Sep 21, 2026 · 21 min · 8 segments
Meta is taking the UK government to court in the latest of several global legal challenges, which have seen the beleaguered social media company try to stave off efforts to place it under greater…
Tom NicholasHost
On the most basic level, it introduced a new law which said that any website which serves adult material has to place that behind some kind of age check.
They also introduced several other rules surrounding the sending of threatening communications, using the internet to encourage self-harm, and also epilepsy trolling which I think it's something I only learned about during the passing of this law, in which you kind of, or not you, I'm sure you would never do this, dear viewer, but someone might sort of hide the fact that there's going to be a series of flashing images in a video for the purposes of trying to cause people to have epileptic seizures.
Sort of not how I'd spent an evening, but... sort of not each to their own, not each to their own.
The main criticism of the Online Safety Act centered on the fact that, as with any attempts to introduce age-related rules online, the only way to gate certain content is to have some kind of ID check, and that ID check would sort of have to happen for everyone.
Even like age estimation technology, which does exist and relies solely on kind of scanning your face or a photo, is very often inaccurate.
The only way to really test someone's age is to get them to upload a scan of a driving license or passport or other form of physical ID, which opens up all kinds of questions regarding the potential for data breaches and who is going to know that you have scanned your ID into that particular website, which you might not want everyone knowing that you're frequent visitor of.
And like, to be honest, I do also think what went undiscussed when the Online Safety Act was going through was that there were probably a good chunk of people who were just against it because they wanted to visit certain websites without having to do the ID thing.
And they found it both, you know, a hassle and also were kind of worried about that data getting out.
But I guess it kind of sounds much better to say that you're posting things out of principle rather than just going on TV.
I would have really respected anyone who went on TV and was just like, I just want to get my rocks off.
One thing I will say, and people really like to shout at me online for pointing this out whenever this topic comes up, is that a lot of this controversy around the Online Safety Act, and the same is often true of like age-gating stuff and bans on social media for under 16 year olds, is that a lot of this controversy was and is actually kind of confined to very specific corners of the internet.
Which I think is really interesting because my assumption had long been that people would really support this kind of thing in theory, and then when they realized that it involved them having to bother uploading their ID, they might have very quickly changed their tune and become vehemently against it.
And just to clarify, me saying that it is popular is not me trying to suggest that it means that it is definitely good.
I think even if you are against these laws, it's important to acknowledge that a good chunk of the British population want this thing to exist.
And indeed, there's similar polling around curbs on social media across the world.
On the most basic level, it introduced a new law which said that any website which serves adult material has to place that behind some kind of age check.
They also introduced several other rules surrounding the sending of threatening communications, using the internet to encourage self-harm, and also epilepsy trolling which I think it's something I only learned about during the passing of this law, in which you kind of, or not you, I'm sure you would never do this, dear viewer, but someone might sort of hide the fact that there's going to be a series of flashing images in a video for the purposes of trying to cause people to have epileptic seizures.
Sort of not how I'd spent an evening, but... sort of not each to their own, not each to their own.
The main criticism of the Online Safety Act centered on the fact that, as with any attempts to introduce age-related rules online, the only way to gate certain content is to have some kind of ID check, and that ID check would sort of have to happen for everyone.
Even like age estimation technology, which does exist and relies solely on kind of scanning your face or a photo, is very often inaccurate.
The only way to really test someone's age is to get them to upload a scan of a driving license or passport or other form of physical ID, which opens up all kinds of questions regarding the potential for data breaches and who is going to know that you have scanned your ID into that particular website, which you might not want everyone knowing that you're frequent visitor of.
And like, to be honest, I do also think what went undiscussed when the Online Safety Act was going through was that there were probably a good chunk of people who were just against it because they wanted to visit certain websites without having to do the ID thing.
And they found it both, you know, a hassle and also were kind of worried about that data getting out.
But I guess it kind of sounds much better to say that you're posting things out of principle rather than just going on TV.
I would have really respected anyone who went on TV and was just like, I just want to get my rocks off.
One thing I will say, and people really like to shout at me online for pointing this out whenever this topic comes up, is that a lot of this controversy around the Online Safety Act, and the same is often true of like age-gating stuff and bans on social media for under 16 year olds, is that a lot of this controversy was and is actually kind of confined to very specific corners of the internet.
Which I think is really interesting because my assumption had long been that people would really support this kind of thing in theory, and then when they realized that it involved them having to bother uploading their ID, they might have very quickly changed their tune and become vehemently against it.
And just to clarify, me saying that it is popular is not me trying to suggest that it means that it is definitely good.
I think even if you are against these laws, it's important to acknowledge that a good chunk of the British population want this thing to exist.
And indeed, there's similar polling around curbs on social media across the world.
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