The UK is a hostile (online) environment

From January 2025 to April 2026, Laura and I, through We Are Open Co-op worked on researching, planning, implementing, and evaluating a community platform for Amnesty International UK. One of the decisions we made was to host the site outside the UK.

Why? A combination of the provisions of Investigatory Powers Act 2016 and the more recent Online Safety Act. Amnesty are operating in an environment where their protesters, many of them older, have been arrested simply for holding up signs saying that they support Palestine Action. As I've reflected in another note this is an interesting and intentional position that contrasts with the governments perceived inaction around far-right racist pogroms.

While hosting the community in a different jurisdiction provides some benefits, realistically it only slows down any action that the UK government might wish to take. Still, it's better than nothing.

Neil Brown, a lawyer specialising in internet, telecoms, and tech law, is thinking the same way:

Some of the UK government’s policy announcements around the Internet - and, in particular, social media and VPNs - are downright concerning me at the moment.

In the name of “online safety”, the fundamental rights of both freedom of expression and privacy appear to be under imminent threat.

[...] I value my ability to read, learn, and communicate almost without borders. I don’t like signing up to websites or newsletters (I prefer RSS), I don’t like storing my data on other people’s computers, and I’ve certainly no wish to prove my age or identity outside core government services.

The current proposal to ban people under 16 - who also have the rights to freedom of expression and privacy - from some (as yet not fully delineated) social media services is likely to result in wide-spread verification.

[...]

Some - many - UK ISPs have already implemented, and carry out, DNS blocking, both for mandatory and non-mandatory reasons. Mine - A&A - is probably one of the outliers, with no blocking save for the mandatory sanctions-related requirements.

[...]

[F]or the first time, I am considering locating something (perhaps a WireGuard node, or a SOCKS proxy, or a recursive DNS server / DNS proxy, or perhaps all of them) somewhere on the Internet outside the UK, so that I can route some traffic through that, as needed, to maintain my access to the web.

Honestly, it seems such a shame to me, that UK Internet censorship should reach such a place, but there we go.

[...]

To me, the need to even contemplate this kind of thing is the stuff of dystopian sci-fi.

And yet here I find myself.

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Source: Original article · Are.na block · Politics channel