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.
https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...
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.
"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)
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.
[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).
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.
SubmittedVery 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 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...
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...)
> 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.
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
>>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...
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...
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...
I guess what I mean is this: while I think the PA proscription is probably misjudged, it's not without its precedent.
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...
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.
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?
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...
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.
I will just link instead of re-typing the same points: >>44711336
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.
> 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.
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...