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In effect, this is the power to restrict internet to anyone.
It is, and I have no doubt that is the entire point, despite them "thinking of the children."
Im sure the likes of prince andrew and keir starmers advisors think way to much the children
The Canadian version of this is especially cynical: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c309y25prnlo
I fail to see how this is technically possible. Virgin Media already censors chunks of the internet, but not in a way that currently would allow age verification.

Beyond my ISP I'm virtually anonymous unless I log in. If it's blocked at the network level I cannot login. If it's not blocked by the network, then it doesn't know exactly which individual is using my network connection. Theoretically they could put an interstitial page to check credentials but we'd just end up sharing the login rather than sharing all our personal details in separate accounts, or more likely I'd just not bother and accept the 'child' experience.

If I lose access to social media so be it. All that will do is change the landscape as the diaspora find a new uncensored social media.

This all falls apart when it affects genuine work, then it's already too late. The only real option at this point is VPN.

If they cared about children they'd just ban phones for children. Would be dead easy to enforce and wouldn't have any effect on the rights of adults.

Unfortunately I think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though.

We're not smart enough to make our own decisions but we're smart enough to vote for the best people to make decisions for us?

Make it make sense.

I think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though.

By design.

Yep, just throw them kids under the bus.
This is fine.

The internet is going to be filled with bots anyway so might as well restrict it to this age group. They should be outdoors with no access to the internet.

Why not extend this to under 25s or the elderly?

I'm sure the online safety act also needs to extend this to chatbots and anything that can heavily manipulate and distort this age group.

They won't be restricting the age group from the internet. They will be restricting the internet. That's not fine. There is no feasible way to restrict the internet for an exclusive group, it's the internet!
You forgot the /s for the sarcasm challenged
So now consider that the same government want to extend voting rights to 16 year olds.

So you can vote but you can't control the media you use to learn about who you're potentially voting for. There is something not quite right about that.

Catch-22. They want to censor and not let you learn about the opposite opposition restricting your vote to the current opposition at the same time pissing you off from voting for the current opposition for restricting your rights to learn about the opposite opposition.
There’s plenty of that everywhere. You can sign up to die in a war at 18 but can’t drink alcohol until 21. That’s why laws exist, to codify and resolve edge cases.
What's the text of the amendment and why doesn't this page link to it?
So the UK is now China it seems. What a shining light for democracy and justice. There is no way this will be abused by petty little tyrant minister right?
> So the UK is now China it seems

Western governments have been looking enviously at China's authoritarianism (notoriously Trudeau blurted out he admired their "basic dictatorship" back in 2013) while completely ignoring any elements that might actually improve the lives of the citizens.

Our politicians are determined to implement the worst of our respective systems.

Sadly it's not only the UK. There is a global push to restrict communication world-wide. The future is very bleak for fundamental freedoms.
I’m not convinced anymore that we can handle freedom. Many children grow up glued to a phone or tablet watching AI videos and are targets of dis-information from foreign and/or hostile actors.
Meh it’s accessing and posting stuff on the internet, not that big of a deal. I’d like to see a much bigger humdrum around the ubiquitous surveillance cameras that will eventually be fed to some sort of LLM to create an omniscient eye that follows everyone everywhere.
That's deeply unfair.

China's economy is growing.

Yeah ive been watching whats happening with the URKL (United Robot Knockout League). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62dK3Av334

Musk's jokes basically disassemble when doing a backflip. Fucking joke. Whereas the Chinese bots are doing Mui Thai, karate, and loads more.

But... China is copying us <LAUGH>

The UK already arrests more than 1,000 a month people for online "hate speech". Higher than the official numbers for China, whatever those are worth. They'll probably reach the unofficial, real number soon enough. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
The article says

"The acts make it illegal to cause distress by sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character” on an electronic communications network."

Offensive messages cover a lot of contexts and don't sound as if they are necessarily hate speech.

You should read the whole article: "A spokeswoman for Leicestershire police said crimes under Section 127 and Section 1 include “any form of communication” such as phone calls, letters, emails and hoax calls to emergency services." ".
Can you give some examples of the speech the UK arrests people for?
Sounds interesting..Paywalled.
They are going to be missing out on top content https://www.instagram.com/popular/ai-generated-video-shorts/
The UK has been China forever, they have the most surveillance cameras and police home visits per capita of any developed country and their people like it this way.
Do you have a source on that? All I could find was this that said America has the most, behind China: https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/the-worlds-most-surveille...
Idk I’ve been watching the occasional BBC archives or some other old archive source, and the UK has seemed relatively authoritarian compared to Europe or the US for a while.
UK absolutely needs to be thought of in the same way we think about Russia or Belorussia, or China.
Reading some of the comments here, HN seems to have been invaded by Twitter users spouting their opinion as if it's fact.
Good
Too bad your internet access is not restricted.
But just a month ago everyone in the discussion about freedom.gov was saying that Europe doesn't restrict internet!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270

Well, UK is just one small part of Europe. You probably also confuse Europe and the EU.
Oh, no, not that Europe. You were of course talking about the Europe with Spain (oh wait, La Liga has a cloudflare kill switch). You were of course talking about the Europe with Italy (oh wait, the Piracy Shield). You were of course talking about the Europe with Turkyie (oh wait, ...
but now the definition of europe becomes europe but not UK, since it's convenient to maintain the argument rather than discuss the real underlying issue!
Shrodinger's continent. You don't know what it contains until you know what policy position you need to argue for/against.
Big exaggeration. Opened the link and with the dozen comments or so that I've seen there is no rhetoric of the kind your asserting.

We know from France, UK, Spain, Italy that censorship is ramping up rather than down.

Still not a good enough excuse for freedom.gov when the current US agenda is to support the right wing organizations in Europe.

Out of curiosity, do you expect that freedom.gov will contain socialist, communist, extreme left-wing or islamist point of views?