Some thoughts on the politics of the Online Safety Act
Wednesday, July 30, 2025The Online Safety Act (link is to Neil's site), which requires web platforms get age verification using photo ID and/or biometric face-scanning to access age-restricted content has been, shall we say, deeply unpopular. Many have pointed out the problems with the act: it is a privacy nightmare, it is prohibitive for smaller companies to comply with (thus increasing big tech's concentration of power), it is easily bypassed with a VPN, and may even encourage kids to use "free" VPNs that are really just Kremlin cyberwarfare operations.
I do sympathise with the stated intentions of the act — to protect kids from harmful online material. I'm also not an absolutist about never regulating the net. But I can't deny that I agree with pretty much all of these major criticisms. Surely we can come up with something better? I'd be more in favour of limiting children's access to smartphones. While they could still access harmful online material using other computing devices, at least these other devices are not attached at the hip and can be more easily monitored by adults.
An under-discussed further problem is that this is a gift to Farage and Reform UK. Being a far-right party, angry young men are one of their main consituencies. Farage has already said he will repeal the act if he becomes prime minister. The message to young men in the 14-18 category is therefore "Starmer took your porn away, vote Reform to get it back". Now, maybe this would be a vulnerability of any law aimed at protecting young people from pornography, but the fact that many adults see this law as highly problematic makes this essentially a free win for Farage.
There is even the possibility of, say, Elon Musk doing shenanigans to promote Reform. In the run up to the election, Musk could use the mechanisms of the Act to age-gate parts of X. Heck, he could even age-gate Reform's profile. This would enable him and Reform to claim "look, Starmer's anti-porn law has led to Reform being silenced! Vote Reform and end this nonsense". At the very least, even adults who do not have an interest in watching pornography may become fed up with websites that contain any adult content asking for their photo ID, so the more widely this net is cast, the more parties promising to repeal it — primarily Reform — will benefit.
I don't know what the solution is to keeping kids safe online, but this Act is worryingly authoritarian, likely ineffective, and a political strategic blunder. So, a standard Labour policy, then.
There's an interesting interview with a children's online safety researcher in this video.