle and we are all still here and talking, maybe "they" are not out to get us all.
If you have too weak internal political support for something cardboard signs do help push something maybe over the edge.
Last time I checked it (here I barely have any Internet connection) it contained complaints from people unable to straightly conduct their usual web activities, of a sensitivity nature above Peppa Pig.
Hysterics? Possibly. But the first steps that could lead to the worse are taken. I have little trust in the profiles I see to have faith the future steerings.
> Is this you?
If you were suggesting that I could be behind childish acts, in the proper societies I lament are going missing you were supposed to apologize.
My age is private, not low.
Except ... if the government really wanted to improve children's and teenage mental health in the UK, they could easily increase the budget for treatments and youth services. That would be the first thing to do, and they're doing the opposite.
Which shows that they just don't care. Taking needed money away from the most vulnerable children on one hand and claiming that new legislation protects children ... does not sum to protecting children.
> Two internet providers are tracking and collecting the websites visited by their customers as part of a secretive Home Office trial, designed to work out if a national bulk surveillance system would be useful for national security and law enforcement.
> Home Office sources indicated that it was taking advantage of abilities in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, to test what data can be acquired, how useful it is in practice, and how it might be used in investigations.
So, what did you mean? Have I fell into some confusion in legislations?
This is why there is zero accountability in the West. Because as soon as we say "hey, policy had some hand in this", people like yourself come out of the woodwork with language such as this to shut the conversation down.
Believe it or not, Terrorism IS a policy issue. If you have bad policy, then you are partially responsible when terrorism happens!
Even natural disasters are a policy issue. For example, here in Texas we had a flood where a lot of people, including young girls, drowned.
This is the type of thing that gets affected when you, say, cut budgets for weather and climate surveillance services. But when you point this out, braindead republicans will say "wowww so you're politicizing the death of little girls? Shame on you!"
But it is political, because everything is political, because politics is literally how modern humans structure their society. It's not team sports. If you cut money for thing X, things that rely on thing X will die, and that includes humans.
The reason people want to shut this coversation down over and over again is because they don't want to be accountable. They voted for something, knowing deep down it's bad and it's gonna lead to some people dying, and they feel immense shame for this. So, they would prefer to simply pretend the issue does not exist, then to have some accountability.
You see, they vote for policies for their direct consequences, but then they don't want to be responsible for those consequences either. That's not possible, those two don't compute together.
It’s a bill about safety online. The onus is moved to the provider to mitigate harms or decide they don’t apply/are low risk.
For porn providers the outcome is fairly clear, to check your users are of age. This was kind of always the case but “are you over 18 yes or no” is not enough.
For other sites it’s making sure there are reporting mechanisms for child abuse content. It’s making sure there’s moderation to manage grooming, self harm stuff etc.
People can fairly argue about the bill but it’s not about age or user verification. That’s one outcome for one set of sites.
I understand from that source that the legislation "mandates that any site accessible in the UK - including social media, search engines, music sites, and adult content providers - enforce age checks"; all accessible sites that could contain """harmful content""" (so basically a dramatically high amount of sites of importance - with particular regard to search engines, which link to the controversial).
Now: how will, say, a search engine conduct age verification without identifying the user.
Because the issue here is that of anonimity online (i.e., the disappearance of the "online" - the end of the Web).
> That’s one outcome for one set of sites
We understand from the article that the set, as said, includes the basics...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...
I can somewhat agree with the sentiment of "rather live here...", even though in many ways it seems likely we are very much on the tail end of an experience that would evoke such sympathies.
One of those challenges that many have today, largely because they very much have been conditioned, trained if you like, to not see those who do them ill, those who harm them as evil, or even enemies; setting aside "inferiority" as that is an unrelated matter.
It is a rather odd condition that has befallen what appears to be all of the western world for reasons that are too deep to go into right now, suffice it to say that they resemble the very kinds of sentiments and perspectives that one expects of any "spoiled" population, be it the Beautiful Ones of Calhoun's mouse population experiment, or the detachment captured in the "Then let them eat brioche (usually mistranslates as cake)". It is the same kind of ill that is befalling our societies all over the western world as the "democracies" have become not only non-responsive to the very people who are presumed represented by those they vote for, but in most cases they have even become not just hostile to their own populations, but they have become actively aggressive towards and against their own populations, which by any measure and standard would qualify such a person as an enemy.
So what do you do with that, when you objectively have enemies (from the latin inimicus, an anti-friend), but you and many if not most people are conditioned to oppose seeing the enemy, seeing the harm, presuming that the proverbial foreign horde streaming through the front gates may in fact not want peace and to live in harmony with you from imaginary endless resources?
It invariably causes conflict due to the waning diligence and order wrought. They are very likely not out to "get you" or us in a manner that is common in the public imagination, which is partially the their tactic and the commoners challenge. People are conditioned with movies to imagine that "get us" would entail all the sort of sudden and compounded actions that one can fit into a formulaic Hollywood format, when in fact they "get us" on such a long trajectory, plans devised by men long gone, maintained, adjusted, and kept on course by men multiples or ages.
The designs against major civilizations are rarely happenstance any more than anything today happens without it being acted upon, whether with intended or unintended outcomes. It is what the multitude does not have a perspective for, that basically nothing in their lives is actually their doing any more than a child is the master of their life.
The challenge is also to see, recognize, and accept the disguised trap prior to entering it, but surely before it snaps shut with fatal effects.
What do you think happens when you are arrested? You are taken to jail. At least for a few hours, or overnight, or even several days depending on the court schedule. And then there are the mountain of legal fees and dread of your fate hanging in the balance.
Sure, it’s not necessarily long term incarceration, but it’s enough to scare most reasonable people into submission.
A childish and pathetic comment
Hence the hollywood code, and all that sort of stuff.
The US really loved censorship, but just not in overt ways. Sure you could publish anything, but it'd never get syndicated by radio, newpaper, TV or cinema.