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

forums.hexus.net

211–220 of 318 posts

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

#211

These 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.

You know perfectly well that the UK is in Europe. Not necessary part of the EU, but Europe as a continent, yes.

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

#214

I sympathize with the operators of these forums of course -- the UK Online Safety Act is poorly conceived. HOWEVER. Deleting their forums? "The act will require a vast amount of work to be done on behalf of the Forums and there is no-one left with the availability to do it." [1] This is a false dichotomy. Put Cloudflare in front of the site, block UK traffic [2], and you're done. 5 minute job. [1] https://forums.hexu…

[flagged]

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

#215
post #99
post #78

Earlier 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.

That's not what they are saying. What they are saying is that the law as written doesn't require the things that many small sites have been saying will be too expensive to comply with. The law as written only requires those things for large site and sites with elevated risk of certain harms. For most small sites any required changes will just be minor tweaks to things they are already doing.

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

#216
post #186

Rather than shut it down, would it be possible to sell the forum to someone in the US for a little bit of money, like $20 or something? Idea being the US-based owner migrates the DB with posts and user logins to servers hosted on US soil, then if the UK government comes knocking the former owners in the UK can say "Sorry it doesn't belong to us anymore, we sold it, here's the Paypal receipt." (Ideally they'd sell the…

Or maybe open it up to scraping so someone can archive it--if the content is that useful, surely some hobbyist outside U.K. with a few GB of disk space would be willing to host it.

Archive Team comes to mind.

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/

https://archive.org/details/archiveteam

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

#217

What is the meaning of "illegal content" given in the OSA? What will social media platforms be forced to censor (, remove, ..) ... let's take a look: Table 1.1: Priority offences by category ( https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... ) Disucssion of offenses related to: prostitution, drugs, abuse & insults, suicide, "stiring up of racial/religious hatred", fraud and "foreign interference". So o…

> [..] as the highs of repressive christian moralism in the mid 20th C. What makes you pick the mid-20th century as the high point of repressive christian moralism? That doesn't seem even close to the high point if you look back further in history.

I'm supposing they mean

as the highs of (repressive christian moralism in the mid 20th C.)

and not

as the highs of (repressive christian moralism) in the mid 20th C.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the chances that someone who runs a tiny, hobby motorcycle forum is going to be extradited from his vacation abroad for breaking a U.K. law? 0.1%? 0.01%? 0.001%? Less? If we only did zero-risk things, nobody would do anything.

That probability is entirely based on the premise that the extradition treaties that the UK has signed with other countries would NOT follow UK law despite the treaty soley based on the premise of being a political refugee for their free expression. What will likely happen, and what often happens with other countries in the third world, is that 'politically problematic' people are being caught in neighbouring countri…

As a US person, living in the US, with a US server, I would have absolutely zero reservations about hosting an online forum that may or may not welcome UK users. Just like I would have zero reservations about going online and blaspheming against a religion (illegal in many countries) swearing (illegal in the U.A.E. & probably elsewhere) or insulting a king (illegal in Thailand).

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

#219
post #160

What is the meaning of "illegal content" given in the OSA? What will social media platforms be forced to censor (, remove, ..) ... let's take a look: Table 1.1: Priority offences by category ( https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... ) Disucssion of offenses related to: prostitution, drugs, abuse & insults, suicide, "stiring up of racial/religious hatred", fraud and "foreign interference". So o…

> "foreign interference" That is a very tricky one to manage on an online forum. If an American expresses an opinion about UK policy, in a literal sense that is literally foreign interference. There isn't a technical way to tell propagandists from opinionated people. And the most effective propaganda, by far, is that which uses the truth to make reasonable and persuasive points - if it is possible to make a point tha…

The British legal system is a common law one like the U.S I believe, so it would be up to court interpretation.

Foreign interference would probably be interpreted as an organized campaign of interference being launched by a foreign power.

>This runs into the same problem as all disinformation suppression campaigns - governments have no interest in removing the stuff everyone agrees is untrue

at one time everyone agreed Anti-Vaxx was untrue, and now it's American government policy but still just as untrue.

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

#220

What is the meaning of "illegal content" given in the OSA? What will social media platforms be forced to censor (, remove, ..) ... let's take a look: Table 1.1: Priority offences by category ( https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... ) Disucssion of offenses related to: prostitution, drugs, abuse & insults, suicide, "stiring up of racial/religious hatred", fraud and "foreign interference". So o…

> This seems as draconian, censorious, illiberal, repressive and "moral panic"y as the highs of repressive christian moralism in the mid 20th C.

Given what has happened to the US as a result of unbridled free broadcast of misinformation and disinformation, we definitely need more "draconian, censorious, illiberal, repressive" rules around the propagation of such media.

Moral panic is EXACTLY what's called for!

You have captains of industry and thought leaders of the governing party throwing fucking nazi salutes, and this is broadcast to the masses! Insanity to defend free speech after the country is circling a drain as a result of said free speech.

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