A week has passed since the Online Safety Act’s age-verification rules came into effect, turning vast swathes of the internet dark for users based in the UK. Although the bill was sold as a necessary measure to protect children from pornography, it is not just ‘adult’ content that has suddenly been restricted.
Here are five things Britons can no longer post or read about under the new internet censorship rules.
1) Cultural treasures and historical truths
Francisco Goya’s 19th-century masterpiece, Saturn Devouring His Son, was automatically hidden from British users of X within days of the new rules coming into force. The painting depicts the Ancient Greek myth of the Titan Cronus, who ate one of his sons out of fear he would usurp him. It may sit proudly on display in Madrid’s Museo del Prado, but heaven forbid anyone should encounter it while scrolling on their phone.
A thread on X detailing the life of Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades has also been suppressed, presumably it’s been deemed ‘Islamophobic’.
Even fashion is apparently considered too risqué a subject for the censors. A post by Derek Guy – aka the Menswear Guy – on classic men’s tailoring from the 1930s has been ‘temporarily’ age-gated ‘due to local laws’.
2) Women’s rights
Even though single-sex spaces are the law of the land in the UK, as confirmed by April’s open-and-shut Supreme Court ruling, it seems that posting online about single-sex spaces is now a no-no. A disgruntled 53-year-old user of X discovered that a tweet calling for single-sex toilets was branded too ‘sensitive’ by the censors for her to read.
3) Keir Starmer, the government and the state of the UK
News that the name ‘Keir’ is dying out in the UK, with not a single baby born last year sharing the name of the prime minister, seems to have touched a nerve with online watchmen. A Guido Fawkes article headlined ‘Keir Suffers Extinction Event’, featuring a baby with Starmer’s head superimposed on it, has been put behind the age wall on X.
And it’s not just irreverent articles about the prime minister’s unpopularity that are banned – protests against his policies are also being obscured. A video of a protester being restrained by police outside an asylum hotel in Leeds has been hidden from UK users. X has since confirmed that this was thanks to the Online Safety Act.
4) The grooming-gangs scandal
Perhaps the most abhorrent outcome of the Online Safety Act so far is how it is silencing grooming-gang victims – all over again. On Wednesday, testimony from survivor and campaigner Sammy Woodhouse, detailing the brutal rapes and abuses she suffered as a young girl, was censored on X as ‘graphic content’. Because the post ‘might not be appropriate for everyone’, no one in Britain can see it without the use of a VPN.
Similarly, a parliamentary speech made by Tory MP Katie Lam about the rape gangs – in which she quoted powerful testimony from survivors – has been restricted. The right of MPs to exercise absolute freedom of speech when in parliament has existed for hundreds of years. But the right of their constituents to hear what they have to say has now seemingly been abolished by the Online Safety Act.
It’s not just the testimony of survivors of sexual assault that is now restricted on the UK internet. Access to online support forums, such as Reddit’s r/sexualassault, has also been cut off. Is this law really keeping people safe?
5) The Online Safety Act itself
When compiling a list of posts that have been censored on X, Benjamin Jones of the Free Speech Union found himself censored for bringing the absurdities of the Online Safety Act to the public’s attention. In this way, the act simultaneously suppresses online content and stifles debate about that suppression.
While the Labour government insists that the Online Safety Act has been put in place to protect children, it is now abundantly clear that it is a Trojan Horse for broader censorship of the internet. We must scrap these disastrous new rules at the earliest possible opportunity. They have not made us ‘safe’ – they have only made us unfree.
Georgina Mumford is a spiked intern.
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