If billionaires conspire to distort the markets against the interest of the people, and unbeknownst to them, then that’s a conspiracy, normalized by calling it Capitalism.

That's not distorting the markets, that is what they are for. The market isn't some magical deity who's only been stopped because their will is being misinterpretated by the billionaires, they are the market. They control the market. The purpose of a system is what it does. The "Free" market is as much of a myth as when MLMs say the state will "dissolve away" to produce true Communism with the workers owning the means of production. The moment a "free" market is made, it instantly gets manipulated by people with money and the market stops being free anymore. That's part of the reason why so many rich cunts babble on about "free" markets, because it gives them power The billionaires fucking with the market and the law isn't an aberration of the system, it is the system. Once you realise that, everything falls into place.

This isn't a conspiracy, this was pretty much done out in the open. To call it a conspiracy suggests there was some amount of subterfuge. Like Carnegie UK published papers on why they think the OSA is a good idea in 2022, the Online Safety Act 2023, plus the additions made in '25, are publicly viewable here. The transcripts of the debates are here on Handsard.

You know how it was implemented but you can only guess why.

Oh Oh! I can guess why!

The whole reason why the bill was made and written as it was is money. We live in a period of surveillance capitalism where various companies make fuck tonnes of money from your data. Google, Facebook and the like didn't make their money from merely "running ads". They took the data you gave them through cookies and your posting and used it to more accurately target ads at you. Then, they started selling your data to other data brokers who then sold it to anyone with enough money. We've all heard the story about how target knew a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did, and we all know about Cambridge Analytica, Brexit and Trump. Facebook will literally monitor your emotional state through your posts and target you with ads for loans when they think your emotionally vulnerable.

So, we all know data brokers are hungry for data to sell, and as one Murray Bookchin once said: "Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing". So guess what? Investment firms saw a load of moral panics and calls for digital ID. They invested in firms like YOTI (they are not required to say who invested in them, nice and convenient) and started doing research for the government through their think tank arms to convince the government that the OSA is a good idea. The bill says that stringent age checks must be done to view certain pieces of content, but not how, so that means websites have to hire YOTI and co to do that for them or do it themselves. If they can't afford to they either have to shut down because they don't care about the little guy.

So now data brokers have some very valuable data they can take from you: Your unedited face, your passport/drivers licence (plus all the biometrics that come with that) and (alongside that), your sexual habits, more controversial views, and your neuroses! The government can buy that off them (not that they couldn't already find that out), but also so can the people with the big bucks, COMPANIES! On Grindr? Well now your health insurer can increase your premiums if they think you are promiscious. Got political views? Well now they can be manipulated for an outcome favourable to large corporations. Your employer can buy your data and see if you have been saying things they don't like, annorexic people can be given ads for gym memberships and health fads. Oh, and all this can be sold to the government, be it yours or someone else's.

It's all money, it's no shady conspiracy, literally it is business as usual and it sucks.