Discussion
New blogpost:
"Initial thoughts on the Social Media Platforms (Ofcom Licensing) Bill"
I try to think the best of people and their intentions, so this might be just one big mistake, but honestly, wow...
I cannot imagine someone attempting, with a straight face, to impose strict criminal liability on cafe and pub owners, for what their customers say.
https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/09/initial-thoughts-on-the-social-media-platforms-ofcom-licensing-bill/
@neil A thought, new to me, from your analogy:
What if, rather than allow their customers to chat quietly with each other, the cafe owners selected some conversations - the most irritating and divisive ones - to be displayed on a massive billboard outside the cafe, in the hope that people annoyed by them would come in to argue with the people who said those things, and buy some coffee whilst they were there?
@neil We would expect the cafe owner to be liable for what they selected to put on their billboard, whether that selection was by the owner themselves, or an algorithm they had designed.
Letting other people have a conversation on your platform is not publishing.
Choosing which one of a million conversations happening on your platform you want to promote is publishing: rather than say something yourself, you simply wait for someone else to say it, and then promote that.
@neil Algorithmic feeds cause the harm - they are designed to be addictive, endless, full of polarising engagement bait.
Algorithmic feeds could be licenced.
And that would, conveniently, leave Mastodon unaffected.
It would require a careful consideration of what "algorithmic" means here, IMHO.
There is the obvious argument that displaying by date is "algorithmic", but this is not what is meant.
Does a collaboration system, used by 5 people, which shows "documents recently access by other users" or "most popular documents" count as an "algorithmic feed", for example?
@bencurthoys @neil
Mastodon has an algorithmic feed.
It displays in date order - which is an algorithm.
It hides specific posts and people that the moderators have chosen. Again, also an algorithm.
I don't say this just to be a pedantic arse (although I am one) but to point out that defining what algorithms you consider harmful is difficult.
@neil Meanwhile the worst offenders will laugh from their American mansions and simply not pay, and not visit the UK...
@neil
Your analogy doesn’t go far enough. (I’ll leave aside whether this bill is well drafted and achieves what is needed, which is a different debate). If the café owner starts giving a megaphone to particular customers, then they *should* become liable for what that customer is saying.
@neil I have not read the bill yet, but... Social media platforms (mastodon excluded) are editors and publishers. They gave algorithms that decide what goes into everyone's feed, and there should be some liability for those decisions. They can choose whether or not to promote harmful content, and to date they have been promoting it to drive traffic. Cafe owners do not edit what their customers are saying and publish select parts to their other customers.
> Social media platforms (mastodon excluded) are editors and publishers.
This depends entirely on the scope of "social media platform"?
@neil Oh yes, absolutely. But Reddit and YouTube both have an edited feed, for example (but YT at least doesn't seem to push horrible stuff at me... but maybe that's because I'm (hopefully) not a horrible person :)
@neil
Loving (not) the definition of "social media platform" which includes the word "platform". Without defining 'platform', couldn't the bill extend well beyond software systems and into the real world - perhaps your pub/cafe analogy isn't as far from the truth as one may first think!
@neil and, if it was enacted, what would the practicalities be? Would there be a charge for the licence?
If so, is that not simply harming commerce? If not, I’m pretty sure I can build multiple websites and submit an application for each every minute. Every day…
> Would there be a charge for the licence?
My guess is at the end of the penultimate paragraph:
> presumably paid for? since Ofcom could not run the infrastructure needed to staff etc. this for free
@neil Do cafes and restaurants become social media platforms if customers show each other photos, blog posts, news articles, etc? Because I'm adding charity shops to the mix for the conversations that take place in the stockrooms.
@HollieK72 No, it is just an analogy (fortunately!).
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@neil @Nickiquote naive thought of mine is this - keep this licensing idea but, it only applies if you have a default or forced algorithm timeline and targeted adverts - fedi no issue then, and those types of sites are different from the pub / cafe analogy I think - you are not forced in a pub to listen to folks other than those you want to, or have he staff come and try to sell you shit, and can easily leave and go to some other pub with your pals.