Hive And The UK Online Safety Act

I rarely post blatantly political things, but I think this one affects enough of us that I'll break that self-imposed rule.

You may well have seen in the news that the British government has implemented the final part of it's Online Safety Act.

It is a piece of legislation which, it is claimed, will make the interenet a safe place for children to use.

In reality, it is so broadly written that it makes anything posted by a British user on the internet that the UK govenment doesn't like into a crime. If they decide to call it "misinformation", then it's illegal. Even if it subsequently turns out to be true.

Image by vero_vig_050 from Pixabay

Some Background

Despite the claim that the Act is to protect children, the first action of the government - within 24 hours - was to announce the creation of an elite police unit whose role was to scour X and other social media platforms for any negative discussion on the topic of immigration.

This is the same government (and the one before as well) that actively suppressed any action or discussion on the grooming gangs that abused tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of vulnerable underage girls. So introducing an Act which says it protects children lacks any credibility.

What The Act Requires

A key provision of the Act is that any online platform with user-generated content is required to verify the age of all users. This means uploading copies of government-issued identity documents (passport, driving license or similar) and/or biometric face scans.

It coveres just about every service online, from social media sites like X and Facebook, to YouTube and Rumble, Wikipaedia, Reddit, Discord, down to the smallest PHP discussion board about train spotting or local history.

In one move, the British government have abolished internet anonymity for UK citizens.

It also creates a large number of vectors for identity thieves to try to hack, and the British government itself has an appalling record for data security.

There are some saving graces, however.

VPN downloads have spiked by thousands of percent in the last week.

It is going to take a while before all platforms are compliant, and some (X and Wikipaedia) have already started legal action against the British government.

While the government itself has made no secret of it's plan to use this Act to crush political dissent and monitor all internet activity (for our own good, of course), it'll take a while for them to get their act together and create the AI's that'll be used to trawl the vast amount of data they collect. Not helped by their preferred IT contractor being Fujitsu, who are notoriously slow, expensive and incompetent.

How Does This Affect Hive ?

Hive has relatively few UK users. Being low on the radar is a big help.

But notionally, if it followed this law, it would have to use IP addresses and device information to work out where people live, and take the identity data for anyone accessing it from the UK.

Interestingly, Hive's structure means there is no-one the government could go after and put in prison for failing to do this. I would also hope it's unlikely any of Hive's coders would be interested in doing this voluntarily !

So it's possible that Hive will end up being one of the few places where UK citizens can stay relatively anonymous. It could even become a forum where dissidents can communicate with each other.

What Does The Future Look Like ?

People are already getting around this tyrannical law by using VPN's, or (I've heard through the grapevine) holding photos of Keir Starmer in front of their webmcams when asked for facial scans.

The government are already using this law to crush political dissent from what they call "the Far Right", with the organisers of peaceful protests (notionally still legal) being rounded up on any pretext they can think of.

The government are now talking about banning VPN's. I'm not sure how they'd achieve that, but technical competence isn't a hallmark of our politicians.

As a next step, it's possible they might implement a firewall which only allows approved software through, similar to the Chinese model. At which point the internet effectively becomes a monitored intranet and Hive might be one of many sites that get blocked.

What is sad is that this absurd law doesn't do anything to protect children, it reinforces the establishment view that children are just property of the state and parental responsibility is irrelevant.

Other Western governments are looking on with interest to see if they can get away with passing similar laws.

We're in for a diffcult few years.

Posted using The BBH Project