Petition to repeal Online Safety Act passes 500,000 signatures

'The scope is far broader and restrictive than is necessary in a free society'

Counting 520,540 signatures at the time of writing, the pushback's creators explained in the description: "We believe that the scope of the Online Safety Act is far broader and restrictive than is necessary in a free society.

"For instance, the definitions in Part 2 covers online hobby forums, which we think do not have the resource to comply with the act and so are shutting down instead. We think that Parliament should 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."

An assault on pornography streaming was recently launched in conjunction with the Act, making all adult content websites responsible for verifying the age of visitors.

However, according to hundreds of thousands of online users, the Act's talons are reaching into territory where they're not welcome, as petitioners argue that it should be up to parents to limit children's internet access.

The government's official response to the petition reads: "The government is working with Ofcom to ensure that online in-scope services are subject to robust but proportionate regulation through the effective implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023."

This comes after Reform UK's Zia Yusuf reacted to the Act's introduction during a Westminster conference.

"So much of the act is massive overreach and plunges this country into a borderline dystopian state," said Yusuf, who now leads a team looking for efficiencies in councils the party runs.

She then proceeded to claim that the power given to media regulator Ofcom "forces social media companies to censor anti-government speech".

"Any student of history will know that the way countries slip into this sort of authoritarian regime is through legislation that cloaks tyranny inside the warm fuzz of safety and security and hopes nobody reads the small print."