🔞 Online Safety
Who controls the harm controls the future. Who controls the harm controls the past.
I’ve seen lots of talk about adult content and ID privacy … but do you really know the impact of the Online Safely Act?
I’ve just been catching up (“dogfooding” we call it) on my little news app — Nourish – and came across this rather good summary of harms.
See; it’s not just then four-letter “p” word that’s down ~33%.
Content relating to the other “p” word – the one in West Asia that’s being systematically obliterated – and even websites like Wikipedia are being beaten with this blunt stick.
The harm of harm-protection…
I understand that the ideology put forward for this legislation has spurious things to do with protecting minors but I have always found that disingenuous.
Like a lot of modern legislation it’s shaped by shadowy lobbyists and poorly understood by fickle-minded politicians. The rather populist notion of protecting minors masks the real harm of all this harm-protection.
1. Bottom Trawling
First, the reality is that it is not just the restriction of harm in perhaps the very real sense (addictive, exploitative adult entertainment) but the restriction of speech … and moreover: the restriction of ideas, criticism and dissent.
The government has used terror to outlaw supporters of generally peaceful and quite frankly demonstrably-legitimate protest … in such a dragnet-way that these age restrictions are biting down on anything even remotely adjacent to those ideas.
That is silencing dissent — plain and simple.
2. Gerrymandering Constituents
Next, the whole thing is remarkably, dangerously contradictory since the government is, on the one hand, trying to emancipate 16 and 17 year olds to bolster their constituency … while on the other hand: restricting 16 and 17 year olds’ access to understand the fundamentally important values on which these young adults might be expected to vote.
How can we trust young voters with a decision when we can’t trust them with the material on which to base that decision?
3. Perversely Inverting
Finally, in practice this legislation is not just an age restriction: it’s a demographic throttle too. The misguided presumption about real-world behaviour fundamental to the design of this law’s application would be laughable if it weren’t, presumably, intentional.
We all know 99% of people just click “yes” to cookies and the frequent failure of the “no” to actually work is never punished. This real-world pattern renders those cookie laws dangerously flawed and utterly meaningless.
Well, this is the inverse.
No-one, unless their either stupid our desperate, is going to show their face, their passport and ultimately their sole to an anonymous website which, almost by definition, is of dubious repute and not really to be trusted.
This doesn’t restrict teens (who would be the first to circumvent such restrictions anyway)…
… it restricts adults who value their “online safety” (of all things!)
I hadn’t realised, in the noise, that this law extended to things like Wikipedia or support for legitimate protest but it does.
And so, in the application of “online safety”, we’ve ranked the safety of the government to avoid criticism above the safety of its citizens to protect their privacy and anonymity.
That is almost textbook 1984 behaviour.
And it won’t end well.
The PA ban, in the shadow of the OSA, describes a clear path to silence dissent.
That, in and of itself, is a terrifyingly chilling, utterly corrupting influence.
Remember: when tomorrow’s government gains power they will inherit the levers of the past, including this one.
Remember also: it’s never power that corrupts, but the fear of losing power.
No government with give this power up.
Why would they?
Personal note: yes, I know I was in the middle of a four-part three-parter and yes, I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. (Thank you for all you smashing people who’ve been subscribing regardless xx).
Anyone who knows me personally knows that I habitually take on far more than I can manage and the last few months has been a confluence of all manner of shit that’s rendered this little newsletter bottom of the pile.
Rest assured that, like everything in my life, I have dozens of started-but-not-finished posts waiting in the wings! Ha. I will try and finish some and hit send.
In the meantime, thanks for reading — I love to hear what you think so do, please hit the comments — and please do spread the word. Every new subscriber is a slap round the face to finish all the articles I’ve started.
Stay safe - at home and online! 🔞