censorship in the uk
this was way longer than i intended it to be but please feel free to discuss in the comments and read my massive rant if you want
the uk government and of ofcom have implemented the online safety act under the guise of “protecting the children” from “harmful and age-inappropriate content”, their number one priority being porn.
a lot of people may think this is a good thing, because the idea is right, protect children from explicit content, but the execution is entirely wrong. sites like twitter, reddit, discord and even wikipedia are being affected by this. i’m not familiar with what’s happening on discord and wikipedia but i can tell you this;
not only is submitting personal identification and biometrics to third party sites for age verification a HUGE privacy risk, but blocking ALL nsfw content (not just porn) from being viewed without ID isn’t protection, it’s censorship, control and surveillance.
you might have heard about the tea app getting hacked and having a huge data breach with 13000 selfies and IDs getting exposed which is a (very conveniently timed) example of the risks of submitting your ID to any company. so now, knowing the risks of submitting ID, are you going to do it? probably not, right? rendering you unable to access mature content period. both outcomes are beneficial to the government, either give away your right to free speech or give away all your personal data to be surveilled at all times.
for now the best get-by for this is using a VPN (proton is a pretty good one for free btw) but soon enough not even that will work with the introduction of the KOSA bill to the US.
on top of all that, with 16-17 year olds now being allowed to vote and reform being the only party seemingly against the act, we’ve basically just handed the country to nigel farage on a silver spoon… great…
another thing kinda unrelated but the removal of hundreds of games from steam and itch.io is also a big threat of censorship in the gaming community. collective shout is a radical feminist organisation in australia that pushed for tyler the creators visa to be revoked in australia for his lyrics being “too mysoginistic” so surprise surprise, they contacted steam to remove games depicting rape and incest and when they didn’t respond, pressured payment processors (visa and mastercard i believe) to threaten to pull out if they didn’t remove those games.
once again, you may think this is a good thing because rape and incest, very gross, but this mindset of “it doesn’t matter because it’s something i don’t like” is what’s allowing these companies to push for more removal of more content. they have managed to get itch.io to remove all games classified as adult games, some that don’t even have porn in them. they also previously wanted detroit become human to be banned from sale in australia due to its “depictions of child abuse and violence against women” which (i’m just going to pull this out of a vice article that they had removed due to them quote putting the organisation under a bad light) “removal of such a game would be akin to artistic censorship of material discussing misogynistic abuse against female family members. Targeting the game, in other words, could be considered anti-feminist in intent.” and also called on target to remove GTA5 from store shelves because it “encourages players to commit sexual violence and kill women.” and allows players to “enact their fantasies of committing extreme violence against women, including punching women to the point of unconsciousness, killing them with a bat, gun or machete, running them down with a car, and setting them on fire as they continue screaming.” which, by the way, you can do to the men in the game too??? like??? it seems like they want all games that include women going through any kind of hardship to be banished from the earth.
along with that, payment processors should not be allowed to dictate what you can and can’t buy with your own money!!! common sense i know but damn!!!
but anyways censorship is on the rise all over the world, it’s horrible, please if you’re in the UK sign that petition even though they gave a really crappy government response and pleaseee email your local MP it really can make a difference.
