A growing number of American politicians is condemning a new British law that requires some websites and applications, including some based in the United States, to verify the ages of users throughout the pond.
A bipartisan group of members of Congress visited London recently to meet with homologists and transmit their concerns about the United Kingdom online security law, which entered into force on July 25. Vice President JD Vance has criticized the law for months, as well as privacy defenders who argue that the law violates free expression and hurts vulnerable groups.
Vance criticized the United Kingdom again on Friday, this time in person at the beginning of a visit to the country. Sitting next to the British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and talking to the journalists, Vance warned the United Kingdom not to go for a “very dark path” of the “censorship” online that, according to him, was stepped before by the Biden administration.
The United Kingdom’s Law on the United Kingdom aims to prevent children from accessing potentially harmful online material, and Internet companies are now asking British users to verify their ages in several ways, even with photos of their identifications, through a credit card provider or with selfies analyzed through the age verification software.
But the radical nature of the law has surprised some British. They are asked to demonstrate their age not only for pornography websites, but also before they can listen to songs with explicit lyrics or access message boards to discuss sensitive topics. Reddit, for example, is restricting access to several pages, including R/StopSmoking, R/STD and R/Aljazeera.
Reddit said in a publication about his application of the law that for people in the United Kingdom, he was now verifying ages before they can “see some mature content.” A company spokesman said R/STD, a message board focused on sexual health issues, is restricted due to explicit images. They said that R/StopSmoing is restricted because it deals with harmful substances and that R/Aljazeera, which is not affiliated with the news organization of the same name, but that it deals with similar issues, is restricted because it represents serious injuries or violence.
To avoid the new law, the use of virtual private network software that can mask the location of a person, also known as VPN, has increased in the United Kingdom
The main argument of American politicians who oppose the law is that they do not want US technology companies to have to comply, even if they are serving British customers.
The judicial president of the House of Representatives, Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he raised his objections with the United Kingdom government officials during meetings in London at the end of July. In a statement after his return, he said that the law and other European regulations “create a chilling effect on free expression and threaten the rights of the first amendment of US citizens and companies.”
“We absolutely need to protect children and maintain harmful and illegal content outside these platforms, but when governments or bureaucracies suppress speech in the name of security or regulation, it establishes a dangerous precedent that threatens the core of Western democratic values,” Jordan said.
The problem can reach a point of view in a couple of different places. Those could be the courts if any technological company present demands on the law, or could arise in the commercial negotiations if President Donald Trump decides to press the problem with British politicians, although they say they are not open to discuss commercial conversations.
Marc Andreessen, a risk capitalist and goal member Board with narrow links with the Trump administration, recently called the United Kingdom leaders to complain about the law, Financial Times reported Friday. A Andreessen spokesman said the report was not true.
The United Kingdom’s online security law is one of the most complete national laws that any democracy has approved to try to reduce the potentially harmful content online on behalf of children. Parliament approved the law in 2023, and the government went through two years of writing detailed rules before putting the law in force last month.
The law is remarkable for a combination of reasons: the variety of content to which possible fines and possible international scope are applied.
A wide range of content is in question. Although the “primary” approach of the law is the online material, such as pornography and suicide, also requires websites for the content of the age door with bullying, serious violence, “dangerous acrobatics” and “exposure to harmful substances.” That has covered relatively conventional services such as Spotify and the Microsoft Xbox games system.
Companies that do not meet potential fines of up to 10% of their global income, which for larger companies could be billions of dollars. The British regulator ofcom, abbreviation of the Communications Office, says that companies must use the “highly effective age guarantee” to restrict the most risky types of content.
And the United Kingdom has not been inflexible that it will not allow international borders to hinder the application of the law. Ofcom says that it plans to apply the law to the services with “a significant number” of users of the United Kingdom, the services where the users of the United Kingdom “are a target market” and the services that are “capable of being accessed” by the users of the United Kingdom with a “material risk of significant damage” for these users.
The law seems to retain strong support among the British public. About 69% said they supported the new rules on a Yougov survey taken after the implementation began, and 46% said they supported it “strongly.” But 52% said they do not believe that the law is very effective to prevent minors from accessing pornography.
The law was approved during a previous government led by conservation and entered into force under the current government led by laboratory.
But the reform of the United Kingdom Extreme Right party is pressing for a repeal of the law. The party leader, Nigel Farage, former member of Parliament, described him as “state suppression of genuine freedom of expression,” and his party is accumulating in the polls.
“Millions of people have noticed that what they are receiving in their feeds is different from what it was,” Farage said at a recent press conference.
Farage also met with visiting members of Congress last week, and the conversations were heated with Farage and the Democrats exchanging insults, according to politician, although the dispute seemed to be more about Trump’s freedom of expression freedom of expression than of the United Kingdom’s law.
Most technological companies based in the United States say they are complying with the new law. Microsoft said in a blog post that Xbox users in the United Kingdom would begin to see notifications “encourage them to verify their age” as a “unique process”, with the real application from next year. If users do not meet, Microsoft warned, they will lose access to Xbox’s social characteristics, but they can still play.
Discord said he was implementing a new default configuration for all users of the United Kingdom, in effect treating everyone as a minor with a heavy content filter unless they verify that they are adults. Discord says that users can choose to verify their age, either with a facial scan or an identification load.
Elon Musk’s X has also restricted the publications, including information on wars in Ukraine and Gaza, according to the BBC. X and Musk did not respond to requests for comments.
But some services do not meet. The extreme right of the extreme right GAB, which allows White Supremacist Views and other extremist content, said in a warning on his website that he had received of ofcom and, instead of complying, he decided to prevent the entire United Kingdom from accessing its site. The company said in the notice: “We refuse to comply with this tyranny.”
Preston Byrne, an American lawyer who specializes in technological problems, said in X that he plans to file a demand soon in the name of an unidentified client who seeks to cancel the possible application of the British law within the United States.
The subject has been slowly for months before the implementation of the law, and arose in February when British prime minister Keir Starmer visited the White House.
At an Oval office meeting, a journalist asked Trump what he thought of the United Kingdom approach for freedom of expression, and Trump launched the question to Vance, who expressed concern.
“We have, of course, a special relationship with our friends in the United Kingdom and also with some of our European allies. But we also know that there have been violations of freedom of expression that really affect not only the British, of course, what the British do in their own country depends on them, but also affect US technology companies and, by extension, US citizens,” he said.
Starmer defended his government’s approach.
“We have had freedom of expression for a long time, a long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last a long time, a long time. Certainly, we would not want to achieve US systems and we don’t do it, and that is absolutely correct,” he said.
The Secretary of British Culture, Lisa Nandy, later said that the United Kingdom would not make any change in the online security law as part of the commercial negotiations with the Trump administration.
American privacy defenders are seeing the debate play with alarm, concerned that similar law verification laws, such as new state laws aimed at Apple and Google application stores, would change the Internet closer to home.
“Young people should be able to access the information, talk to each other and the world, play games and express themselves online without the government making decisions about which speech is allowed,” wrote Paige Collings, a senior activist of speech and privacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco, in a blog post on Tuesday.
