Comment by silicon5
6 months ago
They're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act:
> Luckily, we don’t have to imagine the scene because the High Court judgment details the last government’s reaction when it discovered this potentially rather large flaw. First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. They suggested asking Ofcom to think again and the minister agreed.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/online-s...
> "They're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act:"
Err, BlueSky is enthusiastically complying with that one (as you read by clicking through to their corporate statement),
> "We work with regulators around the world on child safety—for example, Bluesky follows the UK's Online Safety Act, where age checks are required only for specific content and features... Mississippi’s new law and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) are very different. Bluesky follows the OSA in the UK. There, Bluesky is still accessible for everyone, age checks are required only for accessing certain content and features, and Bluesky does not know and does not track which UK users are under 18. Mississippi’s law, by contrast, would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children."
https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-22-2025-mississippi-hb1126
It's bold of them to attempt to shift the Overton Window in this way ("OSA is actually moderate and we should hold it up as an example of reasonableness to criticize other censorship laws against"). That happened fast.
I think this is weirdly cynical. BlueSky isn't in favor of OSA, they're saying that the Mississippi law is radically worse.
Bluesky has never opposed or criticized OSA. Am I over-indexing on that?
Their July 10 blogpost even frames OSA as a collaboration—it's written plain in the title, "Working with [sic] the UK Government to Protect Children Online",
https://bsky.social/about/blog/07-10-2025-age-assurance
Bluesky is the nesting place for basically every neurotic middle aged leftist who left twitter. It's sort of their team doing the OSA
The porn and gaming fans are on Reddit
Young versions of the above on Instagram.
The Conservatives passed the OSA.
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And surprise surprise, it's in the name of "protecting children", the same thing red blooded Americans have been falling for for decades.
Some people would say "this is exactly why we can't have good things".
Who is failing to protect them from what?
> Who is failing to protect them from what?
Social media from itself. The frank answer is apps like Bluesky and Twitter should be age gated like cigarettes.
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This is what they want, no more free journalism/reporting means bringing back child labor
“services that have a significant influence over public discourse”
This may show paranoia but all these things that are happening recently kinda add up to preparation for war.
In the tiktok ban case we know its reintroduction and passong was because it allowed criticism of Israel, at least according to the people that reintroduced it and got it passed https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/tiktok-ban-fueled-by-israe...
Israel and Luigi have them spooked. Two incidents where they've completely lost control of the narrative.
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> because it allowed criticism of Israel, at least according to the people that reintroduced it and got it passed
This is nonsense. I worked on that bill. The Israel lobby was, like, there. But to my knowledge is delivered zero votes. At the end of the day, if you want a bill passed, you are very careful about saying no to support.
From a broader social-media advertising perspective, the war in Gaza has been a financial bonanza.
https://archive.is/3pave