Relaxing cookie consent rules is unlikely to leverage change. There must be:

⚫ More effective and dissuasive action by the ICO to remove illegal advertising.

⚫ Enforce data protection.

⚫ Protect law-abiding market players from the unfair competition of adtech companies who violate our privacy.

Cookie consent rules aren't the biggest barrier to privacy-preserving advertising technologies being widely used.

Ads without personal data are often blocked from being traded by intermediaries in the market.

So deregulatiing instead of enforcement isn't the answer to tackle intrusive tracking.

Trying to nudge the adtech industry into more privacy-preserving models of online tracking by cutting our need to consent is flawed.

The ICO is terrible at enforcing consent rules for adtech providers that run behavioural tracking as it stands.

So the ICO is offering a carrot with no stick 🤷‍♂️

Baked into cookies are what we do on any given site. Trackers can then make guesses about who we are and what we're interested in.

These behavioural profiles are then auctioned off to advertisers in real time.

And so ads for what you've just looked at start to haunt you through the Internet.

Message scanning powers are sleeping on the statute book. They must never get used.

The government has already tried to make Apple put a backdoor in its encrypted services. It's clear they want to recklessly dismantle our cybersecurity protections.

We must save encryption to #PracticeSafeText 💬

Powers in the Online Safety Act to introduce message scanning technology is far from an online safety measure. It's a gift to predators and stalkers❗

Forcing a backdoor into encrypted systems so everything we send can be scanned makes us vulnerable to anybody who wants to exploit that weakness.

Encryption scrambles what we send on messaging apps.

Only the person you’re talking to can make sense of it. That’s your chats, pics and deets for their eyes only.

This is how we protect kids, parents and people experiencing domestic abuse from those who want to use your private life against you.

Livestreaming and social media are essential for activism.

From the Hong Kong protests to Black Lives Matter, social media has provided real-time coverage to challenge official narratives and inform public debate.

Protest crackdowns must not be mirrored in content takedowns.

#OnlineSafetyAct

Political content could also get digitally kettled under Ofcom's proposals:

🔴 Deprioritise posts flagged as potentially 'illegal' from algorithmic feeds until reviewed.

🔴 New police powers to restrict the sharing of content during a 'crisis' that could be misused on protests.

#OnlineSafetyAct

Proactive scanning will go further and faster at silencing dissent.

Under the UK's broad definition of terrorism, automated filters will have to scan for ‘damage to property' and remove such posts as 'illegal' content.

So this flawed system will impact environmental activism.

#OnlineSafetyAct

Activists will feel the brunt of censorship.

The ban on Palestine Action has been used to justify the arrests of people protesting the war in Gaza or the ban itself.

Similarly, posts relating to Palestine could be censored as 'terrorist' content under Ofcom's proposals.

#OnlineSafetyAct