“Won’t somebody think of the children?”: The UK safety act & photography.
The Vulture and The Little Girl by Kevin Carter
This week the online safety act was enforced by the UK government, this legislation forces all UK residents to prove they are over eighteen years to access NSFW content, this includes sending official identification (passport/drivers licence) to the website you’re trying to access. This move by the government is to try and make the internet a safer place for adults and children. As a former child myself I know it can almost be impossible to keep them safe from things they definitely want to see, in my generation it was mainly finding jazz mags in bushes and in forests or the Kays catalog, thousands of years ago it was probably finding a slightly amorous cave painting and in the modern world its right there in HD. Though this bill may effect our lives in more ways than just online gratification.
This bill has also affected the world of photography (shock horror!). Photography has always been important for narrative how we see our world , photography has always had the power to change public opinion and bring real change. The images are usually challenging and hard to look at and most definitely nsfw.
“Won’t somebody think of the children”
This week a photo of an child showing signs of malnutrition appeared in the papers to show the horrors of what is going on in Gaza it’s the start of changing public and political opinion, these kind of images highlight the horrors and injustices of war. We have had many images that have changed the world and they are extremely important to inform and educate on issues that are not on our doorstep. I myself use Reddit to keep up with current affairs, this example and others will be effectively hidden from view unless you provide your passport or a selfie of your face. Important journalism that can now seemingly not exist for those who have not released their identities, this may be catastrophic for the adults & children in war zones around the world. With print media and TV news consumption on the decline we need journalism to have a place on social networks to dispel false information. This is for our children as well as theirs.
Hidaya, a 31-year-old Palestinian mother, carries her sick 18-month-old son Mohammed al-Matouq, who is also displaying signs of malnutrition, inside their tent at the Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, on July 24, OMAR AL-QATTAA
So Why not just provide your passport/face? The UK government has opted out of dealing with the impending headache of creating a secure server or website to hold this sensitive information and has outsourced it to a few different companies, twitter (X) has opted to use Israeli firm AU10TIX founded by the Israeli domestic intelligence officers, they are allowed to retain your information under a broad term of “legitimate interests” potentially being allowed to reuse or share your information with third parties.
Reddit has used Persona Identities a company that has been criticised for its links to the Trump administration and facing law suits alleging that they retained the biometric data of food delivery drivers and that it used users’ selfies to train AI models. Its privacy policy promises to delete face scans after seven days, but allows retention of data use for “service improvement”.
These are two examples of the companies being used to collect our very precious data from reputable websites, it can be seen as a data grab of huge proportions and in this modern world data is everything, we only have to look at Cambridge Analytica to see how data can be used to change voters opinions on brexit and the US election, data was collected in a dubious manner by CA from Facebook and it was used to profile and push effective propaganda to users. It’s powerful stuff and I can’t speculate over what A.I can do nine years after the CA scandal, but I assume it’s at least eighteen thousand percent more effective with zero evidence. This coupled with more and more companies using A.I based CCTV to track people via face detection we might be sleep walking into a dystopian future (Now to take off my tinfoil hat and pop on my photography bandana)
It may have consequences for street photography and the capturing of everyday life, street photography is an important medium but one that treads the line of what can be acceptable in art and photography. But it’s a legitimate medium of photography and its importance is usually recognised many years after the fact to bring a sense of nostalgia of a world lost. In the immediate it can show social injustice and draw attention to marginalised groups. It’ll certainly bring up interesting discussions on who owns their own image rights and what can be shared in a public forum or media platform without prior release forms and box ticking which could see many important images lost to censorship.
My own photo that was flagged for being NSFW.
Recently one of my photos got mark as nsfw by an algorithm I was not informed by instagram that I had been flagged but my followers sending me messages wondering what I had uploaded, sorry to disappoint but it was Liverpool fans heading to the game, what flagged this particular post up is still up for debate but it will means is you’ll have to pass your security checks to see this inoffensive post in future and on Reddit would mean my account would not be visible to those who had not provided their data. Let me tell you now that photo is not worth selling your future over or your children’s future either. Luckily there is an easy way around this use a VPN and return to finding jazz mags in shrubbery. Most importantly keep amazing and brave journalism in the public eye.
Painting by George Shaw