U.K.’s Online Safety Act Censors the Internet—A Preview of U.S. Proposals

The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (OSA) went into effect July 25, offering America a sneak peek at an age-verified internet. Lawmakers in the United States are rightfully outraged at the effects the OSA will have on American companies, yet they continue to put forth proposals that would lead to the exact same outcome.

According to new U.K. rules, social media sites and search engines are required to prevent minors from accessing content deemed “harmful”—which has an extremely broad definition. It includes not only pornography, but also violent and hateful content. What this means in practice is that a wide variety of websites must now verify user age in order to allow access to newsworthy, educational, or other standard content while other sites can provide the exact same content to minors without age verification simply because they do not host user posts.

The U.K.’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) explains in detail what each category of prohibited content includes. Under the OSA, minors must be prohibited from accessing “[c]ontent which: [d]epicts real or realistic serious violence against a person.” It also includes “[c]ontent which is abusive and which targets any of the following characteristics: (a) Race, (b) Religion, (c) Sex, (d) Sexual orientation, (e) Disability, or (f) Gender reassignment.” It even includes “[c]ontent which realistically depicts serious violence against a fictional creature.” Such a definition would not only prohibit minors from accessing historical and newsworthy content about wars—but many episodes of SpongeBob (if posted to social media), including but not limited to “No Weenies Allowed.” This is not an exhaustive list of prohibited content, either.

With the OSA in effect, X has age-restricted a post by a conservative member of Parliament about her concerns with the government not investigating instances of rape. Users cannot view that post in the United Kingdom until they verify they are at least 18; however, they are free to read about it on news websites without verifying their age. Other age-restricted posts on X include videos of police using force against people protesting asylum seekers. Reddit has also age-gated U.K. access to forums about menstruation, efforts to stop smoking and drinking, and forums about sexual assault. One Discord user reported being forced to input their age due to an inane post about their own age. Even Spotify is requiring age verification and will delete accounts that don’t comply.

Not only does the OSA create separate standards for the same content, it puts user privacy at risk as well. Last year, 404 Media discovered that the age verifier formerly used by X and many other top tech companies had breached many users’ government identification and other sensitive information. The implementation of age verification in response to the OSA also comes at the same time that the top app in the App Store in the United States was revealed to have had several massive data breaches, including of age-verification information.

The OSA’s problems are not limited to the vague nature of what merits censorship on social media. They also include the fact that many U.K. adults are uncomfortable with having to verify their age online due to the sensitive nature of the process and the risk it entails. A petition with over 450,000 signatures on the Parliament website advocates for repealing the OSA, specifically citing how it applies even to “hobby forums.” Lucky for them, age verification can be easy to bypass, as we have written about before. Some facial scanning systems can even be bypassed using a still from the video game Death Stranding. Because these rules are easily circumvented with a virtual private network (VPN), some VPN services have seen their usage skyrocket in the United Kingdom, even topping the App Store charts. As ProtonVPN’s general manager told The Verge, “[t]his clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact universal age verification laws will have on their privacy,” noting that these spikes in signups are common when countries gate access to social media and communications platforms.

Because these regulations are impacting American websites, members of Congress and the White House have expressed concerns about how they’re going to be used to censor speech hosted by American companies. The Telegraph reported that “[m]embers of Donald Trump’s administration are monitoring the Online Safety Act with ‘great interest and concern’ after key allies said it was censoring free speech and imposing unfair burdens on U.S. businesses.” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted, “UK REGULATORS THREATEN AMERICAN COMPANIES WITH CENSORSHIP.” He also noted that the right-wing video-sharing platform Rumble does not have a significant user base nor interest in the United Kingdom, yet regulators are pressuring them to meet in order to force regulatory oversight. Jordan also noted his concern that Ofcom seeks to embed the United Kingdom’s more restrictive standard of free speech on Reddit. Reps. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) and Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) have also spoken out about the OSA’s chilling effect. Remember—this outrage is in response to age-gating content. This restricted content is only visible if users verify their age online, usually through photo IDs or face scans. These concerns also come shortly after a new U.S. House Judiciary Committee report detailing censorship of American speech caused by the European Union’s Digital Services Act.  

Ironically, all of this is happening against the backdrop of American lawmakers advocating for laws that would have similar outcomes. For instance, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) lists a variety of harms to minors for which platforms would be liable. Its duty of care, like the OSA’s, is vague and loose, reading that platforms:

[s]hall exercise reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature to prevent and mitigate the following harms to minors where a reasonable and prudent person would agree that such harms were reasonably foreseeable by the covered platform and would agree that the design feature is a contributing factor to such harms.

With such vagueness attached to a pursuant list of harms, it’s overwhelmingly likely that, if enacted, KOSA would lead to similar censorship of any distressing—even if newsworthy or informational—content by platforms until users verify their age.

With other proposals like the Kids Off Social Media Act, platforms would be prohibited from allowing users under the age of 13 from creating an account if they have “actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances” that the user is a minor. Basically, if a platform should have known a user was a minor and allows them to create an account, the platform can be sued. Instead of opening themselves up to many lawsuits when they should have known a user is a minor, they will implement age verification. Provisions in the bill that claim it doesn’t mandate age verification don’t combat the reality that platforms won’t want to face costly litigation every time they don’t realize someone is a minor when regulators think they should have.

Any law that segments adults and children online will lead to the same consequences. Even if laws do not require censorship of specific content, if they require minors to be treated differently than adults, it will mean that platforms will choose either to treat all users like children or require them to verify their age. This is coming into view in the United Kingdom. Users are treated according to the restrictions in place for minors until they verify their age. Enforceability is showing to be particularly weak, as users often opt to use a VPN instead of surrendering their most sensitive information to different platforms.

The White House and U.S. lawmakers are rightly concerned about the censorship implications of the United Kingdom’s OSA. They need to recognize that their own proposals here would have the same effects. Ultimately, lawmakers must decide whether they could accept that their own actions caused those outcomes.