Petition calls on Parliament to repeal the Act.
A petition to repeal the UK Online Safety Act has garnered almost half a million after strict new age verification requirements came into force.
For just over a week - as of Friday July 25 - all platforms displaying adult content must verify that their users are over 18 years old via new, robust age checks. Social media, gaming services, and dating apps are also required to shield minors from harmful content via similar checks.
The petition calls on Parliament to repeal the act, and “work towards producing proportionate legislation rather than risking clamping down on civil society talking about trains, football, video games or even hamsters because it can't deal with individual bad faith actors.”
According to media reports, the UK's Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology responded to the petition that the government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, but ensures it is working very closely with Ofcom for a proportionate implementation.
Also according to The Register, an estimated five million age verification checks are being carried out daily as users attempt to access age-restricted online content.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
