11 ms·

Online Safety Act – shutdowns and site blocks

284 points by azalemeth 1y ago

Telaneo 1y ago
The list's probably going to get a lot longer. I wonder how it's going to compare to the list of sites who block Europeans due to GDPR concerns. I've only ever noticed two sites that did that, even though the amount of noise from Americans was not insubstantial. The OSA is a lot more invasive than the GDPR though.
- ta1243 1y ago
  The main category of site which GDPR blocks are local news sites in the US Sites block for GDPR because they want to abuse visitor data and privacy Sites block for OSA because they don't want to abuse visitor data and privacy
  - Oras 1y ago
    How about when it’s a local site, they don’t really care about EU traffic? It’s too much “pointless” effort to comply such as having EU servers to process user data, extra code to show the ugly cookie consent, and privacy policy and terms of service that would comply with GDPR.
    - trinix912 1y ago
      Or perhaps just don't use sketchy 3rd party advertising and analytics? You can always offer companies to send you PNG's of ads and serve them to the user without any of this. You can always analyze server logs to see which pages are the most popular, without deanonymizing the users. It's how some news agencies in the EU already do.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        I wish I knew what's going through the minds of the people who approve all these analytics partners. I've not been able to effectively argue even against the use of "consent or pay" in EU apps and websites, despite "the European Data Protection Board released a non-binding opinion stating that in most cases, consent-or-pay models do not constitute valid consent within the meaning of the GDPR." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_or_pay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_or_pay
        ta1243 1y ago
        There are so many large sites which use consent-or-pay with no enforcement action taken though.
    - mytailorisrich 1y ago
      Why would you bother at all? If you are a local site by a local company on the other side of the world you don't need to block anyone, you just ignore foreign laws. In the case of those news sites, though I suspect that most are owned by large multinational companies whose lawyers advised that blocking EU visitors is the only 100% sure way to avoid hypothetical retaliations by EU authorities.
    - ta1243 1y ago
      If it's a local site then it's not subject to the GDPR. The GDPR applies to sites aimed at europeans. However the privacy attacking malware they embed on there to mine data from their users would apply, and that's why they block it - because America allows abuse of their citizens data, but Europe doesn't. Of course there is no enforcement for an entity attacking European citizens in this way so they could do it anyway, but like with cookie banners the point isn't to comply with a law, the point is to get citizens to blame the law rather than the abusers.
- michaelt 1y ago
  Also the EU's population is 450 million, while the UK's is 69 million. So losing the users stings 85% less.
  - mna_ 1y ago
    Just looking at raw population isn't good enough because some countries are more "online" than others and the UK is one of those countries.
    - Telaneo 1y ago
      Are any countries in the EU a lot less online than the rest, to the point that this matters more than a few percentage points? Even grandmas in Eastern Europe have smartphones now, and I don't think the EU has expanded to Sub-Saharan Africa quite yet (unless you want to count Réunion).
  - visualphoenix 1y ago
    It’s not just the UK implementing age verification actively. 5 EU member states [0] are actively participating: Denmark, Greece, Spain, France [1], and Italy. Canada and Australia are jumping in [2] [3]. [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1820 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_... [1]: https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/france/la-loi-sren-securisation-et-regulation-de-l-espace-numerique-en-france https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/france/la-loi-sren... [2]:https://facia.ai/news/canada-proposes-age-checks-for-online-adult-content-access/ https://facia.ai/news/canada-proposes-age-checks-for-online-... [3]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-search-engines/105516256 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
    - devnullbrain 1y ago
      It puts a UK user in a weird situation. On one hand, the more countries that join in (and I've heard of US states too), the more likely it is that age verification becomes well supported and I continue having access to the wider world's internet. On the other hand, we've reached a very thick part of the wedge already: this is terrible for competition and I do not trust any state with this power. The best path is one of calamitous implementation that scares off other countries and embarrasses this one into a u-turn. But it's increasingly unlikely.
- crashprone 1y ago
  Would you mind elaborating on your statement? How is the GDPR invasive? Invasive from the content providers' POV?
  - Telaneo 1y ago
    Invasive from the content providers' POV, yes. Mostly in good ways in my experience being on the other side of that, but its obviously not completely non-invasive, given that a few things happened after the GDPR came into effect. If it was completely non-invasive, then nothing would have happened, and there wouldn't have been any point in passing it. No point in passing a law you don't want to actually affect anything.
j1elo 1y ago
> reddit discussion about a type of bowel surgery Are they really going to register individual topics for Reddit? Wait, > Post on social media website X claiming that content relating to protests has been age-gated due to the Online Safety Act. Now we're reporting individual tweets?!?
- Popeyes 1y ago
  I think it is based on tags, so if you tag stuff as NSFW then you get an age challenge.
  - apexalpha 1y ago
    So if we want to troll Brits online we just post mildly inappropriate stuff in a any random thread and they're instantly locket out until they ID? That would be hilarious.
    - Popeyes 1y ago
      Until the laws come to you.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    Reddit also likes to randomly tag posts and subreddits as NSFW to force people to make accounts.
- hdgvhicv 1y ago
  The Reddit link works fine with old.reddit. New Reddit has always required an account for nsfw subs.
- II2II 1y ago
  Judging from how most of the reports are phrased, the shutdowns and blocks are initiated by the content providers. Some are for legal reasons, some because they are legitimately concerned that they may be covered by the act, and some to protest the act. Those who are claiming that the government shut down these sites are spreading disinformation. It is more accurate to describe it as a chilling effect.
imtringued 1y ago
Stop smoking subreddit and irish music site considered harmful to children. The amount of geoblocked/shutdown sites by far exceeds the "intended" [0] targets. [0] Everyone knows that the collateral damage is intentional and this was never about porn.
- trinix912 1y ago
  As well as seemingly completely innocent things like renaultevclub.co.uk - Renault EV Club. What on earth did they think was going on there to get them on the list?
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    Any forum, really. Abundance of caution. It's a cost/benefit thing. Also I suppose forum users of an EV site will be able to get around the block anyway.
  - PeterStuer 1y ago
    It's a site were users can post content that can be seen by other users. Yes, it is that simple. Can't have the common folk spouting uncontrolled narrative without us knowing their identity now can we.
  - alpaca128 1y ago
    Same reason many local US news sites etc just block anyone from the EU. They don't want to bother with GDPR and perhaps don't really get enough visits to warrant the effort either.
KillenBoek 1y ago
This is insane, how long will it take them to overreach and abuse their power for political gain?
- Mk2000 1y ago
  They already are...
- swarnie 1y ago
  It happened almost immediately. Certain protest footage posted to X was already blocked in the UK. Get back to work Nicholas 30 ans. The Uniparty demands another day of sacrifice.
- coldtea 1y ago
  This is already part of a long line of laws specifically used for abuse of power and political gain...
- zimpenfish 1y ago
  c2000 with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act[0]? [0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents
- isaacremuant 1y ago
  This is already happening and not just the UK. Happened years ago for Australia and is getting codified into law for the good (TM) EU. This is a concerted push.
- selfmodruntime 1y ago
  Considering that this already constitutes an insane overreach and abuse of power, not long.
perihelions 1y ago
Some similar discussions from earlier this year, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152154 ("In memoriam (onlinesafetyact.co.uk)"—147 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044 ("Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced) (lfgss.com)"—555 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152178 ("Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act"—87 comments)
- blisstonia 1y ago
  Lobsters hasn't been blocked here in the UK.
akomtu 1y ago
100 years ago the British Empire tried to thought-control India. Today the empire is a bunch of demented aristocrats who are thought-policing those few who are still under their control.
- b800h 1y ago
  If the aristocrats were in control we wouldn't have these problems. They stopped running things a long time ago.
  - cess11 1y ago
    Fine, it's not as much an aristocracy as a more general nobility, to an extent competing with foreign oligarchs and governments for control. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords and so on.
  - michaelt 1y ago
    Yes, these days our prime ministers normal, everyday knights, etonians and billionaires. Sometimes they'll be photographed without a tie, or they'll have a chummy nickname like Tony or Dave or Liz. You know, normal people like you and me.
  - Maken 1y ago
    The aristocrats were removed long ago. Bankers have run the UK since the Age of Sail.
- gadders 1y ago
  Yes, the UK is so unsuccessful a large number of Indians want to move there every year.
  - mapcars 1y ago
    Just for economical reasons, not because of great culture or anything like that.
LAC-Tech 1y ago
At this point, I am pretty confident I can live the rest of my life without ever entering British air space. So I ask myself - could I come up with a simple HTML page that would be illegal in the UK without age verification checks? I won't host pornography, but it seems to cover a lot more than that. Photos from contests? Calls to overthrow the government? I'd put it under some creative commons license so other people could host the exact same content. What if there were thousands, or tens of thousands of sites that did it. It'd be wonderful if people were willing to put their money where their mouth is how them how impotent and illegitimate their laws really are.
- trinix912 1y ago
  I don't think it will take long for most people in the UK to realize what's going on, they're already protesting, and it's clear that protest footage is being blocked too. I also don't think it would take the UK too long to block sites like what you're describing. It's now totally doable that ISPs would run non-whitelisted websites through an AI screening before serving them to the user. Or they might choose to go after individuals accessing them multiple times, as repressive governments go after individuals possessing/viewing politically "harmful" material.
  - LAC-Tech 1y ago
    I would love to be blocked by the UK government. I'd wear that badge proudly. Do you think I could get them to send me a certificate and everything?
    - ENGNR 1y ago
      Blocked. By Order the Queen. I'm sure someone could whip up some merch super quickly as souvenirs/protest
      - gschizas 1y ago
        > By Order the Queen The King. Sorry to spoil The Crown for you, but Queen Elisabeth II has been dead for a few years.
nickweb 1y ago
Fully understand the reasons for the site - and the title on HN is shutdowns and site blocks - but the site itself displays self-enforcinging sites and shows them as potential government blocks. There are blocked sites but you have to look for them in different sections of the site. One site shown at the start of the other pages, adult friend finder is showing as blocked, however I can access it from my UK provider so honestly not sure what value this site brings (yet) apart from highlighting those that have a self-enforced blackout due to "451 Legal Reasons". I'm on mobile so difficult to copy and paste - but that site was the top of an alphabetical list after I made my way past a few VPNs.
pjc50 1y ago
Note that this is not just a UK thing but also in several US states: https://avpassociation.com/4271-2/ https://avpassociation.com/4271-2/
- haritha-j 1y ago
  True, but certianly doesn't make me feel any better about it. If we started getting school shootings in the UK, and someone said ah but the US has that too, I wouldn't feel much better.
ascorbic 1y ago
This is a confusing mix of sites that have decided to geoblock UK users because they don't want to deal with the regulations (fair enough) but also ones that have age verification and no geoblock
b800h 1y ago
What's frustrating me about this is that theoretically this list should include every MUD and BBS, if they don't want to get in trouble. It's a horrible law, which forces people into the pockets of the largest sites which can afford to do the age verification. Speaking as a Brit, I wish Wikipedia would just go black for the UK. That might focus some minds.
- cs02rm0 1y ago
  > Speaking as a Brit, I wish Wikipedia would just go black for the UK. That might focus some minds. Likewise. People (organisations/companies), as far as possible, shouldn't be pandering to this stuff, it's not the answer, it doesn't help them or us.
  - dabeeeenster 1y ago
    What is the answer?
    - cs02rm0 1y ago
      To online safety for children? The same as offline safety; parenting and education. There's not much money in those though. https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209 https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209
      - dabeeeenster 1y ago
        I wish it was as simple as that
      - baubino 1y ago
        Making content restrictions easier for parents to implement would help a ton — like being able to block all sites in a browser and create a whitelist of the ones kids are allowed to access. Similar whitelisting should be available and easy to implement for YouTube and social media. Having to individually block each site/video/profile you don’t want your kid to access is a futile game of whack a mole.
coldtea 1y ago
Yeah, the government that let the strets go rampant with crime, that they don't even bother tracking anymore, is concerned about the people's "online safety"...
- randomNumber7 1y ago
  They don't want you to be able to talk about their incompetence or organize protests.
  - moffkalast 1y ago
    There's a great documentary on the topic, it's called "Yes Minister"
- __loam 1y ago
  The idea that the uk is a remotely dangerous country is probably why it's now seeing more and more nanny state laws. It's also probably part of why Brexit happened.
  - rapsey 1y ago
    Any country or city can be made to look safe if crime is not prosecuted or policed.
- rapsey 1y ago
  [flagged]
- watwut 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bilvar 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - watwut 1y ago
santiagobasulto 1y ago
EDIT: I was wrong in this comment, I thought it was blocked but the owners decided to take it down. Original comment follows: They blocked irish.session.nz: "Resources for learning Irish music by ear". This is either a mistake or a very early example of a political abuse of the OSA. Both are wrong of course and prove what a stupid and concerning thing OSA truly is.
- nickweb 1y ago
  They didn't block it. The site owners have chosen to not show the site to UK users for Legal Reasons.
  - octo888 1y ago
    A bit like choosing to give up your wallet with a gun to your head A ridiculous analogy but not entirely
- miohtama 1y ago
  If I am right it is the opposite. It's because website owners block the UK IP addresses, as otherwise they could face criminal charges unless they buy an expensive compliance-as-a-service solution to check the age of all visitors and hire lawyers to craft "compliance policy" Ofcom can read. Otherwise you have a criminal liability. Think it as a bit like GDPR but 1) much more expensive 2) with criminal liability 3) Makes even less sense than GDPR as it does nothing to prevent harm for minors 4) derimental for user experience and users. "Funnily enough" the companies who lobbied for Online Safety Act, and former Ofcom employees, are now selling age verification check services and compliance services related to Online Safety Act. They have pretty good profit margins there, making even Google and Facebook look poor. More here: https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209 https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209
  - santiagobasulto 1y ago
    You are right, my bad.
  - 1y ago
dan-robertson 1y ago
The data quality here seems poor, eg it lists reddit.com as having shut down, which is clearly false. I think some list like this would probably come across better with some curation so it isn’t largely a list of unsympathetic porn sites and no-name blogs being blocked to spite the UK.
- a5c11 1y ago
  Under the main link (the big, bold one) there is a link to what precisely has been blocked. Apparently, it's enough for them to just geoblock specific subreddits, like: dark humour, bowel surgeries, some porn stuff, etc.
  - dan-robertson 1y ago
    There was an entry claiming, as far as I could tell, that all of Reddit was shutdown.
thrown-0825 1y ago
Being British sounds genuinely awful.
- hn_throw2025 1y ago
  Voting British is genuinely awful. This is another draconian powergrab designed by a Tory government and supported by a Labour government. The Uniparty is real. The control freak technocrats are cut from the same cloth.
  - disruptiveink 1y ago
    Starmer is as authoritarian as the Tories at this point. There is no difference here.
  - cbeach 1y ago
    I'm resigned to the fact we need the next four years to be sufficiently awful, that voters will want radical change in 2029. As things stand, it's coming: https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/#national-parliament-voting-intention https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/... Reform UK will repeal the Online Safety Act. Zia Yusuf, tech entrepreneur and head of Reform UK Department of Government Efficiency explains this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3JRuAh4jeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3JRuAh4jeY (36:05)
    - wizzwizz4 1y ago
      Look at how Reform UK politicians actually voted, please. They won't repeal the Online Safety Act: they're populist authoritarians in waiting, and not even particularly good at hiding it.
      - cbeach 1y ago
        Do you have an example, please? I wasn't aware that any Reform MPs were in power back in 2023 when the Online Safety Act passed through parliament?
awaisrauf 1y ago
Why are people so bothered with govt requiring a single photo for some websites when private companies already have all the data of almost all humanity?
- ZunarJ5 1y ago
  Because it's going to a third party.
- trinix912 1y ago
  Because it could end up with the government blocking access to websites critical of it, or going after individuals accessing such websites as they will now have all "proof" they'd need for that. In an extreme case, they could potentially blacklist your ID to prevent you from spreading "harmful" political opinions, cutting you off the web entirely.
  - foldr 1y ago
    The OSA doesn’t make any provision for the government blocking access to websites that are critical of it. This is a pretty long slippery slope that you’re talking about, where the government directly enforces the rules instead of OFCOM, and the rules are substantially different from those currently in force. In other words, you are basically just saying that “things might get worse”. This is true, but it’s not really a very strong criticism of the OSA (which I do not support). Also, any hypothetical attempt to abuse the OSA to rein in political dissent would almost certainly be subject to legal challenges under the ECHR.
- altacc 1y ago
  There are many reasons that you could research with a quick search but simply put, it breaks the anonymity of web use and has huge implications for intentional and unintentional surveillance and data misuse. What is asked for here is much more and much more strongly linked to an individual than the data you refer to. It requires everyone to upload either ID and/or high quality photos & videos of themselves to a random company. Not just one company one whomever a website chooses for age verification, which can include doing it themselves. This creates multiple massive treasure troves of IDs that will attract hacking attempts (for example the Tea app breach). It creates opportunity for blackmail from this data (for example the Ashley Madison breach but much worse). For those age verification services that require a photo/video, that creates a resource for deep fakes. Plus any 15 year old boy worthy of their digital device will be able to get around age verification using fake id/photos or a VPN, whilst a less savvy adult trying to access information about quitting drinking or drug abuse will face a barrier. And this is for ANY website that has a very broad range of content that the OSA mandates age verification for. It's easier for a website to err on the side of caution and just block the UK. That especially includes websites that have zero reporting back to Meta/Google/etc... for usual marketing profiling. If anything it pushes more people into the limited, monitored and advertising driven Meta/Google web.
RaSoJo 1y ago
> bsky.app | @greg.org on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/greg.org/post/3lvt3mjvskk2i https://bsky.app/profile/greg.org/post/3lvt3mjvskk2i Reported: 07 August, 2025 at 19:53 Shut down on: 07 August, 2025 Geoblocking due to OSA Statue of |david behind age verification filter So, going forward, will similar pieces of art be blocked in the British Museum as well? Like physically?
- fiftyacorn 1y ago
  I like it - request that greek statues cover up in case children see
  - cm2187 1y ago
    Or start breaking statues penises again
    - callc 1y ago
      That would at least help change size expectations!
- fenykep 1y ago
  Or you can simply block people under 18 from the museum. That's what Hungary did - no minors allowed in places where homosexuality could be on display.
  - mapcars 1y ago
    These are two different things though
    - miroljub 1y ago
      It's the same "but think of the children and their safety" kind of thing.
      - 1y ago
lblissett 1y ago
I’m in the uk. No vpn. I tried several of these links and they all worked for me… Is there any verification on submissions to this?
- diordiderot 1y ago
  sites have been allowed to estimate age based on account age and digital fingerprinting.
  - esskay 1y ago
    That might also be the case but some things on that list arent blocked at all in the UK (yet). It doesn't appear to be actually checked and anyone can submit a link and it just gets added from the looks of it.
    - lblissett 1y ago
      Yes. The Online Safety Law (and similar ones in other countries) is stupid and should be repealed. However, this is a list of "blocked sites" composed mostly of sites that are not blocked.
anonzzzies 1y ago
I learn about nice sites / pages there I did not know before.
diordiderot 1y ago
[flagged]
est 1y ago
It's never a good idea for the authority to block something It's an even worse idea to make the block list public lmao
gorgoiler 1y ago
One thing I’ve realised over the past few weeks is that some parents must be delighted to have the government control the web for them. When the parent does the enforcement themselves then they can be put under direct pressure by their children to drop the ban. When the government does it then the parent can say, honestly, sorry, there’s nothing they can do about it: It’s out of their hands. The child only has access to tier 1 support [parent] and the support agent’s only response is “sorry, corporate policy [law] requires AV for certain sites, there’s nothing I can do. Is there anything else I can help you with today?…” I don’t say this to make the laws easier to swallow but the social economics of it make it more understandable why this law might be so popular with anyone already overloaded with angry teenagers. Next up: the Bedtime Is At Nine PM Act 2026, Tuck Your Shirt In Act 2027, and No We Have One At Home Already Act 2028.
- vidarh 1y ago
  And then the child talks to their friends, some of whom already have free VPNs, and works around it and said parent goes around oblivious to the fact that their child has access to whatever they want. My son figured out free VPNs when he was 8-9. This is only stopping adults.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    Exactly what I was going to say, though I don't think this will stop adults either. If somebody wants porn without asking Big Brother for permission, they're going to search for the answer for how to do that, and find it immediately. In the era of LLMs this is even more true. Every single chatbot I tried (DeepSeek, Grok, Claude, ChatGPT) except ChatGPT immediately gave numerous and detailed instructions on how to easily bypass the bans. I'm sure one could trivially push ChatGPT outside its love for big brother as well, if they cared to do so. It's not clear to me who exactly such bans are effective against, and to what end. Obviously the government gains an immense amount of power so they're going to love it, regardless of its efficacy.
    - vidarh 1y ago
      LLMs is a good point. I think a lot of older people would struggle to figure it out themselves or even know what to search for, but given you can now so easily just ask plain questions about how to circumvent it, perhaps the tech illiterate will also easily bypass them.
disruptiveink 1y ago
I'm not victim blaming here, but does anyone have this nagging feeling that in this case, we, the "techies" caused this by refusing to engage with lawmakers? In the case of E2E encryption, it's definitely a hill to die on, there is no way to make a backdoor "only the good guys" can access. But in this case, the long standing refusal for the tech industry to engage in even the lightest of lobbying towards having legal regulation for standards seems to bite us in the ass every now and then. We've seen it time and time even for things that are non controversial and would clearly benefit everyone: why is BCP 38 not mandated by law in any country? Why is IPv6 at the ISP consumer edge not mandated by law? All of this could have had the same effect if instead of putting the onus of age verification on millions of websites, you instead put it onto the "customer end device", with some definition as to have it only apply to anyone who sells devices used to access online content with more than X% market share (meaning effectively Microsoft, Google on behalf of all Android OEMs and Apple, plus TVs and console makers). You'd also put into law what content providers need to do to become compliant. It drops from "having a robust system of age verification" into "if you're serving content over HTTP and your content is for over 18, you need to send a specific over 18 header". If you're publishing an app on a walled garden app store, you need to specify the age rating (as one does already). If you state your page is good for under 18s when it's actually over 18, you then incur a fine. Then it's really just up to OS makers to build support for the above into the parental controls functions that mostly already exist. Implement the header checking on the browser. Then restrict over 18 apps and outside app store that aren't explicitly authorised: this ensures no alternate browsers could be installed or ran by a child, while leaving them freedom to roam the web and install under 18 apps. The issue with existing parental controls is twofold: the web is a wild place and manually vetting every single app your kid wants to install is overbearing so everyone gives up on parental controls. Then it's a matter of, when you buy a phone for your kid, you click a button "the user is a child, enable parental controls, set the grown up password". If parents fail to even do this, then clearly it's their own fault? You'd specifically leave out non-HTTP protocols and leave a bunch of technical loopholes that could be exploited by technically minded people. It would both limit the amount of wreckage to things the common people doesn't even know it exists and make sure this wouldn't creep into places it doesn't belong. Sure, teenager who downloads Arch into a USB pen drive and boots off it can then access whatever they want, or someone who finds they can get into IRC and XDCC a bot for hot JPEGs, but at that point they clearly earned it. I get the feeling that we've fucked it, left very important regulations up to people who have no clue and now we get the most onerous and worst implementation possible of things every single time put into law. We could have done the same with cookies, there's like, three browsers. Remember P3P? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P
absqueued 1y ago
Eh? Why the lobste.rs?
almaight 1y ago
reddit/x.com/4chan
tempodox 1y ago
They'd have to block amazon and ebay, too. Someone might have the idea to buy a book there. Speaking of which, are they also closing book stores and libraries? Apparently, they're not blocking MechaHitler. Cheers.
blisstonia 1y ago
I hope any websites geoblocking UK ip addresses will leave some message about why they are blocking access, so the user sees it and hates it.
- cmacleod4 1y ago
  Here's my geoblock message for https://newsgrouper.org https://newsgrouper.org - Blocked due to UK Online Safety Act You appear to be connecting from an IP address in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately this site is no longer available to UK users. This is due to the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which are not practical for this site to comply with. If you feel this is unjustified, I can only suggest that you write to your Member of Parliament. This site remains in operation for non-UK users, as they are outside the scope of the Act. For more information see Ofcom's official site, and an unofficial guide. Other web interfaces to Usenet are available, and may continue to allow UK users, see Wikipedia.
odwyerrich 1y ago
It's the J's.
jarek83 1y ago
So, now whoever runs anything on the web, will just be over-cautious and block UK traffic, while those in the UK will use VPNs. Are we going to have a time where UK web space will look dormant for law enforcements?
blisstonia 1y ago
Anyone know why news.ycombinator.com hasn't fallen foul of this legislation?
- desas 1y ago
  To "fall foul", i.e. be required to add highly effective age assurance, there's a number of tests you have to pass One of the tests is: > Are there a significant number of children using the service or is the service likely to attract a significant number of children. I'd guess that HN would be in scope for the act overall - they provide user-to-user functionality and have a lot of users in the UK. Either they answer no to the questions above, or they answer yes and should have performed a risk assessment where they look at things like what kind of content is allowed, how the site is moderated, how do users contact each other etc etc.

284 points by azalemeth 1y ago

The list's probably going to get a lot longer. I wonder how it's going to compare to the list of sites who block Europeans due to GDPR concerns. I've only ever noticed two sites that did that, even though the amount of noise from Americans was not insubstantial. The OSA is a lot more invasive than the GDPR though.

ta1243 1y ago
The main category of site which GDPR blocks are local news sites in the US Sites block for GDPR because they want to abuse visitor data and privacy Sites block for OSA because they don't want to abuse visitor data and privacy
- Oras 1y ago
  How about when it’s a local site, they don’t really care about EU traffic? It’s too much “pointless” effort to comply such as having EU servers to process user data, extra code to show the ugly cookie consent, and privacy policy and terms of service that would comply with GDPR.
  - trinix912 1y ago
    Or perhaps just don't use sketchy 3rd party advertising and analytics? You can always offer companies to send you PNG's of ads and serve them to the user without any of this. You can always analyze server logs to see which pages are the most popular, without deanonymizing the users. It's how some news agencies in the EU already do.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      I wish I knew what's going through the minds of the people who approve all these analytics partners. I've not been able to effectively argue even against the use of "consent or pay" in EU apps and websites, despite "the European Data Protection Board released a non-binding opinion stating that in most cases, consent-or-pay models do not constitute valid consent within the meaning of the GDPR." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_or_pay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_or_pay
      - ta1243 1y ago
        There are so many large sites which use consent-or-pay with no enforcement action taken though.
  - mytailorisrich 1y ago
    Why would you bother at all? If you are a local site by a local company on the other side of the world you don't need to block anyone, you just ignore foreign laws. In the case of those news sites, though I suspect that most are owned by large multinational companies whose lawyers advised that blocking EU visitors is the only 100% sure way to avoid hypothetical retaliations by EU authorities.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    If it's a local site then it's not subject to the GDPR. The GDPR applies to sites aimed at europeans. However the privacy attacking malware they embed on there to mine data from their users would apply, and that's why they block it - because America allows abuse of their citizens data, but Europe doesn't. Of course there is no enforcement for an entity attacking European citizens in this way so they could do it anyway, but like with cookie banners the point isn't to comply with a law, the point is to get citizens to blame the law rather than the abusers.
michaelt 1y ago
Also the EU's population is 450 million, while the UK's is 69 million. So losing the users stings 85% less.
- mna_ 1y ago
  Just looking at raw population isn't good enough because some countries are more "online" than others and the UK is one of those countries.
  - Telaneo 1y ago
    Are any countries in the EU a lot less online than the rest, to the point that this matters more than a few percentage points? Even grandmas in Eastern Europe have smartphones now, and I don't think the EU has expanded to Sub-Saharan Africa quite yet (unless you want to count Réunion).
- visualphoenix 1y ago
  It’s not just the UK implementing age verification actively. 5 EU member states [0] are actively participating: Denmark, Greece, Spain, France [1], and Italy. Canada and Australia are jumping in [2] [3]. [0]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1820 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_... [1]: https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/france/la-loi-sren-securisation-et-regulation-de-l-espace-numerique-en-france https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/france/la-loi-sren... [2]:https://facia.ai/news/canada-proposes-age-checks-for-online-adult-content-access/ https://facia.ai/news/canada-proposes-age-checks-for-online-... [3]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-search-engines/105516256 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
  - devnullbrain 1y ago
    It puts a UK user in a weird situation. On one hand, the more countries that join in (and I've heard of US states too), the more likely it is that age verification becomes well supported and I continue having access to the wider world's internet. On the other hand, we've reached a very thick part of the wedge already: this is terrible for competition and I do not trust any state with this power. The best path is one of calamitous implementation that scares off other countries and embarrasses this one into a u-turn. But it's increasingly unlikely.
crashprone 1y ago
Would you mind elaborating on your statement? How is the GDPR invasive? Invasive from the content providers' POV?
- Telaneo 1y ago
  Invasive from the content providers' POV, yes. Mostly in good ways in my experience being on the other side of that, but its obviously not completely non-invasive, given that a few things happened after the GDPR came into effect. If it was completely non-invasive, then nothing would have happened, and there wouldn't have been any point in passing it. No point in passing a law you don't want to actually affect anything.

j1elo 1y ago

> reddit discussion about a type of bowel surgery Are they really going to register individual topics for Reddit? Wait, > Post on social media website X claiming that content relating to protests has been age-gated due to the Online Safety Act. Now we're reporting individual tweets?!?

Popeyes 1y ago
I think it is based on tags, so if you tag stuff as NSFW then you get an age challenge.
- apexalpha 1y ago
  So if we want to troll Brits online we just post mildly inappropriate stuff in a any random thread and they're instantly locket out until they ID? That would be hilarious.
  - Popeyes 1y ago
    Until the laws come to you.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Reddit also likes to randomly tag posts and subreddits as NSFW to force people to make accounts.
hdgvhicv 1y ago
The Reddit link works fine with old.reddit. New Reddit has always required an account for nsfw subs.
II2II 1y ago
Judging from how most of the reports are phrased, the shutdowns and blocks are initiated by the content providers. Some are for legal reasons, some because they are legitimately concerned that they may be covered by the act, and some to protest the act. Those who are claiming that the government shut down these sites are spreading disinformation. It is more accurate to describe it as a chilling effect.

imtringued 1y ago

Stop smoking subreddit and irish music site considered harmful to children. The amount of geoblocked/shutdown sites by far exceeds the "intended" [0] targets. [0] Everyone knows that the collateral damage is intentional and this was never about porn.

trinix912 1y ago
As well as seemingly completely innocent things like renaultevclub.co.uk - Renault EV Club. What on earth did they think was going on there to get them on the list?
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Any forum, really. Abundance of caution. It's a cost/benefit thing. Also I suppose forum users of an EV site will be able to get around the block anyway.
- PeterStuer 1y ago
  It's a site were users can post content that can be seen by other users. Yes, it is that simple. Can't have the common folk spouting uncontrolled narrative without us knowing their identity now can we.
- alpaca128 1y ago
  Same reason many local US news sites etc just block anyone from the EU. They don't want to bother with GDPR and perhaps don't really get enough visits to warrant the effort either.

KillenBoek 1y ago

This is insane, how long will it take them to overreach and abuse their power for political gain?

Mk2000 1y ago
They already are...
swarnie 1y ago
It happened almost immediately. Certain protest footage posted to X was already blocked in the UK. Get back to work Nicholas 30 ans. The Uniparty demands another day of sacrifice.
coldtea 1y ago
This is already part of a long line of laws specifically used for abuse of power and political gain...
zimpenfish 1y ago
c2000 with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act[0]? [0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents
isaacremuant 1y ago
This is already happening and not just the UK. Happened years ago for Australia and is getting codified into law for the good (TM) EU. This is a concerted push.
selfmodruntime 1y ago
Considering that this already constitutes an insane overreach and abuse of power, not long.

perihelions 1y ago

Some similar discussions from earlier this year, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152154 ("In memoriam (onlinesafetyact.co.uk)"—147 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044 ("Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced) (lfgss.com)"—555 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152178 ("Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act"—87 comments)

blisstonia 1y ago
Lobsters hasn't been blocked here in the UK.

akomtu 1y ago

100 years ago the British Empire tried to thought-control India. Today the empire is a bunch of demented aristocrats who are thought-policing those few who are still under their control.

b800h 1y ago
If the aristocrats were in control we wouldn't have these problems. They stopped running things a long time ago.
- cess11 1y ago
  Fine, it's not as much an aristocracy as a more general nobility, to an extent competing with foreign oligarchs and governments for control. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords and so on.
- michaelt 1y ago
  Yes, these days our prime ministers normal, everyday knights, etonians and billionaires. Sometimes they'll be photographed without a tie, or they'll have a chummy nickname like Tony or Dave or Liz. You know, normal people like you and me.
- Maken 1y ago
  The aristocrats were removed long ago. Bankers have run the UK since the Age of Sail.
gadders 1y ago
Yes, the UK is so unsuccessful a large number of Indians want to move there every year.
- mapcars 1y ago
  Just for economical reasons, not because of great culture or anything like that.

LAC-Tech 1y ago

At this point, I am pretty confident I can live the rest of my life without ever entering British air space. So I ask myself - could I come up with a simple HTML page that would be illegal in the UK without age verification checks? I won't host pornography, but it seems to cover a lot more than that. Photos from contests? Calls to overthrow the government? I'd put it under some creative commons license so other people could host the exact same content. What if there were thousands, or tens of thousands of sites that did it. It'd be wonderful if people were willing to put their money where their mouth is how them how impotent and illegitimate their laws really are.

trinix912 1y ago
I don't think it will take long for most people in the UK to realize what's going on, they're already protesting, and it's clear that protest footage is being blocked too. I also don't think it would take the UK too long to block sites like what you're describing. It's now totally doable that ISPs would run non-whitelisted websites through an AI screening before serving them to the user. Or they might choose to go after individuals accessing them multiple times, as repressive governments go after individuals possessing/viewing politically "harmful" material.
- LAC-Tech 1y ago
  I would love to be blocked by the UK government. I'd wear that badge proudly. Do you think I could get them to send me a certificate and everything?
  - ENGNR 1y ago
    Blocked. By Order the Queen. I'm sure someone could whip up some merch super quickly as souvenirs/protest
    - gschizas 1y ago
      > By Order the Queen The King. Sorry to spoil The Crown for you, but Queen Elisabeth II has been dead for a few years.

nickweb 1y ago

Fully understand the reasons for the site - and the title on HN is shutdowns and site blocks - but the site itself displays self-enforcinging sites and shows them as potential government blocks. There are blocked sites but you have to look for them in different sections of the site. One site shown at the start of the other pages, adult friend finder is showing as blocked, however I can access it from my UK provider so honestly not sure what value this site brings (yet) apart from highlighting those that have a self-enforced blackout due to "451 Legal Reasons". I'm on mobile so difficult to copy and paste - but that site was the top of an alphabetical list after I made my way past a few VPNs.

pjc50 1y ago

Note that this is not just a UK thing but also in several US states: https://avpassociation.com/4271-2/ https://avpassociation.com/4271-2/

haritha-j 1y ago
True, but certianly doesn't make me feel any better about it. If we started getting school shootings in the UK, and someone said ah but the US has that too, I wouldn't feel much better.

ascorbic 1y ago

This is a confusing mix of sites that have decided to geoblock UK users because they don't want to deal with the regulations (fair enough) but also ones that have age verification and no geoblock

b800h 1y ago

What's frustrating me about this is that theoretically this list should include every MUD and BBS, if they don't want to get in trouble. It's a horrible law, which forces people into the pockets of the largest sites which can afford to do the age verification. Speaking as a Brit, I wish Wikipedia would just go black for the UK. That might focus some minds.

cs02rm0 1y ago
> Speaking as a Brit, I wish Wikipedia would just go black for the UK. That might focus some minds. Likewise. People (organisations/companies), as far as possible, shouldn't be pandering to this stuff, it's not the answer, it doesn't help them or us.
- dabeeeenster 1y ago
  What is the answer?
  - cs02rm0 1y ago
    To online safety for children? The same as offline safety; parenting and education. There's not much money in those though. https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209 https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209
    - dabeeeenster 1y ago
      I wish it was as simple as that
    - baubino 1y ago
      Making content restrictions easier for parents to implement would help a ton — like being able to block all sites in a browser and create a whitelist of the ones kids are allowed to access. Similar whitelisting should be available and easy to implement for YouTube and social media. Having to individually block each site/video/profile you don’t want your kid to access is a futile game of whack a mole.

coldtea 1y ago

Yeah, the government that let the strets go rampant with crime, that they don't even bother tracking anymore, is concerned about the people's "online safety"...

randomNumber7 1y ago
They don't want you to be able to talk about their incompetence or organize protests.
- moffkalast 1y ago
  There's a great documentary on the topic, it's called "Yes Minister"
__loam 1y ago
The idea that the uk is a remotely dangerous country is probably why it's now seeing more and more nanny state laws. It's also probably part of why Brexit happened.
- rapsey 1y ago
  Any country or city can be made to look safe if crime is not prosecuted or policed.
rapsey 1y ago
[flagged]
watwut 1y ago
[flagged]
- bilvar 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - watwut 1y ago

santiagobasulto 1y ago

EDIT: I was wrong in this comment, I thought it was blocked but the owners decided to take it down. Original comment follows: They blocked irish.session.nz: "Resources for learning Irish music by ear". This is either a mistake or a very early example of a political abuse of the OSA. Both are wrong of course and prove what a stupid and concerning thing OSA truly is.

nickweb 1y ago
They didn't block it. The site owners have chosen to not show the site to UK users for Legal Reasons.
- octo888 1y ago
  A bit like choosing to give up your wallet with a gun to your head A ridiculous analogy but not entirely
miohtama 1y ago
If I am right it is the opposite. It's because website owners block the UK IP addresses, as otherwise they could face criminal charges unless they buy an expensive compliance-as-a-service solution to check the age of all visitors and hire lawyers to craft "compliance policy" Ofcom can read. Otherwise you have a criminal liability. Think it as a bit like GDPR but 1) much more expensive 2) with criminal liability 3) Makes even less sense than GDPR as it does nothing to prevent harm for minors 4) derimental for user experience and users. "Funnily enough" the companies who lobbied for Online Safety Act, and former Ofcom employees, are now selling age verification check services and compliance services related to Online Safety Act. They have pretty good profit margins there, making even Google and Facebook look poor. More here: https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209 https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209
- santiagobasulto 1y ago
  You are right, my bad.
- 1y ago

dan-robertson 1y ago

The data quality here seems poor, eg it lists reddit.com as having shut down, which is clearly false. I think some list like this would probably come across better with some curation so it isn’t largely a list of unsympathetic porn sites and no-name blogs being blocked to spite the UK.

a5c11 1y ago
Under the main link (the big, bold one) there is a link to what precisely has been blocked. Apparently, it's enough for them to just geoblock specific subreddits, like: dark humour, bowel surgeries, some porn stuff, etc.
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  There was an entry claiming, as far as I could tell, that all of Reddit was shutdown.

thrown-0825 1y ago

Being British sounds genuinely awful.

hn_throw2025 1y ago
Voting British is genuinely awful. This is another draconian powergrab designed by a Tory government and supported by a Labour government. The Uniparty is real. The control freak technocrats are cut from the same cloth.
- disruptiveink 1y ago
  Starmer is as authoritarian as the Tories at this point. There is no difference here.
- cbeach 1y ago
  I'm resigned to the fact we need the next four years to be sufficiently awful, that voters will want radical change in 2029. As things stand, it's coming: https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/#national-parliament-voting-intention https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/... Reform UK will repeal the Online Safety Act. Zia Yusuf, tech entrepreneur and head of Reform UK Department of Government Efficiency explains this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3JRuAh4jeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3JRuAh4jeY (36:05)
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    Look at how Reform UK politicians actually voted, please. They won't repeal the Online Safety Act: they're populist authoritarians in waiting, and not even particularly good at hiding it.
    - cbeach 1y ago
      Do you have an example, please? I wasn't aware that any Reform MPs were in power back in 2023 when the Online Safety Act passed through parliament?

awaisrauf 1y ago

Why are people so bothered with govt requiring a single photo for some websites when private companies already have all the data of almost all humanity?

ZunarJ5 1y ago
Because it's going to a third party.
trinix912 1y ago
Because it could end up with the government blocking access to websites critical of it, or going after individuals accessing such websites as they will now have all "proof" they'd need for that. In an extreme case, they could potentially blacklist your ID to prevent you from spreading "harmful" political opinions, cutting you off the web entirely.
- foldr 1y ago
  The OSA doesn’t make any provision for the government blocking access to websites that are critical of it. This is a pretty long slippery slope that you’re talking about, where the government directly enforces the rules instead of OFCOM, and the rules are substantially different from those currently in force. In other words, you are basically just saying that “things might get worse”. This is true, but it’s not really a very strong criticism of the OSA (which I do not support). Also, any hypothetical attempt to abuse the OSA to rein in political dissent would almost certainly be subject to legal challenges under the ECHR.
altacc 1y ago
There are many reasons that you could research with a quick search but simply put, it breaks the anonymity of web use and has huge implications for intentional and unintentional surveillance and data misuse. What is asked for here is much more and much more strongly linked to an individual than the data you refer to. It requires everyone to upload either ID and/or high quality photos & videos of themselves to a random company. Not just one company one whomever a website chooses for age verification, which can include doing it themselves. This creates multiple massive treasure troves of IDs that will attract hacking attempts (for example the Tea app breach). It creates opportunity for blackmail from this data (for example the Ashley Madison breach but much worse). For those age verification services that require a photo/video, that creates a resource for deep fakes. Plus any 15 year old boy worthy of their digital device will be able to get around age verification using fake id/photos or a VPN, whilst a less savvy adult trying to access information about quitting drinking or drug abuse will face a barrier. And this is for ANY website that has a very broad range of content that the OSA mandates age verification for. It's easier for a website to err on the side of caution and just block the UK. That especially includes websites that have zero reporting back to Meta/Google/etc... for usual marketing profiling. If anything it pushes more people into the limited, monitored and advertising driven Meta/Google web.

RaSoJo 1y ago

> bsky.app | @greg.org on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/greg.org/post/3lvt3mjvskk2i https://bsky.app/profile/greg.org/post/3lvt3mjvskk2i Reported: 07 August, 2025 at 19:53 Shut down on: 07 August, 2025 Geoblocking due to OSA Statue of |david behind age verification filter So, going forward, will similar pieces of art be blocked in the British Museum as well? Like physically?

fiftyacorn 1y ago
I like it - request that greek statues cover up in case children see
- cm2187 1y ago
  Or start breaking statues penises again
  - callc 1y ago
    That would at least help change size expectations!
fenykep 1y ago
Or you can simply block people under 18 from the museum. That's what Hungary did - no minors allowed in places where homosexuality could be on display.
- mapcars 1y ago
  These are two different things though
  - miroljub 1y ago
    It's the same "but think of the children and their safety" kind of thing.
    - 1y ago

lblissett 1y ago

I’m in the uk. No vpn. I tried several of these links and they all worked for me… Is there any verification on submissions to this?

diordiderot 1y ago
sites have been allowed to estimate age based on account age and digital fingerprinting.
- esskay 1y ago
  That might also be the case but some things on that list arent blocked at all in the UK (yet). It doesn't appear to be actually checked and anyone can submit a link and it just gets added from the looks of it.
  - lblissett 1y ago
    Yes. The Online Safety Law (and similar ones in other countries) is stupid and should be repealed. However, this is a list of "blocked sites" composed mostly of sites that are not blocked.

anonzzzies 1y ago

I learn about nice sites / pages there I did not know before.

diordiderot 1y ago

[flagged]

est 1y ago

It's never a good idea for the authority to block something It's an even worse idea to make the block list public lmao

gorgoiler 1y ago

One thing I’ve realised over the past few weeks is that some parents must be delighted to have the government control the web for them. When the parent does the enforcement themselves then they can be put under direct pressure by their children to drop the ban. When the government does it then the parent can say, honestly, sorry, there’s nothing they can do about it: It’s out of their hands. The child only has access to tier 1 support [parent] and the support agent’s only response is “sorry, corporate policy [law] requires AV for certain sites, there’s nothing I can do. Is there anything else I can help you with today?…” I don’t say this to make the laws easier to swallow but the social economics of it make it more understandable why this law might be so popular with anyone already overloaded with angry teenagers. Next up: the Bedtime Is At Nine PM Act 2026, Tuck Your Shirt In Act 2027, and No We Have One At Home Already Act 2028.

vidarh 1y ago
And then the child talks to their friends, some of whom already have free VPNs, and works around it and said parent goes around oblivious to the fact that their child has access to whatever they want. My son figured out free VPNs when he was 8-9. This is only stopping adults.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Exactly what I was going to say, though I don't think this will stop adults either. If somebody wants porn without asking Big Brother for permission, they're going to search for the answer for how to do that, and find it immediately. In the era of LLMs this is even more true. Every single chatbot I tried (DeepSeek, Grok, Claude, ChatGPT) except ChatGPT immediately gave numerous and detailed instructions on how to easily bypass the bans. I'm sure one could trivially push ChatGPT outside its love for big brother as well, if they cared to do so. It's not clear to me who exactly such bans are effective against, and to what end. Obviously the government gains an immense amount of power so they're going to love it, regardless of its efficacy.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    LLMs is a good point. I think a lot of older people would struggle to figure it out themselves or even know what to search for, but given you can now so easily just ask plain questions about how to circumvent it, perhaps the tech illiterate will also easily bypass them.

disruptiveink 1y ago

I'm not victim blaming here, but does anyone have this nagging feeling that in this case, we, the "techies" caused this by refusing to engage with lawmakers? In the case of E2E encryption, it's definitely a hill to die on, there is no way to make a backdoor "only the good guys" can access. But in this case, the long standing refusal for the tech industry to engage in even the lightest of lobbying towards having legal regulation for standards seems to bite us in the ass every now and then. We've seen it time and time even for things that are non controversial and would clearly benefit everyone: why is BCP 38 not mandated by law in any country? Why is IPv6 at the ISP consumer edge not mandated by law? All of this could have had the same effect if instead of putting the onus of age verification on millions of websites, you instead put it onto the "customer end device", with some definition as to have it only apply to anyone who sells devices used to access online content with more than X% market share (meaning effectively Microsoft, Google on behalf of all Android OEMs and Apple, plus TVs and console makers). You'd also put into law what content providers need to do to become compliant. It drops from "having a robust system of age verification" into "if you're serving content over HTTP and your content is for over 18, you need to send a specific over 18 header". If you're publishing an app on a walled garden app store, you need to specify the age rating (as one does already). If you state your page is good for under 18s when it's actually over 18, you then incur a fine. Then it's really just up to OS makers to build support for the above into the parental controls functions that mostly already exist. Implement the header checking on the browser. Then restrict over 18 apps and outside app store that aren't explicitly authorised: this ensures no alternate browsers could be installed or ran by a child, while leaving them freedom to roam the web and install under 18 apps. The issue with existing parental controls is twofold: the web is a wild place and manually vetting every single app your kid wants to install is overbearing so everyone gives up on parental controls. Then it's a matter of, when you buy a phone for your kid, you click a button "the user is a child, enable parental controls, set the grown up password". If parents fail to even do this, then clearly it's their own fault? You'd specifically leave out non-HTTP protocols and leave a bunch of technical loopholes that could be exploited by technically minded people. It would both limit the amount of wreckage to things the common people doesn't even know it exists and make sure this wouldn't creep into places it doesn't belong. Sure, teenager who downloads Arch into a USB pen drive and boots off it can then access whatever they want, or someone who finds they can get into IRC and XDCC a bot for hot JPEGs, but at that point they clearly earned it. I get the feeling that we've fucked it, left very important regulations up to people who have no clue and now we get the most onerous and worst implementation possible of things every single time put into law. We could have done the same with cookies, there's like, three browsers. Remember P3P? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P

absqueued 1y ago

Eh? Why the lobste.rs?

almaight 1y ago

reddit/x.com/4chan

tempodox 1y ago

They'd have to block amazon and ebay, too. Someone might have the idea to buy a book there. Speaking of which, are they also closing book stores and libraries? Apparently, they're not blocking MechaHitler. Cheers.

blisstonia 1y ago

I hope any websites geoblocking UK ip addresses will leave some message about why they are blocking access, so the user sees it and hates it.

cmacleod4 1y ago
Here's my geoblock message for https://newsgrouper.org https://newsgrouper.org - Blocked due to UK Online Safety Act You appear to be connecting from an IP address in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately this site is no longer available to UK users. This is due to the requirements of the UK's Online Safety Act, which are not practical for this site to comply with. If you feel this is unjustified, I can only suggest that you write to your Member of Parliament. This site remains in operation for non-UK users, as they are outside the scope of the Act. For more information see Ofcom's official site, and an unofficial guide. Other web interfaces to Usenet are available, and may continue to allow UK users, see Wikipedia.

odwyerrich 1y ago

It's the J's.

jarek83 1y ago

So, now whoever runs anything on the web, will just be over-cautious and block UK traffic, while those in the UK will use VPNs. Are we going to have a time where UK web space will look dormant for law enforcements?

blisstonia 1y ago

Anyone know why news.ycombinator.com hasn't fallen foul of this legislation?

desas 1y ago
To "fall foul", i.e. be required to add highly effective age assurance, there's a number of tests you have to pass One of the tests is: > Are there a significant number of children using the service or is the service likely to attract a significant number of children. I'd guess that HN would be in scope for the act overall - they provide user-to-user functionality and have a lot of users in the UK. Either they answer no to the questions above, or they answer yes and should have performed a risk assessment where they look at things like what kind of content is allowed, how the site is moderated, how do users contact each other etc etc.