Category: introduction

— 7 min read — There is a lot of critical commentary about the fact that the UK Online Safety Bill includes regulation of content that is ‘legal but harmful’. A common refrain is ‘well if the content is really harmful, it should be made illegal, but if it is not harmful enough to be…

— 11 min read — We have heard calls from various quarters for people to have to verify their identities before being able to post content on social media. In this post I will look at how this debate is reflected in the published text of the UK Online Safety Bill. First, to set some…

— 10 min read — It is common for people to propose that online services should be required to verify their users’ ages in the interests of improving safety for children. Other people argue that online services should collect the minimum possible amount of information and they have concerns about the implications of introducing systems…

— 13 min read — What does the Online Safety Bill do (in a nutshell)? The Bill grants the UK Government authority to give detailed instructions to some online services about how they should run their operations for UK users. These instructions will cover a broad range of issues related to content and behaviour under…

— < 1 min read — The UK government last week published its long-awaited Online Safety Bill. This follows various stages of publication and consultation over the last 3 years that are helpfully summarised in this note from the House of Commons Library. With the Bill running to 213 pages and covering a huge amount of…

— 13 min read — I spent a happy couple of days last week reading hundreds of pages of the UK draft Online Safety Bill with its explanatory notes and impact assessment. This legislative proposal is going to be scrutinised in detail over coming months as people try to flesh out what it will mean…

— 2 min read — The European Commission published a comprehensive proposal to regulate the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies on April 21st 2021. I have recorded a new podcast episode with Nicklas Berild Lundblad where we share some initial reactions to and thoughts about this proposal. A particular concern of mine is that…

— 2 min read — There’s a lot of news right now which means that not everything momentous is making the headlines. The announcement of a new approach to corporate taxation by the Biden administration has not been a lead story but could turn out to have huge ramifications over the next few years. I…

— < 1 min read — In this week’s episode of the regulate.tech podcast, Nicklas and I tease out what we mean when we talk about ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ models for the internet. We discuss web vs internet protocols, app stores, ‘walled garden’ services, government imposed restrictions and more!