Tech giants told UK online safety laws ‘not up for negotiation’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/11/tech-giants-told-uk-online-safety-laws-not-up-for-negotiation

by vriska1

18 comments

  2. Or, apparently, implementation.

    ‘Gosh, encouraging the German nazi party doesn’t seem to be prohibited. But god help you if you make one post on Facebook we don’t like!’

  3. They are right, you should never tell your password to anyone.

  4. Digital ID is inevitable.

    Censorship will become the norm.

    Obviously it’s just to protect the kids, stop terrorists & stop harmful misinformation.

  5. As someone who’s been in web technology professionally for over 20 years, I view the OSA as a disaster that will choke off what little remaining incentive there is for global tech businesses to invest in Britain.

    The government say (in the linked article) access to the British economy is a privilege, but that’s exactly the problem; the rest of the world is increasingly seeing us as an arrogant economy which offers comparatively little, yet expects everyone else to jump through a million contorted hoops of varying sizes for the “privilege” of doing business with us. It’s a privilege no one wants, just like how no one was queuing up to sign trade deals with us after Brexit.

    Much like the cookie consent disaster, the OSA couldn’t be more conspicuously drawn up by the technologically illiterate. It will almost certainly further the monopolization of most major web services under the existing top 5 and drown out the little remaining competition. It will definitely lead to the censorship of legitimate opinion and all sorts of other content that will give false positives, since the sheer scale of responsibilities imposed will require extensive automation from nascent technology that’s unreliable.

    It threatens privacy by making the practical application of end to end encryption impossible in many cases, opening up private content between individuals to be not just accessible, but actively subject to monitoring by private businesses.

    There are other issues, but these are the main ones which concern me.

  6. “Under the Online Safety Act, large social media platforms will eventually have to make sure illegal content – including hate speech – is removed, enforce their own content rules and give users the means of screening out certain types of harmful content if they choose to do so.

    The news comes as the father of Molly Russell, the teenager who took her own life in 2017 after seeing harmful content online, warned this weekend that the rules were not tight enough.

    After last summer’s riots, which were fuelled by online misinformation, Kyle asked Ofcom to examine how illegal content, particularly disinformation, spread during the disorder and whether further measures would be needed. He said that his judgments on the issue would not be swayed by the demands of big tech.

    “The safety of people across Britain is not up for negotiation,” he said. “But also, investing in a country where its citizens are safe and feel safe is a better bet than one where they don’t. People do vote with their feet on these issues and platforms upon which people don’t feel safe are ones that tend not to do as well as others.”

    I have no issue with this.

    Musk and Zuckerberg can get bent.

  7. They’re literally just going to stop operating in the UK, are they?

  8. It’s easier to just ban UK IP address ranges from the rest of the internet. *shrug* Nobody really cares about Britain.

  9. The OSA is going to descend into a horrific farce, one of the changes will be forcing porn websites to verify everyone’s ages – this will be achieved via people uploading ID documents such as passports, credit cards, driving licences… In other words the UK will force the sleaziest websites on the internet to create a gold mine of blackmail-data about Brit’s porn watching habits. I predict that it will lead to several closeted gay men committing suicide after there are data hacks or leaks. It is an abhorrent intrusion of privacy.

    Additionally, the OSA (which the Tories began) is an egregious act of self-harm which will deter tech investment in the UK (because of onerous requiremen of expectations of companies to censor their own platforms).

    It is a product of the bizarrely totalitarian impulse that emanates from both the Tories and Labour. There’s been remarkably little pushback against it.

  10. It will be up for negotiation when Russian hackers hack into Government agencies like the National Crime Agency. They done it before, they will do it again. Especially when the United Kingdom is technically involved with the Ukraine-Russia conflict. They will definitely use the weaknesses of this bill as an advantage to try and win the war. Napoleon Bonaparte once said “Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself”.

    But only when that happens, The UK government will realise how much of a big mistake this was. The fact they implemented this bill when two conflicts are going on and in country which is in serious financial difficulties and massively relies on the Internet and social media to even function from a government which is universally hated by most people is not a good outlook.

    Stuff like this is only going to give the Reform UK Party more ammunition to beat labour in the long run. (Yes, the Conservatives did technically put this bill up but Labour also agreed with them with this bill as well, so it’s not really that much different either way.)

    March 16 will be judgement day. And the whole world is going to watch.

  11. Russian hackers will hack the UK government because of OSA to win the war in Ukraine? The government massively relies on social media? Reform will rule the UK because of OSA failure?

    What are you on because this is so heavy stuff

  12. Not negotiable until such time as it’s changed.

    And it will be changed. The government just doesn’t want to admit that yet.

  13. The OSA is an absolutely terrible piece of legislation that should be concerning to everyone, not just tech companies. It could mean the end of any form of privacy, massively increase fraud, tank investment into the UK and worst of all do pretty much nothing to actually protect children online.

    And before anyone says just use a VPN, they want to ban those too!

  14. Let’s have a think, I’m a company owned and operated in the USA, and some little country makes a law that says I have to dramatically change the platform… and then they threaten me. Just how are they going to back up that threat? Bring it on. – some people, mostly lawmakers have no forking idea how the internet works !

  15. It’s crazy how much tech giants seem to be trying to control governments. Then, what I find even more crazy is people saying oh we shouldn’t let our elected government try and stop tech giants from controlling our governments because they enjoy reading 5 pages of ads and one update from someone who they haven’t spoken to in years. YOU DO NOT NEED SOCIAL MEDIA TO SURVIVE NEITHER DOES THE ECONOMY.

  17. Population control is a priority, and electronic ID and id cards are incoming. Just wait an see.

  18. “But I just make this basic point: access to British society and our economy is a privilege – it’s not a right

    And the British government/economy will find out acsess to technology, software and services are a privilege not a right.

    The UK keeps going on about how it wants to protect children and vulnerable people. But you forget it loves to treet everyone like there children and vulnerable people.

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