Last Friday at 6:32 am, the sitting MP for Lowestoft visited Pornhub. “To continue,” went a pop-up, “we are required to verify that you are 18 or older, in line with the UK Online Safety Act.”
The Act, which came into force last week, was designed to protect children on the internet. Under it, most online services that host user-generated content must conduct risk assessments and take steps to make sure minors do not encounter explicit content. This means all pornography sites must have in place rigorous age-checking procedures. Ofcom found that 8 per cent of children aged eight to 14 had visited an online pornography site or app over a month-long period.
Fine. But the unintentional by-product is that the most innocuous services might be the worst hit. The Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s non-profit operator, is mounting a legal challenge to the bill, arguing that the changes will compromise the site’s commitment to privacy and freedom of speech. “This is not good news,” said the owner of The Hamster Forum, “Home Of All Things Hamstery,” back in March. “I would probably need a lawyer and team of experts to be able to fully comply with everything… I am going to have to close the forum… I’m suggesting everyone joins Instagram and follows our account on Instagram instead.”
The forum’s owner was quoted £2400 a year to use an external age-verification service in compliance with the Act. This is a big chunk of the average part-time webmaster’s income, but nothing to corporate social media executives, who get by on paid advertising and huge initial injections of venture capital. Annual enterprise costs for Persona Identities, the service used by Reddit and LinkedIn, are reported to start in the lower six figures.
The only websites with the financial capacity to work around the government’s new regulations are the ones causing the problems in the first place. And now Meta, which already has a monopoly on a number of near-essential online activities (from local sales to university group chats), is reaping the benefits. Thousands of hamster enthusiasts are likely flooding onto Instagram as we speak, ready to be redirected into black holes of miscellaneous “content” they never asked for in the first place. The exact nature of this content is of no corporate concern. The only service rendered is to advertisers, whose pleas are helpfully interspersed between posts and videos. The people running the platform do not care what you logged on for and whether you got it.
Compare this to the beleaguered Hamster Forum. No venture capital is involved – the website was run by passionate hobbyists. They clubbed together with the express purpose of disseminating rodent intel to the people who searched for it. If its users really do move over to Instagram, they’ll find their photos and advice trapped behind a login wall, where they will only benefit other net contributors to Zuckerberg’s growing empire. Their pets will make Meta richer – cute videos are an asset if you’re trying to suck consumers into an infinite behavioural loop that only benefits you. Perhaps most unfairly, the forum’s hamster owners will have to live on the terms of people who are totally indifferent to the value of their time and knowledge.
The sad case of London teenager Molly Russell was a major motivator in the writing of the Online Safety Act. Russell saw an algorithmic vortex of disturbing imagery on Instagram and Pinterest before her death in 2017; the vortex existed because tech stakeholders demand infinite growth at any human cost. These are morally corrupting incentives that the Act doesn’t even attempt to address. If Labour mean what they say about online harm, they ought to consider the more radical option: use government policy to dissolve the tech monopolies. Give Britons a chance to eke out an online existence without having to cope with the second-order effects of a for-profit internet – invasive advertising, data collection and addiction-forming “dark patterns.” Let nobody in receipt of public funding post from behind a login wall.
Online non-natives have another truth to reckon with: true stewardship is impossible. The government is King Canute and the internet is the unruly tide. Without “user-generated content” there would be no World Wide Web in the first place. If we have to choose between a decentralised internet with user-generated content, or a functionally empty internet with children on it, the answer is obvious: get rid of the children. Take the onus of age verification away from the websites, and hand it to the broadband providers. Open up a competitive market for offline phones. Bring back the CD-ROM, and the paper book. The corporate force needed to keep minors safe online is the same corporate force driving everyone mad.
[See more: The revenge of the left]
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