Britain's online safety act, forced through parliament despite all the usual warnings about hasty "think of the children" legislation, is now in force. The overwhelming compliance requirements are already causing local sites to shut down, such as a popular forum for bicyclists. Those running websites and platforms in the U.K. have a lot of expensive work in store, and serious liabilities to worry about, including being thrown in jail.
The Online Safety Act lists over 130 'priority offences', and tech firms must assess and mitigate the risk of these occurring on their platforms. The priority offences can be split into the following categories: Terrorism
Harassment, stalking, threats and abuse offences
Coercive and controlling behaviour
Hate offences
Intimate image abuse
Extreme pornography
Child sexual exploitation and abuse
Sexual exploitation of adults
Unlawful immigration
Human trafficking
Fraud and financial offences
Proceeds of crime
Assisting or encouraging suicide
Drugs and psychoactive substances
Weapons offences (knives, firearms, and other weapons)
Foreign interference
Animal welfare
CNBC offers context and a summary of the law's controversial provisions.
Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom can levy fines of as much as 10% of companies' global annual revenues if they are found in breach of the rules. For repeated breaches, individual senior managers could face possible jail time, while in the most serious cases, Ofcom could seek a court order to block access to a service in the U.K. or limit its access to payment providers or advertisers. Ofcom had been under pressure to beef up the law earlier this year after far-right riots in the U.K. instigated in part by disinformation spread on social media.
The government wanted to be seen to be do something about a problem—child welfare—and enjoyed an opportunity to assign itself vague, arbitrary and unaccountable powers to shut down any kind of online forum. Online commentators complain of the authoritarian and nanny-state impulses in play, but zoom out and it looks more like regulatory capture by U.S. tech giants. The grim irony is those are the companies who facilitate the alleged harms in the first place, and can absorb the costs of complying with red tape that won't stop them. The activists seem happy, at least, having been seen to have gotten someone to be seen to do something.