I don't believe the Online Safety Act does require that. RIPA did.
But again, most Brits are using WhatsApp anyway; end-to-end security is wholly meaningless in that context.
I don't really recognise this "branded a child molester" accusation either, TBH. That seems fantastical but I suspect you are not British.
There are plenty of people on the right (e.g. in Reform) making reasonable points about the burden of requiring adults to identify themselves to access legal material and people are not branding them child molesters (not least because that sort of screeching typically comes from the right).
The simple reality is that in the UK the majority don't think it's that troublesome, in general, that adults should have to prove they are adults to access adult material (or use a VPN, which the government is actually not acting to ban or add new regulations to). We already have default adult content blocks on mobile data, for example (and the adult content block, once disabled, can therefore be used as a way to identify adulthoot).
I tend to find that foreign observers, especially American foreign observers, always tend to conjure up really abstract arguments about inalienable fundamental rights, reduce everything to freedom of speech, whatever.
Life is messier and more complex and despite our more nuanced, complex set of laws, they are more moderate than various laws from US states, and it is not the UK that is the first to run headlong into fascism: that is happening in the USA, which voted for it.
British law is untidy. Life is untidy. We aren't fucking idiots or ill-informed children. We just draw the lines differently.
But again, most Brits are using WhatsApp anyway; end-to-end security is wholly meaningless in that context.
I don't really recognise this "branded a child molester" accusation either, TBH. That seems fantastical but I suspect you are not British.
There are plenty of people on the right (e.g. in Reform) making reasonable points about the burden of requiring adults to identify themselves to access legal material and people are not branding them child molesters (not least because that sort of screeching typically comes from the right).
The simple reality is that in the UK the majority don't think it's that troublesome, in general, that adults should have to prove they are adults to access adult material (or use a VPN, which the government is actually not acting to ban or add new regulations to). We already have default adult content blocks on mobile data, for example (and the adult content block, once disabled, can therefore be used as a way to identify adulthoot).
I tend to find that foreign observers, especially American foreign observers, always tend to conjure up really abstract arguments about inalienable fundamental rights, reduce everything to freedom of speech, whatever.
Life is messier and more complex and despite our more nuanced, complex set of laws, they are more moderate than various laws from US states, and it is not the UK that is the first to run headlong into fascism: that is happening in the USA, which voted for it.
British law is untidy. Life is untidy. We aren't fucking idiots or ill-informed children. We just draw the lines differently.