Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

lobste.rs

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 90 posts

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#21

Post by basisword »

As much as I hate this legislation, this is really just a small forum deciding they don't have the time to understand the legislation and therefore it's easier to block IP's from the UK (while it's not even clear if that will exempt them from liability). Fair enough but hardly earth shattering. I remember several US based websites geo-blocking all of Europe after GDPR came in (I think the LA Times was one of the biggest) and that went on for years.

We need legislation that tackles the various issues this legislation aims to tackle but in much more targeted ways. It needs to specifically target the biggest social media companies (Meta, X, Reddit, etc). Smaller forums are irrelevant. If your algorithm recommends self-harm content to kids who then go on to kill themselves it is right that you should be held responsible. "We're so big we can't be expected to police the content we host" should not be an acceptable argument.

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#22

Post by AdrianB1 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #4
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #2

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> the right propaganda of the leftists being against technology is so easy to justify OSA is a product of the last Tory government who, I can promise you, were not at all "leftists".

All of Europe is leftist in that regard. There is no free speech in Europe and even the "extreme right" parties in France, Italy, Germany or Romania, for example, are just called extremist because anyone can throw words at anything, not because they are (note: LePen the father was an extremist, the daughter is not).

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#23

Post by portaouflop »

dang wrote: post #11
portaouflop wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't know if you mean that or are being sarcastic, but either way, this is not the kind of comment we want here, so please don't like this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That is fair enough — I guess im just salty that the UL repeatedly feels they can impose their backwards legislation on the rest of the world when they are hardly even relevant — it’s just a repeat of colonialist nonsense but on a more ridiculous level.

Legislating to break apple’s encryption worldwide was just the latest entitled insult to everyone else worldwide.

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#24

Post by zimpenfish »

sepositus wrote: post #15

Is a decentralized approach to communication an effective bulwark against this type of legislation? As is mentioned in the linked thread, the act itself is extremely hard to parse, so maybe it's not even possible to know the answer. Just curious if anyone has done research from that angle.

Neil Brown[0] has been attending the Ofcom online sessions and asking them about Fediverse servers but they've been unhelpfully vague as to how/if/why/when they fall under OSA.

[0] https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#26

Post by kmeisthax »

As someone who self-hosts Mastodon, should I be geoblocking the UK as well?

For the record, I only host it for myself, so I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have received any of the legal protections that the OSA is now stripping away, and thus geoblocking the UK wouldn't matter. But if there's something else I'm missing, please let me know.

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#27

Post by randunel »

do_not_redeem wrote: post #10

ELI5: Why should a US-based site, hosted on US soil and run by a US citizen, care about laws in all the hundreds of other random countries located thousands of miles away?

Because he can face legal consequences for breaking the (local elsewhere) law. The US do the exact same, look up FATCA.

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#28

Post by soulofmischief »

sepositus wrote: post #19
soulofmischief wrote: post #9

The simple answer is to not recognize the authority of the UK government when you don't have a physical presence there, as long as they are failing to protect their citizens with sane, ethical digital policy. Tough pill to swallow for some, but there is no difference between irrational demands made from the government of the UK, and say, North Korea. It's everyone's choice which side of history they'd like to be on.

Just to play devil's advocate, the relationship between the EU and the US compared to North Korea is not at all similar. I think that's why this is listed as an option: > A statement from the US Department of State that it does not believe the law applies to American entities and a commitment to defend them against it.

The UK is not a part of the EU.

I also recognize the potential for legal action or criminal charges. Those are great opportunities to fight these tyrants in one of the few battlefields available to us.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law."

Now, it may be that Lobsters simply doesn't have the highest respect for the law, or perhaps they value their community's survival over leading by principle and securing a bright future for posterity. Short-sighted thinking, but I understand the motivation.

My comment is a call for people to consider their priorities with respect to the world we leave behind us. Taking the easy way out and avoiding conflict with an encroaching global authoritarian movement is not going to fix anything, and contributes toward an ever-darker future.

This is not a jab at Lobster, and I am glad to see them at least trying something before simply geoblocking the UK. But what if geoblocking isn't enough? What if knowing a VPN-enabled user is from the UK but not banning them is still grounds for a lawsuit or criminal charges?[0] What if more countries join in?

[0] This leads to the ironic outcome that the UK becomes less represented in the next generation of online discourse and slides further into backwater obscurity, despite being home to such rich culture and academia.

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#29

Post by randunel »

soulofmischief wrote: post #9

The simple answer is to not recognize the authority of the UK government when you don't have a physical presence there, as long as they are failing to protect their citizens with sane, ethical digital policy. Tough pill to swallow for some, but there is no difference between irrational demands made from the government of the UK, and say, North Korea. It's everyone's choice which side of history they'd like to be on.

Haven't you heard of FATCA and other similar local US laws which impact institutions everywhere in the world?

Re: Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act

#30

Post by bb88 »

Red_Comet_88 wrote: post #13

They also block Brave browsers entirely. I tried reading into it, but it appears to be one of those "programmer personality quirks". The fellow that runs the site appears to think Brave is a scam of some sort, and just decided to block the entire browser. Oh well, I'll stick to HN.

Is it me, or is brave more of a cryptocurrency platform that pretends to be a browser?

A lot of people don't really like the toxic discussions that crypto usually tends to devolve in. So it makes sense to block the browser if you don't want those people on your server.

Post reply on HN