The timing of the UK’s Online Safety Act launch is terrible

When accessing the social features on your Xbox or Roblox requires the digital equivalent of a nightclub bouncer, the initial intention is lost in a cloud of inconvenience and cynicism. If you check much of the discourse online – provided you can access it – people are concerned the government have underlying motivations that extend beyond an apparent duty of care for young people.

Kier Starmer isn’t incredibly popular at the moment, and people frankly don’t trust that their privacy is upheld online. Between constant reports of our data being handed out to data brokers, hacking operations, and tech tycoons ending up in court for under-table malpractice, there’s a general sense of resignation from the public. Nothing is truly private, and you need to look after yourself.

The Online Safety Act is the biggest assault on free speech in modern British history.

Unless we resist it, Britain will become a digital surveillance state.

Section 179 of the act makes it a criminal offence to say something false that causes ‘non-trivial psychological harm,’… pic.twitter.com/CHr1XueUUO

— Mike Fairclough (@1MikeFairclough) July 29, 2025

That feeling of personal agency over the situation has now been eliminated by the Online Safety Act. The available options for everyone in the UK are: hand over your biometrics, your passport details, your banking information, etc, or… say sayonara to a whole strata of the internet. I mean, half the country has no idea how AI even works, but will have their face scans logged somewhere so they can access Reddit. It’s not a stretch to call the operation excessive.

Considering the government once lost confidential military documents on a train and recently oversaw massive NHS data breaches, it’s hard to feel any sense of security and calm about the situation. God only knows what third-party apps have planned for our data, who’s collecting what, where is it stored, and for how long?

Hundreds of thousands of petition signatures have been amassed opposing the bill already, but the government is reportedly undeterred. The staggering rate at which people are also downloading VPNs underscores just how unwilling to comply the public is. If anyone’s winning out of this, it’s these nifty little networks.

The Online Safety Act, however, doesn’t feel safe, secure, or even viable in the long term. If anything, an appropriate description would be dystopic.