I don’t think Nigel Farage is a particularly interesting, good or moral person. As a journalist, I’ve encountered him twice, and found him charismatic, but misguided and bigoted in his view of the world.
I never thought I’d agree with Farage on anything. Yet when the Reform UK leader brands the Online Safety Act (OSA) a “borderline dystopian” overreach and vows to repeal it, I find myself closer to his belief than that of the Government that framed the argument as a simple choice between protecting children and siding with predators.
Because while the goal of protecting children online is a noble one, and ought to be pursued, the OSA isn’t the right mechanism. It’s Tech Secretary Peter Kyle cosplaying as The Simpsons’ Helen Lovejoy, screaming: “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” and telling critics they’re the problem.
The text of the OSA casts its dragnet over any service that lets people post or share content. Since Friday, any site where children could encounter adult material of pretty much any type – pornography, violence, self-harm, bullying, dangerous stunts, “exposure to harmful substances” – has had to proactively check IDs at the digital door.
That means porn sites, yes – but also volunteer-run Reddit pages – including one supporting users to stop smoking, and r/cider’s online community of scrumpy fans – and even Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the online encyclopaedia, has taken the Government to the High Court, warning that the act’s identity verification rules would effectively kill it in the UK. It complains that it “would undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia’s volunteer contributors, expose the encyclopedia to manipulation and vandalism, and divert essential resources from protecting people and improving Wikipedia”.
It’s not just the digital big boys who now have to comply with these rules. One estimate says 100,000 services now have to comply, or risk ruinous fines of up to £18m or 10 per cent of global turnover, whichever is higher. Smaller players are deciding not to take the risk. And so, the law that promised to stop teens stumbling onto Pornhub has snuffed a hamster-keeping forum out of existence.
There’s a lot to object to here. Yet on Tuesday morning Kyle claimed that anyone backing Farage’s repeal plan is on the side of “extreme pornographers” and paedophiles – even invoking Jimmy Savile for good measure.
“Make no mistake about it,” Kyle told Sky News, “if people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he’d be perpetrating his crimes online. And Nigel Farage is saying that he’s on their side.”
It was a line of argument even a school debating society chair would cringe at, never mind the holder of one of the highest officers in the land: crank the moral panic to 11, smear dissenters as enablers of abuse, and hope no one notices the law’s gaping flaws.
Kyle’s language matters because it shuts down a serious conversation about how best to keep children safe online. Plenty of academic researchers, digital rights lawyers and hobby-site operators share deep misgivings about the OSA. Are they child abuse apologists, too? I think the act is poorly written and even more poorly enacted. I suppose, in Kyle’s mind, that makes me a supporter of paedophilia.
By caricaturing critics, the Tech Secretary dodges the awkward reality that the legislation he has pushed through does little more than push people to avoid being tracked online, and will cause more harm than good in the long run.
square SIMON KELNER Parents, there's no excuse for not protecting your children online
Read More
Look at the stats, though, and I’m in a minority: eight in 10 Britons back mandatory age checks. But pollsters committed the same sleight of hand the Government is trying to do. YouGov asked if people support ID checks specifically to stop children accessing pornography sites. That’s the intended target of the legislation, but not the totality of it.
Ask people whether they support banning their children from accessing Wikipedia to do their history homework, or having to show ID when they themselves log onto a local history group, and the stats would tell a different story.
Those with a little more digital literacy than the Technology Secretary, and those who listen to his spinning of a truly terrible bit of legislation, know what’s up already. Users have voted with their feet, and their IP addresses. Demand for VPNs, which conceal a user’s true location and mask their digital footprint, is up; one provider says purchases have rocketed by 1,000 per cent. And it’s not all teenagers looking to get their rocks off.
If we can have a grown-up conversation – and Kyle’s immediate grasping for the paedophiles and predators suggests the Government, at least, can’t – there are merits to an OSA that works.
We can’t deny the problem: exposure to violent or exploitative content can scar children. Something ought to be done. But the OSA confuses a rifle with a blunderbuss.
A genuinely targeted fix might have mandated on-device age estimation – a method of verification which would leave users less exposed than if their passport or driving license were leaked – or strengthened parental controls on the biggest platforms where harms are documented. Instead, the government wrote a law that treats school homework research on Wikipedia and a grooming subreddit as equally concerning.
And apparently if you point that out, you’re a friend of Jimmy Savile or Jeffrey Epstein. I personally preferred it when the Government didn’t gaslight its electorate to try and hide its stupidity. And I preferred it when secretaries of state knew what they were doing, and were able to acknowledge their errors without resorting to name-calling.
Hence then, the article about i never thought i d agree with farage on anything until now was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( I never thought I’d agree with Farage on anything – until now )
Also on site :
- Supermarket timings for Boxing Day and New Year revealed for Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Lidl and more
- Trump rants about Epstein in Christmas Day post claiming he dropped ties with sex offender ‘long before it became fashionable’
- ABL Bio Receives Upfront Payment for License, Research and Collaboration Agreement for Grabody Platform and Equity Investment from Lilly