actual question, why bother? if they are domiciled in the UK, sell it to someone outside it or move the company elsewhere. let the britons kick and scream; the fun thing about the internet is they can't really do anything about it.
Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
101–110 of 318 posts
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
IANAL > any websites that let users interact with other users has to police illegal content on its site and must implement strong age verification checks. But I believe you only need age verification if pornography is posted. There's also a bunch of caveats about the size of user base - Ofcom have strongly hinted that this is primarily aimed at services with millions of users but haven't (yet) actually clarified whet…
I geo-block UK visitors on all of my websites. It's sad but the safest solution.
why? if you're located elsewhere you can literally just ignore UK/EU law. they don't have jurisdiction over you; worst-case scenario is probably them ordering ISPs to block your site.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#103actual question, why bother? if they are domiciled in the UK, sell it to someone outside it or move the company elsewhere. let the britons kick and scream; the fun thing about the internet is they can't really do anything about it.
The company no longer exists and it doesn't make any money so it isn't worth anything.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 hardl…
I think these views are not necessarily contradictory. You can't wipe out Bad Things by making them illegal online. But I think not proliferating them certainly helps, and for sure I don't see why they should be tolerated online.
IMO there's benefit in making easy Bad Things hard, even if you can't stop them. Like gun ownership in Europe. How you do that while respecting internet freedom - my original question - I don't know. But I disagree with simply stating there is no conflict.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c... Last month. “ We’ve heard concerns from some smaller services that the new rules will be too burdensome for them. Some of them believe they don’t have the resources to dedicate to assessing risk on their platforms, and to making sure they have measures in place to help them comply with the rules. As a result, some smaller services feel they might need to…
"We pinky swear to totes not enforce the law as written [unless and until we decide, with no notice or warning, to do so] up to and including criminal penalties". Not as reassuring as you claim it to be.
We don’t need to trust what they say, we just need to engage in a little critical thinking. What’s the benefit for Ofcom in pursuing tiny websites? There’s no political benefit, no financial benefit… the guidance from Ofcom reaffirms the natural conclusion.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#106actual question, why bother? if they are domiciled in the UK, sell it to someone outside it or move the company elsewhere. let the britons kick and scream; the fun thing about the internet is they can't really do anything about it.
The company no longer exists and it doesn't make any money so it isn't worth anything.
someone owns the forum and it's still a big archive of stuff. backlinks pointing there, old info, can run ads so it should cashflow somehow.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#107These UK laws might boost Tor usage.. let's hope something good will come from the full censorship political tyranny in Europe.
The UK is not in Europe, which would otherwise impose human rights legal constraints on UK government legislation.
The UK is in Europe, it didn't suddenly break off and float away, it's just not part of the EU, there's a bunch of European countries that aren't in the EU
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#108Anyone* would be crazy to run a UK-based or somewhat UK-centric forum today. Whether it be for a hobby, profession, or just social interaction. The government doesn’t perceive these sites as having any value (they don't employ people or generate corporation tax). [*] Unless you are a multibillion $ company with an army of moderators, compliance people, lawyers.
Well I'm on a forum run by a UK company, hosted in the UK, and we've talked about this, but they're staying online. And, no, they're not a multibillion dollar company.
I don't see our moderators needing to do any more work than they're already doing, and have been doing for years, to be honest.
So we'll see how the dice land.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What defines hate speech? Who defines hate speech? Does hate speech result from the speech or the actions of those against the speech? Should the speech of protestors have consequences for disturbing the peace? What consequences should the state force onto individuals for speech, or actors affected by speech? Americans for lack of a better description grapple with violence of the state differently than Europeans, but…
This act itself, I believe, does not reference "hate speech", which as you seem to point out is ambiguous, and I in turn only use it as short hand.
For the most part, this act says that content already considered illegal by existing and new laws must be policed by platforms. What is illegal is actually quite well defined, it seems. This article covers it nicely: https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/aug/08/what-is-...
Indeed, the controversy is, it appears, not about what is illegal, but about how the onus on policing this, and other things like the restrictions, is put on platforms. There are no major changes to what content is and isn't illegal! There are some additions, like "revenge porn", which is likewise easy to define and hard to see as a fundamental freedom of speech issue.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this particular case, the forum is UK-based (" HEXUS is a UK-based technology reporting and reviews website founded by David Ross in 2000 ") In other non-UK-based cases, geo-blocking is the answer being used by some people. Per https://geoblockthe.uk/ , they state: " Luckily OFCOM (the UK Government department responsible for 'enforcement' of these new rules) have confirmed that blocking people in the UK from acce…
Would be great if services like e.g. Wikipedia would do exactly that. "This website is not available in the UK. Ask your representative about the UK Online Safety Act for more information".
Wikipedia tries to act as a source for information all around the globe, they never block, they only get blocked, blocking the UK would go against their goals