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UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

freespeechunion.org

41–50 of 204 posts

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#41
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think that words can hurt plenty, bullying can drive people to suicide or indeed bring them to commit terrorist acts. But I don't want to censor the internet. There are 1.3m death from traffic accidents and 0 deaths from Twitter.

> bullying can drive people to suicide or indeed bring them to commit terrorist acts. You think bullying on twitter has caused 0 deaths?

If we're talking about only the contents of twitter.com and not harassment that extends into real life and just happens to also happen on twitter? I'll take that bet.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#42

I’m strongly opposed to just about everything the UK government has done or proposed involving the internet, but the ‘Free Speech Union’ is an awful source to have on HN. The FSU is entirely a product of the “culture wars” of the outrage manufacturing twitterati, and offers to protect members from “feminist professors”. The UK’s Open Rights Group is the closest thing to a UK EFF (founded by Doctorow), and is generall…

Have a look at the Scottish hate speech law then. It's as Orwellian as it comes.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#43

What I’m becoming more painfully aware of with each passing year is that “free speech” is actually (sadly) a very unpopular ideal. We haven’t really had it in a long time, and we have less of it with each passing year - cheered on by a not insignificant majority.

In this context, the UK never had free speech. So they aren't losing anything.

However, the problem with freedom of speech is that it's not absolute. There are many exceptions that to the reasonable person will agree that need exist.

The problem is that opponents of free speech are using the exception system in order to silence dissent.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#44
post #5

What I’m becoming more painfully aware of with each passing year is that “free speech” is actually (sadly) a very unpopular ideal. We haven’t really had it in a long time, and we have less of it with each passing year - cheered on by a not insignificant majority.

"The problem with freedom is that people abuse it and cause harm to others." Edit: (to be clear, I do not personally believe this, just offering a little insight as to how the "not insignificant majority" think)

I think, being offended at words is mostly a sign of one's own personal insecurity. Can you imagine a successful doctor or a business owner being seriously offended because someone on the Internet called them a bad word? I bet they would respond same way I do when my son calls me a "bad papa" for insisting he finishes lunch before getting a desert.

The bigger, much bigger problem is the growing amount of people that feel financially insecure about their lives, have no marketable skills, and plenty of free time. And the media is currently doing its best to direct their rage to unresolvable tribal infighting, rather than self-improvement, and possibly concluding that their misery might have something to do with the rise of monopolies, poorly chosen loan-funded degrees, and a few other very specific things rather than abstract inequality and injustice.

I don't like where this is headed. Tribal society structure, with elites living in fenced mansions, and hungry plebs literally killing each other over petty tribal disputes is very real. Half of Africa lives like this, Mexican drug cartels do, most Europe did before Enlightenment. And it is mind-boggling to see that this type of society might be coming to the former First World in fewer than a single generation.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#45
I'm going to guess that many readers from this US-focused site have assumed this is like the ACLU or something but for Britain. It er... is not.

It's a platform for Toby Young in particular, and a cadre of fragile Right Wing "intellectuals" to insist that it's wrong for anybody to even criticise their bullshit.

This gives you some sort of idea: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/4agqbn/toby-young-free-sp...

I actually clicked this link before noticing the affiliation, because I thought it might have technical content and that would actually be interesting. It doesn't.

So, ignore Toby Young, but as usual for HN people probably aren't much interested in the actual article so much as the headline anyway, here's the technical consequences of the "plan" if you want to call it that.

This government (and its predecessor) have a core plan that relies on how the Internet worked in like 2016. Much of what people do is unencrypted and even when it's encrypted you can at least identify who they're talking to. So your backstop is that if sites are unco-operative (and we can assume many actively criminal and terrorist sites will not cheerfully co-operate) you block them in DNS. This is a known quantity, you can buy DNS blocking appliances at ISP scale. You can budget for it. The service providers will want so-and-so much money, you make them pass the cost on to their subscribers, hopefully it's not enough to cause push back that loses too many votes.

However even this limited plan isn't actually popular (it polls badly with certain groups and it's too technical for your doorstep representatives to have any hope of justifying their position so best to shut up about it) and from 2016 onward the British government has had plenty of more important things to do. This plan keeps getting kicked into the long grass. To be clear: It's a government plan, the government could make time for it on the legislative agenda, this isn't like a US House bill that Mitch won't even read let alone bring to a vote in the Senate - but they are far too busy to prioritise this.

Meanwhile it is now 2020. Meanwhile DPRIVE is deployed and ECH (what was once eSNI and now encrypts more stuff) is starting to shape up. So the DNS blocking strategy doesn't do anything any more. Now you'd have to rewrite the plan, invent new ISP-scale blocking appliances, goodness knows what those cost and what other problems they introduce, and you still haven't even tried to see if your plan does anything, much less achieves whatever nebulous goals are in your current white paper.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#46

I’m strongly opposed to just about everything the UK government has done or proposed involving the internet, but the ‘Free Speech Union’ is an awful source to have on HN. The FSU is entirely a product of the “culture wars” of the outrage manufacturing twitterati, and offers to protect members from “feminist professors”. The UK’s Open Rights Group is the closest thing to a UK EFF (founded by Doctorow), and is generall…

More of a reaction to rather than a product of the culture wars, I'd say. Just like the heterodox academy.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#47
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> removes agency from those who choose to react in a negative way. "I order you to kill this person." Just a combination of words, and yet.... I think there is a continuum between this and non-violent+non-inciting speech and your comment does little to tangle with the difference.

"I was just following orders" does not defend one's actions, so the whole continuum must respect individual agency over others' speech.

Consider the level of crimes that must take place for that defense to come into play, much less the additional levels of magnitude before it ceases to be an actual defense.

In our average, every-day life, it's quite possible to illegitimately harm people and escape retribution by using "I was just following orders" as a defense.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#48

I’m strongly opposed to just about everything the UK government has done or proposed involving the internet, but the ‘Free Speech Union’ is an awful source to have on HN. The FSU is entirely a product of the “culture wars” of the outrage manufacturing twitterati, and offers to protect members from “feminist professors”. The UK’s Open Rights Group is the closest thing to a UK EFF (founded by Doctorow), and is generall…

> If you’re no-platformed by a university—a feminist professor who challenges trans orthodoxy, for instance—we’ll encourage you to fight back and members of our advisory councils may be able to tell you what remedies are available to you.

it's actually the opposite - it's claiming if you are a feminist professor, they may help you.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#49
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bullying can drive people to suicide or indeed bring them to commit terrorist acts. You think bullying on twitter has caused 0 deaths?

If we're talking about only the contents of twitter.com and not harassment that extends into real life and just happens to also happen on twitter? I'll take that bet.

I think you drastically underestimate stochasticity, the sheer number of people on twitter, and how actions at the margin can drive someone over a precipe.

Re: UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech

#50

I’m strongly opposed to just about everything the UK government has done or proposed involving the internet, but the ‘Free Speech Union’ is an awful source to have on HN. The FSU is entirely a product of the “culture wars” of the outrage manufacturing twitterati, and offers to protect members from “feminist professors”. The UK’s Open Rights Group is the closest thing to a UK EFF (founded by Doctorow), and is generall…

> If you’re no-platformed by a university—a feminist professor who challenges trans orthodoxy, for instance—we’ll encourage you to fight back and members of our advisory councils may be able to tell you what remedies are available to you. it's actually the opposite - it's claiming if you are a feminist professor, they may help you.

"challenges trans orthodoxy" is definitely picking a side.
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