The UK’s New Internet Law Is Even Worse Than You Think

0:00 I've often said on this channel, the most powerful weapon any government can use to crush dissent is to restrict what you're allowed to say. In Orwell's 1984, the government didn't simply control your words, it watched you speak them. And in 2025, the UK has just passed sweeping new laws supposedly to protect children online. But underneath the hood, it's a blueprint for censorship. a shift from privacy to permission, from open access to surveillance. And to absolutely nobody's surprise, this isn't only happening in the UK. Australia is next this coming December. Similar laws are taking shape in parts of the US. And if you think this won't reach your country, you haven't been paying attention. So, what exactly is this UK

0:46 law? It's called the Online Safety Act. And as of July 25th, it's in full effect. The government says it's designed to protect children from harmful online content. Things like pornography, various forums related to mental health, and graphic violence. But here's how it actually works. If a platform hosts a significant amount of this so-called priority content, it now has a legal obligation to block under 18s from accessing it. That means they have to verify your age with proof. And the law doesn't only apply to corn sites. It applies to social platforms like Reddit and X, which now asks UK users to upload a passport or a live selfie through third-party firms before viewing certain content. If a site doesn't comply, it faces fines of up to

1:33 £18 million or 10% of its global revenue. In some cases, Offcom, the UK's media regulator, can even order the entire site to be blocked. So now, a growing number of sites are responding in one of two ways. Either they start forcing users to verify their identity using say scans or ID uploads or they can block UK users entirely to avoid the legal and financial risk. This brings me to privacy. These age checks aren't handled by the platforms themselves. They're outsourced to verification companies like Yoti, KWS, and Persona. Private firms you've probably never heard of. These companies collect, process, and verify sensitive data. They say they deleted after a few days, but

2:20 you don't get to choose your provider, and you don't really know where your data goes. Unsurprisingly, the fallout began almost instantly. Wikipedia was one of the major platforms to push back. The Wikipedia Foundation refused to implement age checks, arguing it would violate the anonymity and privacy of its global volunteer editors. They warned that forcing ID checks would undermine the privacy and safety of contributors, especially those working on controversial or sensitive topics. Instead of complying, they threatened legal action against Ofcom. Meanwhile, other platforms didn't fight. They just shut the doors. They've made it clear they would rather lose the UK audience entirely than risk multi-million pound fines or hand over their users personal

3:05 data to verification brokers. So, what did people do? They did what anyone under a surveillance regime tries first. They looked for the exit. And that exit was a VPN. The day the online safety act took effect, VPN downloads in the UK exploded. What we actually haven't talked about here is this act makes children less safe. The evidence of that is four of the top five most downloaded apps in the Apple App Store as we speak are VPNs. These are virtual um networks that allow children to spoof their location anywhere in the world. the 13 to 16 year olds. Anyone who's encountered a 13- 16 year old these days will tell you they will run rings around uh most baby boomers who draft this legislation. ProtonVPN, a privacy focused provider, saw an 1800% spike in signups and

3:52 downloads overnight, jumping straight to number one on the UK app store ahead of Tik Tok, WhatsApp, and even Chat GPT. Other providers like NordVPN and ExpressVPN also reported 10x surges in UK traffic. By the weekend, half of the top 10 apps on the app store were VPNs. When Australia rolled out its own online safety laws, I didn't wait. I signed up to ProtonVPN and it's been a total gamecher. Fast, private, rockolid. No surprises that it's number one on the app store right now. They haven't sponsored this video. I just genuinely believe in their mission. If you want to protect yourself online, hit the link below and get up to 60% off. AOM quickly took notice and issued a warning. It would now be illegal for platforms to

4:39 encourage VPN use as a way to bypass age verification. Everybody who's out there thinking of using VPNs, let me just say to you directly, verifying your age keeps a child safe. Keeps children safe in our country. So, let's just not try and find a way round. Now behind the legal ease, the premise of this law is rather dystopian because the online safety act doesn't only enforce age checks. It hands extraordinary power to Ofcom, a body that until now mostly dealt with broadcast standards and telecoms. It can demand changes to how platforms operate, force sites to remove or restrict access to content, and even order ISPs to block websites entirely with court approval. But the real danger isn't simply in the

5:25 enforcement, it's in the discretion. While the government says this is about protecting children, the act gives offcom the authority to decide what counts as harmful, how platforms must deal with it, and how strictly they have to apply age gates. See where this is going? The UK's prevent program, originally intended to address Islamic extremism in British Muslims, now considers anti-immigration sentiment as a terrorist ideology. The slope is slippery and it's clear where this is headed. Accessible social media sites. There are new powers here to censor your site. State my to censor my site. To censor your site. You mean truth. Truth. I mean truth. Is that okay? Well, I don't think he's going to censor my site because I say only good things.

6:11 Will you please uncensor my site? Yeah, we don't. In fact, a glimpse into the future could be inferred from how Australia's very own Minister of Truth tried to get platforms to censor an Islamist attack on Bishop Marary Emmanuel, not only in Australia, but globally. Back to the UK, on top of defining what is in fact harmful. The Secretary of State can direct Ofcom to revise its codes of practice at any time in the name of public policy or national security and platforms are legally obliged to follow. That means the government now has a legal pathway to influence what platforms censor simply by declaring something harmful or politically sensitive. Today it's about age restricted content. Tomorrow it could be disinformation, extremism, hate

6:57 speech, or any other term vague enough to justify takedowns and filtering. And it doesn't stop at content removal. Now, I do want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of this video. You. No, seriously. This channel is completely fanfunded. No corporate overlords or gambling disguised as mobile games, just regular people supporting through Patreon and helping keep this content independent. And if you're enjoying this video and the broader channel so far, consider signing up as a patron. You get perks like early access, Discord rolls, and direct access to me. Links in the description below. The act also gives offcom powers over private messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal. It allows the regulator to demand that platforms scan encrypted messages for illegal content, which experts say would require

7:43 breaking into encryption entirely. The UK government claims it won't use that power yet, but it refused to take it out of the law. Makes you think. Apple, WhatsApp, and Signal have all threatened to pull out of the UK rather than compromise encryption. Even the UK's former cyber security chief warned that mass surveillance is now just an inevitability if this scanning becomes normalized. And this is where you really need to pause and ask what exactly are you giving up. This really comes down to how the internet fundamentally works and who gets to participate in it. The most obvious casualty here is anonymity. Under this law, the ability to simply browse or post without handing over your ID is disappearing. to access large parts of the internet. You now need to

8:30 verify not just your age but your existence. And once anonymity goes, so does everything built on it. Think of whistleblowers, political and religious dissident, victims of abuse, people struggling with mental health. For many, anonymity is safety. It's what allows them to speak, ask for help, or contribute without fear. But the online safety act doesn't care about context. It enforces verification first and leaves trust for later. This also creates a massive chilling effect. If people think they are being watched or that their digital footprints are being tracked across multiple platforms, many will simply stop engaging. You don't have to criminalize speech when you can just make people afraid to speak. But this system also devastates the open

9:15 web. Complying with these laws isn't cheap. Large companies like Meta, Google or Reddit can afford to integrate age gating systems, outsource verification to private firms and absorb illegal risks. But small forums, hobby sites and other communities, they'll either close down, block UK users, or become shells of what they once were. We've already seen this happen. This leads to a quiet centralization of the internet where a few tech giants remain standing acting as sanitized compliant gatekeepers and everyone else either folds or gets buried under regulation. And as always, what starts in Westminster doesn't stay there. Australia's version of this law comes into force this December, banning under 16s from social media entirely and

10:02 forcing platforms to verify everyone's age using facial scans. In the US, states like Louisiana and Utah have already passed age verification laws for both adult content and social media, with others racing to follow. France now requires parental consent for anyone under 15 to join social platforms and is pushing for national level age checks, too. Look, I grew up in an authoritarian state, one where someone like me and exmos could never shake the feeling of being watched. say the wrong thing and at best you're isolated. At worst, you're in real life-threatening danger. To me, what's happening now in the West feels eerily familiar. It's the beginning of a much broader transformation, not just of the

10:48 internet, but of the relationship between citizen and state. Watching this model quietly become the global standard, all under the guise of safety, is more than concerning. It's deeply, dangerously familiar. And if we stay on this path, we'll lose the internet as we know it. Hey, you made it to the end. As always, don't forget to subscribe, turn on notifications, and give the video a thumbs up. It really helps. A massive thank you to all my channel members and Patreon supporters. You're the reason I can keep making content like this. If you want to support the channel, consider joining the crew. Just hit the join button below or head over to Patreon. Even a small pledge goes a long way and I would genuinely love to have you on board.