How will 7cups deal with the UK Online Safety Act?
Just a bit curious about this and what 7cups plans are for dealing with the UK OSA.
For anyone who doesn't know the UK recently passed a law requiring services such as social media platforms and online forums to implement an age verification system, even services which are not based in the UK. This law applies to 7cups and the UK says 7cups must either provide 1 of 3 age verification methods or block the UK from accessing the site.
The verification methods may either be credit card checks (which 30% of brits don't own one), passport/driving licence ID checks (20% of brits don't have these) or using "technology" to estimate a persons age via a photo or a video (AI age estimation). So even implementing this would restrict millions of brits from using 7cups.
7cups will be required to keep records of these personal details, pictures of passports, driving licences, credit card details or photos/videos used to estimate age via AI. What's more is this will also apply to the teen side of 7cups, who are also required to verify their age and which the law specifically requires 7cups to prevent anyone under the age of 18 from being able to contact strangers. Meaning 7cups must prevent any teens from the UK from being able to use this site since the main function of the site is contacting strangers.
I imagine 7cups is quite stuck on this issue, implementing privacy invading systems on a site who's mission is all about user anonymity and privacy (albeit being forced to) goes against said mission. So does blocking access to the site, but I was just curious since I'm from the UK what 7cups plans to do about it?
Will 7cups:
A: Implement extreme privacy invasive and costly age verification systems and deny access to teens from the UK?
B: "officially" block the UK from accessing the site? (still allowing VPN connections)
C: Ignore it, and the fines/legal repercussions that go with it?
D: Something else?
@DarkSoul
Interesting, I didn't know this was going to happen!
This is interesting, I wonder how this will play out on this site.
@DarkSoul I had heard of this, but was unaware of the details.
@Heather225 is probably the best person to ask.