The UK's Online Safety Act aims to make the internet safer for children by restricting access to pornography and harmful content. However, it faces significant issues reminiscent of the failures of Prohibition in the US, where the public's desire for alcohol rendered the law ineffective. Enforcement becomes challenging, leading internet services to block content indiscriminately rather than discerningly. This has resulted in age-restriction measures on platforms like Spotify and Discord, limiting access to various forms of content, including important literature.
Over here in the United States, our greatest failure in that regard was the 'Noble Experiment,' AKA Prohibition. From 1920 to 1933, you could not legally own, buy, or drink alcohol.
The idea as presented was to make the UK 'the safest place in the world to be online,' especially for children. The Act was promoted as a way to prevent children from accessing porn, materials that encourage suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, dangerous stunts, etc.
Forcing internet services and ISPs to be de facto police means they're choosing the easiest way to block people rather than try the Herculean task of determining what's OK to share and what's not.
In the real world, this has meant such dens of inequity as Spotify, Bluesky, and Discord have all implemented age-restriction requirements.
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