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 The extraterritorial effect seems even worse than OSA, if I'm reading it correctly: being accessible by UK users at all, no requirement for a 'significant number' of users.
@neil But cafes and pubs dont' typically profit from tolerating customers who harass others.
It is challenging in that this bill says nothing about being focussed on tackling harassment, or about profit-making entities!
@neil does the first line of this bill limit it to "companies" which I would assume were people making profit from the platform? And so your self hosted services would be exempt? Or am I being far too kind hearted to the author.
> does the first line of this bill limit it to "companies"
No. It applies to a "person" (which includes companies, but is not limited to them).
@neil I might take pubs out your example. Whilst not a full "control the conversations" requirement, if a pub kept having fights and the police attend then I suspect it would lose it's licence as a pub, because there is a limited requirement to become the cause of public disorder.
But I'd agree the law already pushes further than than for websites, although I'm still not sure how they're going to force compliance and prevent us bypassing with VPNs.
@neil a law that I’ll gladly flout should it pass. Some laws you have a duty to disobey. This would be one of them.
lex iniusta non est lex
@neil
Has "social media platform" ever been defined? That whole bill is ridiculously all-encompassing.
I run an instance of Immich, a photo server. Sandra and I both upload our photos to it. Immich has a "This day on previous years" feature. Is that "algorithmic content"?
I run an instance of Jellyfin, a media server. Sandra and I can both upload music, films etc. to it. When I watch one TV episode, it shows me the next ones in the series. Is that "algorithmic content"?
I run an instance of Mastodon, as social media server. I can see other people's posts. Other people can see mine, poor things. There is a setting "Do you want other people to see you in their follow recommendations?". Is this "algorithmic content"?
I run an instance of apache2, a web server. It hosts my blog. At the bottom of each blog post, there is a computer-generated list of "Related Posts". Is this "algorithmic content"? (Is this even a "social media platform"?)
I have asked "is the translate feature I see on mastodon with my firefox browser AI ?"
apparently, the anti AI zealots say no, for reasons
:)
@neil according to the bill as far as I can tell, the initial definition is confined to social media platforms that extend beyond private into public spaces. So none of your examples count as falling under the scope of the bill until you onboard someone you don't personally know.
Yes, those examples were whether something was algorithmic content or not.
But if one applies the definition in clause 3 of the bill (and assumes an "and" between (a) and (b)), I am not convinced that my Mastodon instance is out of scope, or my blog?
@neil odd. In South Africa that's the sort of thing where the court would order parliament to clear up the uncertainty if anyone disputes it.
Normally I'd assume reasonable common sense interpretation where this is focused on large public platforms, but I guess we cant assume good intent in this case?
I run radicale, a calDAV server. I can see Sandra's appointments, and she can see mine. They are shown in date order. Is that "algorithmic content"?
Tasks are shown in alphabetical order. Is that "algorithmic content"?
And so on.
@neil I've heard since many years that there's a difference between the European and US legal systems in that in the US you can get away with technicalities "letter of the law" but not in Europe "spirit of the law". Is that complete bollocks or is there some truth to it?
In Sweden I would indeed expect that "sensible interpretation" can be relied on - but then it's not ever something I've had to test in reality ...
I struggle when I see policy or legislative proposals based on "regulating algorithms", even leaving aside the obvious (but important) "it is all algorithms" riposte.
Are all algorithms problematic?
Are all "recommender" algorithms problematic?
And so on.
@neil Quicksort is an algorithm, as is a method to work out pi, as is a method to calculate orbital paths, as is a method to calculate taxes, as is the method to perform long division taught to school kids up and down the land.
I honestly despair of people who fail to understand that things don't just mean what they see on news sites (c.f. datacentres)
@neil Nobody has the guts to ban advertising.
@neil Turing Completeness considered harmful 
@neil it is sometimes unhelpful how people use general terms to describe specific things.
I assume legislation is broadly concerned with “recommender systems” and not Euclid’s algorithm.
I leave aside, for now, what is a "platform".
Train stations have platforms.
Does my server?
@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.
@neil @Nickiquote which is not to say I am sure what the problem to be solved is either, but I think if folk are committed to legislating to regulate social media, they should at least target it at the sort of social media which profits financially from whatever hearm they are regulating to address.
@neil @Nickiquote insta/FB/TikTok etc - I beleive insta you can as a user disable the algorithmic timeline, but it defaults to it. The disable option presents one like mastodon default of those you follow in time of posting order.
@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
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
@neil Even assuming that such a law could be enforced, this is very concerning:-
"that content made available on its social media platform is not materially harmful to users or to the public interest"
"harmful to the public interest" would surely vary based on which party is in Government. Most parties would probably consider action for the environment to not be in the public interest, some parties would consider posts supporting or against immigration to be harmful.