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When the British Government started work on online censorship laws I think it envisaged that age/ID verification would create a business opportunity for British start up companies to exploit the market so created. Unfortunately for them it looks inevitably set that the usual US internet giants will be the ones to profit from the requirements.

In fact Meta has been speaking of its ideas that operating system companies and app stores should be the ones to implement age/ID verification.

Meta is calling for implementing age verification across Europe and proposed a way to do it. The company wants to ensure that parents only need to verify the age of their child once and noted that the most effective way of achieving this would be to have operating systems or app stores complete the verification process.

The move would pass on the responsibility of age verification from social media platforms to firms such as Apple and Google. Other platforms have also in argued in favor of the solution, including Twitter and Match, the company behind dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid.

Meta delivered its statement during a hearing of an Irish parliament committee focused on children's rights this week. Meta has been taking different approaches to try and ease pressure from global censors on the age verification question. The company has been experimenting with facial age estimation technology from UK firm Yoti in several countries.

Complaint:

I would like to express deep concerns about the name, branding and pump clip design of Twickenham Brewery's ale Naked Ladies. In itself, the school-child sniggering tone of the name is offensive, representing outmoded and sexist attitudes to women which should have no place in public life, and certainly not in any industry that wishes to survive in the 21st century.

Moreover, from my recent experience of ordering a pint in a London pub in which this was the only available real ale, the name of the beer and pump clip imagery present real problems of offence and embarrassment. As a middle-aged man, the experience of saying the name of the beer to the young woman serving at the bar was awkward and unsettling for all concerned. As a pub-goer, I would obviously prefer not to be made uncomfortable by the simple act of ordering a pint. More importantly, bar staff should be able to go to work without being subjected to sexist and sexualised language and imagery which, given age/power differentials with customers, could well be interpreted as harassment or abuse.

Company statement:

The company stated that Naked Ladies was a best-selling beer and had been available for over 19 years. The company explained that it was one of a range of beers which were all named after local landmarks, with the name Naked Ladies relating to statues at York House, the home of Richmond and Twickenham Council. While the statues had no official name, locally they had become known as the Naked Ladies and usage of the local name had transferred more formally with the statues also listed as an entity with Historic England. The company explained that in addition to this, the name was also used to refer to the statues in several other sources, including The York House Society, reflecting that the name was well known by the general public.

The company explained that the pump clip included a graphical representation of the largest statue and it had used such branding for approximately 10 years. The company explained that at all stages, it endeavored to ensure the link between the name and the statue was obvious and clear. This included a description of where the name derived on the company's website and on the packaging of the bottles which referenced the local landmark.

The Panel's assessment

The Panel discussed the product name Naked Ladies and its historical context as explained by the producer. The Panel noted that the name was a colloquial one used to refer to a group of statues at York House in Twickenham which was a fairly well-known landmark as an entity listed with Historic England. The Panel discussed the company's response and noted that the name had not been used gratuitously as the packaging and company website incorporated descriptive language designed to explain the historical context of the statue. The Panel noted that due to its smaller size and limited space the pump clip did not include the same information but considered that the reference to Twickenham in the company's name did provide some context between the name of the beer and the local landmark. The Panel determined that the name may be distasteful to some but that the overall impression, as opposed to the name in isolation, would determine whether the pump clip caused serious or widespread offence under Code rule 3.3.

The Panel discussed the artwork presented on the pump clip which depicted one of the referenced local statues, a naked woman, at York House. The Panel considered the Portman Group's accompanying guidance to Code rule 3.3 and noted that to breach the rule in relation to sexual objectification the packaging or marketing would need to incorporate elements that were demeaning, derogatory, gratuitous or overly sexualised. The Panel considered that the design was artistically stylised and akin to art deco in style with no identifying detail added to any of the statue's features. The Panel noted that the naked statue was modestly presented with its pubic area covered by hops and considered that nudity in and of itself would not inherently cause serious or widespread offence, particularly nudity depicted by an art deco statue. The Panel noted that there was no undue focus on the statue's breasts which were low definition and portrayed through a shadowing technique in keeping with the depiction of the rest of the statue. The Panel discussed the pose of the statue and noted that it was not positioned in a sexualised manner which meant that it did not objectify the statue based on its gender or sexuality. The Panel considered the artwork in its historical context alongside the name Naked Ladies and considered that the pump clip was not demeaning, discriminatory or derogatory in its portrayal of women more broadly.

The Panel considered that the depiction of the statue and the name Naked Ladies did not cause serious or widespread offence. Accordingly, the complaint was not upheld under Code rule 3.3.

EU DisinfoLab, a censorship lobby group regularly making policy recommendations to the EU and member-states, is now pushing for a security structure created by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to be utilized to censor what it deems as disinformation.

Attempting to directly use ICANN would be highly controversial. Given its importance in the internet infrastructure -- ICANN manages domain names globally -- and the fact content control is not among its tasks (DisinfoLab says ICANN refuses to do it) -- this would represent a huge departure from the organization's role as we understand it today.

But now DisinfoLab proposes to use the structure already created by ICANN against legitimate security threats, to police the internet for content that somebody decides to treat as disinformation. It would require minimal amount of diligence and cooperation from registries, a blog post said, to accept ICANN-style reports and revoke a site's domain name.

Police Scotland is grappling with potential budgetary pressures and service reductions. David Threadgold of the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) has raised concerns about the financial impact of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. According to him, the legislation has already led to an overload of calls, with over 6,000 logged since its enactment.

Threadgold's worry centers on the unforeseen costs of handling these cases, particularly the overtime payments for control room staff. He believes these expenses will reverberate throughout the year, affecting other police services. Calum Steele, former general secretary of the SPF, echoes these concerns. As reported by The Scotsman, Steele criticized Police Scotland's preparation for the Act, calling it negligently unprepared and pointing out that the additional costs were predictable.

The legislation's impact extends beyond financial strains. The Act has resulted in a notable rise in the logging of non-crime hate incidents, incidents perceived as hateful but not necessarily criminal. This increase has prompted concerns about a potential inundation of trivial or malicious complaints, especially in the context of highly charged events like football matches. Tory MSP Murdo Fraser has already lodged a complaint over a tweet he posted being logged as a hate incident.

The Alabama House of Representatives has passed a bill that would require makers of phones and tablets to fit the devices with a filter to block pornography that would be activated when the device is activated for use by a minor.

The bill, HB167 by Representative Chris Sells passed by a vote of 98-0. It moves to the Senate.

HB167 says that beginning on Jan. 1, 2026, all smartphones and tablets activated in the state must contain a filter, determine the age of the user during activation and account set-up, and set the filter to on for minor users.

The filter must be able to block access to obscenity as it is defined under state law.

The bill says a manufacturer can be subject to civil and criminal liability if a device is activated in the state, does not, upon activation, enable a filter that complies with the law, and a minor accesses obscene material on the device. The bill says retailers would not be liable.

Authorities in Russia's republic of Chechnya have imposed limits on music tempos to abide by strict cultural norms in the Muslim-majority region.

From now on all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute, Chechnya's Culture Ministry said in a statement earlier this week.

The new tempo standard, which is relatively slow in the context of popular music, was announced following Chechen Culture Minister Musa Dadayev's meeting with local state and municipal artists.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov had instructed Dadayev to make Chechen music conform to the Chechen mentality, according to the statement.

Local artists were ordered to rewrite their music by June 1 to accommodate the changes. Otherwise, they would not be allowed for public performance, the Culture Ministry wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

The Ohio state legislature is debating House Bill (HB) 295 , introduced last October by Republican state Rep. Steve Demetriou. HB 295 would require adult entertainment websites with content considered harmful to minors to verify users' ages using government identification or transactional data, with felony penalties for website operators who violate the law.

An amended version of the bill, dropping the penalties for website operators to a misdemeanor, was adopted during the hearing before the House Criminal Justice Committee on April 3.

However, one of the more controversial elements of the bill is the establishment of a misdemeanor charge against minors who manage to circumvent the age gate through falsified records or the use of a virtual private network that spoofs an IP address.

The US games censor, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) has been working on a facial recognition tool to verify gamers' ages and this method was submitted to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for approval.

In a blog post, the FTC has just announced that it was denying the company's application for the technology. The FTC stated that it denied the application in a vote of 4-0, noting that it received over 350 comments on the issue before the vote. As the FTC notes, those who opposed the application cited privacy, protections, accuracy, and deepfakes as concerns.

Had the application been approved, the FRC would have added the facial age detection tech to the list of acceptable forms of receiving parental consent for collecting information from minor-aged users under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This Act requires parental consent for the collection or use of personal data for users under the age of 13.

Last year, the ESRB partnered with the digital identity firm Yoti and SuperAwesome to create this technology to verify users' ages. The ESRB claimed it was not meant to identify individuals outright but rather estimate the user's age and stated it would not store the data after the analysis concluded. However age companies offering facial age estimation also offer facial recognition, so users would have to somehow trust big tech companies (or national authorities) not to identify users. And let's face it, such institutions haven't proved themselves to be very trustworthy in the past.

While the FTC rejected the proposal, it said that ESBR could re-file the application in the future,presumably after improvements to the system.