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British users attempting to view videos of anti-mass migration protests on X found themselves blocked on Friday, coinciding with the day the UK’s sweeping Online Safety Act took effect.
Enacted by the previous Conservative government, and continued by the current Labour government, the legislation is already being condemned for facilitating online censorship under the veil of child protection.
Although sold to the public as a safeguard against minors encountering explicit content, the enforcement mechanisms are now being used to restrict access to politically charged material.
The protests in question were sparked by outrage over an incident in Epping, where a migrant allegedly sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl while living in a taxpayer-funded hotel. Demonstrations followed swiftly, but footage of these events is now being filtered from UK audiences.
Users attempting to access the protest content were met with a message stating, “Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age.”
The restricted material reportedly included scenes of arrests and clashes during the protests, not the kind of content the law claimed to target.
To meet the law’s requirements, X has implemented various age estimation strategies.
These techniques, originally framed as tools to shield minors from graphic material, are now being used to restrict access to politically relevant video.
With companies facing penalties of up to £18 million ($24M) or 10 percent of their global revenue, platforms are expected to err heavily on the side of caution.
The result is a system that punishes openness and silences dissent under threat of financial ruin.
Elon Musk, who owns X, did not refer directly to the blocked protest videos, but spoke bluntly about the law’s broader intent. “…purpose is suppression of the people,” he posted on Saturday.
The Free Speech Union, which had repeatedly warned about the law’s implications, responded quickly. “If you have a standard X account in the UK – presumably the majority of British users – it appears that you may not be able to see any protest footage that contains violence. We’re aware of one censored post that shows an arrest being made,” the organization stated. “We warned repeatedly about how censorious this piece of legislation would be.”
A petition to repeal the Online Safety Act has now gathered more than 160,000 signatures, surpassing the threshold that requires Parliament to consider it for debate.
At the same time, searches for virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow users to access the internet as if they were located in another country, surged by over 700 percent in the UK.
Rather than safeguarding young users, it is granting extraordinary power to censor politically inconvenient material and narrowing the digital space available for public dissent.
If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.
The post The UK’s Online “Safety” Act Is Already Causing Protests To Be Hidden appeared first on Reclaim The Net.
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Author: Cindy Harper
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