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

Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

forums.hexus.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 318 posts

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#81

Post by ziddoap »

aimazon wrote: post #70
ziddoap wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted another example in this thread of someone running forums with 275k monthly active users that also decided to shut down. That does not qualify as "long dead". That's just one other example. I can assure you that it is not just long-dead forums deciding to shut down, despite your preconceived notion.

You’re falling for the big numbers that do not stand up to scrutiny. There’s no such forum shutting down. Are you referring to lfgss? First, it’s not shutting down, second, the user numbers are completely wrong. As is the claim that the platform supports over 300 forums. You’re an order of magnitude off. Go and visit it and look at the activity, it’s clinging to life. 275k active users? Pure fiction.

I'll avoid searching for other examples, as you seem to want to latch onto the example itself rather than the broader message the examples communicate. The fact is that some people are shutting down operations of websites, deleting data, etc. in response to this law.

Just considering that the law is forcing people to think about shutting down operations is a sign that the law is having a chilling effect. Both for existing websites and the potential creation of new ones.

Just because you believe yourself to be the sole arbiter of which websites are valuable and which can be deleted without worry doesn't change the fact that this law is having a negative effect on small websites.

Perhaps with better communication about the law, rather than the hundreds on hundreds of pages of vague guidance, the law could remain as-is and small website operators wouldn't be as concerned. However, that is not the case.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#82

Post by Aurornis »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #45
yuriks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe lobste.rs is one site that's going to geoblock the UK as a precautionary measure at least

I thought that was a tech site, are they hosting porn now? I'd have thought they'd already police hate crimes, encouraging suicide, self-harm, and such?? Perhaps they have a special section where they encourage kids to huff glue?

You’re missing the point. The law is so vague and broad that it could be interpreted as covering even far more innocuous content than the few extreme examples you listed here.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#83

Post by nradov »

kelnos wrote: post #48
hexator wrote: post #17

Feels more and more like we're at the end of an era when it comes to the internet.

How so? This is just the UK. While the UK really does want to enforce this globally, they really have no enforcement power against non-UK citizens who do not reside in the UK. Certainly it's possible (and perhaps likely!) that the EU and US will want to copycat this kind of law, but until that happens, I think your alarm is a bit of an overreaction.

A lot of people who travel internationally occasionally transit through UK jurisdiction, such as a connection at LHR. This potentially places forum operators in personal legal jeopardy. Would the UK authorities really go after some random citizen of another country for this? Probably not, but the risk isn't zero.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#84

Post by rich_sasha »

observationist wrote: post #73
rich_sasha wrote: post #59

It's awkward. It's clear this law affects terribly bona fide grassroots online communities. I hope HN doesn't start geoblocking the UK away! But then online hate and radicalization really is a thing. What do you do about it? Facebook seems overflowing with it, and their moderators can't keep up with the flow, nor can their mental health keep up. So it's real and it's going to surface somewhere. At some level, I think…

You don't. "Hate speech" is code for "the government knows better and controls what you say." Yes, racism exists and people say hateful things. Hate speech is in the interpretation. The US has it right with the first amendment - you have to be egregiously over the line for speech to be illegal, and in all sorts of cases there are exceptions and it's almost always a case-by-case determination. Hateful things said by p…

I see no reason why hate speech should be given the benefit of the doubt. And no, it's not because my government told me so, I have my own opinion, which is that freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear.

If you don't want it tolerated online, which I don't, you need some kind of legal statement saying so. Like a law that says, you can't do it, and websites can't just shrug their shoulders and say it's not their problem.

I don't line this legislation as it seems to be excessive, but I disagree that the root issue it tries to address is a made up problem.

EDIT it just struck me that in speech and otherwise, the US has a far higher tolerance for violence - and yes I do mean violence. Free speech is taken much further in the US, almost to the point of inciting violence. Liberal gun laws mean lots of people have them, logically leading to more people being shot. School shootings are so much more common, and it appears there is no widespread conclusion to restrict gun ownership as a result.

Maybe that's a core difference. Europeans genuinely value lower violence environments. We believe all reasonable things can be said without it. That doesn't make this legislation good. But at least it makes sense in my head why some people glorify extreme free speech (bit of a tired expression in this age).

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#85

Post by thereisnospork »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #45
yuriks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe lobste.rs is one site that's going to geoblock the UK as a precautionary measure at least

I thought that was a tech site, are they hosting porn now? I'd have thought they'd already police hate crimes, encouraging suicide, self-harm, and such?? Perhaps they have a special section where they encourage kids to huff glue?

The 'if they have nothing to hide' argument? Really?

I look forward to reading your fully compliant risk assessment before interacting with this comment, lest it be judged to contain offensive, inappropriate, or pornographic content.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#86

Post by aimazon »

ziddoap wrote: post #81
aimazon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re falling for the big numbers that do not stand up to scrutiny. There’s no such forum shutting down. Are you referring to lfgss? First, it’s not shutting down, second, the user numbers are completely wrong. As is the claim that the platform supports over 300 forums. You’re an order of magnitude off. Go and visit it and look at the activity, it’s clinging to life. 275k active users? Pure fiction.

I'll avoid searching for other examples, as you seem to want to latch onto the example itself rather than the broader message the examples communicate. The fact is that some people are shutting down operations of websites, deleting data, etc. in response to this law. Just considering that the law is forcing people to think about shutting down operations is a sign that the law is having a chilling effect. Both for exi…

Some people are protesting against this law by threatening to shut down their websites or by deleting content. The founder of lfgss explicitly said they’re against the law on principle.

I think historic content is very valuable which is why I am offended by this absurd response on hacker news where people are conflating the actions of a protest with the consequence of a law.

If someone chooses to protest this law by deleting their website then more power to them but we must be honest about what it is: protest.

People should be considerate about the consequence of the services they release onto the internet. We can debate the specifics of whether certain requirements are reasonable/fair/beneficial but it’s patently absurd to label choices these website owners are making as being caused by this law. The law has zero to do with historic content, there’s not a single risk to anyone who leaves a website online in read only mode as an archive.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#87

Post by mjburgess »

rich_sasha wrote: post #79
mjburgess wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a thing? I mean we had the holocaust, Rwandan genocide and the transatlantic slave trade without the internet. The discovery, by the governing classes, that people are often less-than-moral is just as absurd as it sounds. More malign and insidious is that these governors think it is their job to manage and reform the people -- that people, oppressed in their thinking and association enough -- will be easy to go…

It is a thing for sure. How often it happens, I don't know. I read a number of stories about school children being cyber-bullied on some kind of semi-closed forum. Some of these ended in suicide. Hell, it uses to happen a lot on Facebook in the early days. I totally understand a desire to make it illegal, past a certain threshold. I can see how you start off legislating with this in mind, then 20 committees later you…

Of course hatred, bullying, etc. is real -- what I was referring to is some special amount or abundance of it as caused by free discussion on the internet (rather than, say, revealed by it; or even, minimised by it).

We're not running the counter-factual where the internet does not exist, or was censored from the start, and where free expression and discussion has reduced such things.

The salem witch trials are hardly a rare example of a vicious mob exploiting a moral panic to advance their own material interests -- this is something like the common case. It's hard to imagine running a genocide on social media -- more likely it would be banned as "propganda" so that a genocide could take place.

We turned against the internet out of disgust at what? Was is the internet it itself, or just a unvarinished look at people? And if the latter, are we sure the internet didnt improve most of them, and hasnt prevented more than its caused?

I see in this moral panic the same old childish desire to see our dark impulses as alien, imposed by a system, to destroy the system so that we can return to a self-imposed ignorance of what people are really thinking and saying. It's just victorian moralism and hypocricy all over again. Polite society is scandalised by the portrait of dorian gray, and we better throw the author in jail .

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#89

Post by gotoeleven »

hexator wrote: post #51
kelnos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? This is just the UK. While the UK really does want to enforce this globally, they really have no enforcement power against non-UK citizens who do not reside in the UK. Certainly it's possible (and perhaps likely!) that the EU and US will want to copycat this kind of law, but until that happens, I think your alarm is a bit of an overreaction.

Similar laws are being written elsewhere, Section 230 may not last the next few years. It's not just the UK.

Well the attacks on section 230 from the right are about removing censorship not adding censorship so I'm not sure section 230 is a good comparison.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#90

Post by thorncorona »

rich_sasha wrote: post #71
staticautomatic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate and radicalization are products of existential purposelessness. You can’t make them go away by preventing existentially purposeless people from talking to each other.

No, you can't, but also theres is no reason why the law about allow these to be up. Plenty of people have racist thoughts, and that's not illegal (thoughts in general aren't), but go print a bunch of leaflets inciting racist violence and that is illegal. I see this as an internet analogy.

It seems though that allowing a country which already has problems with “lawful free speech,” to tamp down more on free speech would bring issues no?

Without mentioning the oxymoron that lawful free speech is.

Post reply on HN