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Digital rights advocates, legal experts, and online content creators have told Byline Times that the Online Safety Act’s new age authentication measures are “censoring” public interest activism online — as well as sweeping up unrelated content far beyond the Act’s stated scope.
Byline Times has confirmed that posts about war crimes, genocide, and humanitarian crises have been age-restricted on Elon Musk’s ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) and Reddit. But so too have more benign corners of the internet, hidden from unverified users behind opaque moderation systems.
The Act imposes a series of new duties on platforms, including an obligation to shield children from “harmful” content. To access restricted posts, users must verify their age — effectively dividing the internet into two tiers. But companies, interpreting Ofcom’s guidance and the law’s broad definitions, are left to determine which content gets gated.
“The scope for so-called ‘harmful content’ is subjective and arbitrary,” Paige Collings, Senior Speech and Privacy Activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said.
“Because the OSA threatens large fines or even jail time for any non-compliance, platforms are forced to over-censor content to ensure that they do not face any such liability. Reports are already showing the censorship of content that falls outside the parameters of the OSA,” Collings adds.
Digital rights groups warn that these systems are not only compelling platforms to filter content for children – they’re reshaping the overall experience of the entire internet. The new default web will impact how users of all ages communicate and collaborate online.
A growing number of posts, forums, and news content related to Palestine, queer identity, or harm-reduction practices have quietly been age-gated. Sometimes it’s graphic content, and sometimes it isn’t.
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‘Platforms Already Have a History of Over-Moderating Pro-Palestine Voices’
Byline Times has identified multiple examples of Palestine-related content — including protest footage and news commentary — being locked behind age-gates.
Some of these feature graphic imagery, which may trigger moderation protocols. Reddit communities like /r/israelexposed and /r/ukraineconflict have been restricted. So too have videos on ‘X’ showing police clashing with pro-Palestine protestors.
But others appear more innocuous. Footage from a televised speech about genocide by Dutch-Palestinian author Ramsay Nasr was age-gated. The Reddit community /r/aljazeera — a news aggregation page unaffiliated with the broadcaster — was also blocked.
“All the evidence I’ve seen on my timeline suggests that the Online Safety Act has nothing to do with porn and everything to do with restricting information on Palestine,” Rangzen, a vocal activist with over 40,000 followers on ‘X’, told Byline Times.
An ‘X’ screenshot sent in by Rangzen, which he explained shows age-gated comments on a video he posted about a Palestine protest.
Campaigners at Open Rights Group and journalists at BBC Verify have both confirmed numerous other examples of political and public interest content being censored behind age gates. In some cases, their investigations prompted companies to take age-gates down – implying that they may have been done erroneously or via fallible AI tools.
The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), which aims to end arbitrary restrictions and criminalisation of Palestine advocacy in Europe and Britain, has been following the Act’s implementation closely.
“Pro-Palestine content often involves sharing graphic images or videos to highlight violence and humanitarian crises, such as the ongoing situation in Gaza, said Carolina Xavier Santos, legal researcher at the ELSC.
“This kind of material plays a critical role in exposing and denouncing crimes on the ground, but it could easily fall under the Act’s rules on graphic violence,” she said. “Platforms may interpret it as harmful content and restrict its visibility, even when it is shared for legitimate advocacy and informational purposes.”
She added: “Platforms already have a history of over-moderating pro-Palestine voices using their terms of service and automated systems that lack the nuance to distinguish between hate speech and political expression. With the Online Safety Act in place, this issue could become worse – platforms might pre-emptively remove or suppress legal political content out of fear of violating the Act and incurring heavy fines.”
A Year Since the UK Riots, Elon Musk’s X Is Still ‘Profiting From Anti-Muslim and Anti-Migrant’ Hate
Report finds X is still failing to take down calls for violence against Muslims and migrants despite the messages “clearly violating” the platform’s own rules