Threat and Circuses

Two weeks ago, Peter Kyle, Britain’s minister for science, innovation, and technology, sat down to answer questions posed by users of Mumsnet, a parenting forum (that has a peculiar power in British political life), to talk about the impending implementation of provisions contained in the country’s Online Safety Act, a landmark and complicated piece of legislation aimed at protecting people—in particular children—from harmful content on the internet. A key part of the law—a mandate that platforms take down illegal content, for example suicide forums—was already in effect, and in a few days’ time, online services would have to restrict other types of content on the basis of age, using tools like credit card and photo ID checks or automated facial scans to keep users under the age of eighteen from seeing it. Speaking with Mumsnet, Kyle apologized to the current generation of teenagers and their parents, suggesting that the government had let them down. (The current government is run by the nominally center-left Labour Party, which took power last year; the Online Safety Act was introduced by the previous Conservative government.) He then promised that the coming measures would represent “the biggest step forward for a young person’s experience online since the internet was created.”

Some observers were skeptical that their enforcement would amount to a clear line in the sand: “The UK’s online safety regime is here,” Politico wrote in a headline the day before the age-gating was due to take effect. “Will anybody notice?” As the new rules rolled out eleven days ago, however, many people did very much notice—and, as with other online trends, the canary in the coal mine was porn; Pornhub began requiring age verification, as did a welter of other sites; so, too, did X, a key smut vector these days, in what Politico described as a “major coup” (or should that be a minor one?) for the British government, given the platform’s reluctance to comply with restrictions in Ireland. In addition to pornography, the new law is intended to stop children from encountering “content which encourages self-harm, suicide or eating disorder content,” as well as “bullying, hateful content and content which encourages dangerous stunts or ingesting dangerous substances.” It is not intended to restrict political debate or other forms of legitimate speech. Indeed, if platforms can face steep fines for allowing children to encounter the aforementioned digital harms, they also, the government says, have “clear and unequivocal duties…to protect freedom of expression.”