221–230 of 318 posts
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If enough people switch to Tor, then Tor will get banned. Technical solutions don’t fix bad policies.
If you're in a struggle against a hostile regime, you don't refuse to use the weapons available to you because they're not what will bring you final victory. You use whatever you can.
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> Maybe an LLM can carry some of the load here for free forums like this to keep operating? It can't give you any guarantees, and it can't be held liable for those mistakes.
And it misses the point that the law seems to, or could be used to, criminalise the simple discussion of unpleasant (to some) topics. Without free discourse...well, I think it'd be real bad
And yet there are restrictions on speech everywhere in the world.
So not sure we need to clutch the pearls too tightly.
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…
I'm not trying to be edgy, but genuinely why do you care if someone says or believes something you feel is hateful? Personally I'm not convinced this is even a problem. I'd argue this is something that the government has been radicalising people in the UK to believe is a problem by constantly telling us how bad people hating things is. Hate doesn't cause any real world harm – violence does. And if you're concerned about violence then there's better ways to address that than cracking down on online communities.
In regards to radicalisation, this is a problem imo. I think it's clear there is some link between terrorism and online radicalisation, but again, I'd question how big a problem this is and whether this is even right way to combat these issues... If you're concerned about things like terrorism or people with sexist views, then presumably you'd be more concerned about the tens of thousands of unvetted people coming into the country from extremist places like Afghanistan every year? It's not like online radicalisation is causing white Brits to commit terror attacks against Brits... This is obviously far more an issue of culture than online radicalisation.
So I guess what I'm asking is what radicalisation are you concerned with exactly and what do you believe the real world consequences of this radicalisation are? Do you believe the best way to stop Islamic terrorism in the UK is to crack down on content on the internet? Do we actually think this will make any difference? I don't really see the logic in it personally even if I do agree that some people do hold strange views these days because of the internet.
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The law has absolutely nothing to do with historic content, it has no provisions for or relevance to content published decades ago. Even in the most cautious response to this law, there is no reason to take content offline.
Counterpoint: I read the law and it seems to me that it absolutely does apply to historic content. Ultimately you may be right, but the fact that there isn't a clear answer means nobody without thousands of dollars to throw at lawyers can take that risk.
Let's be real, for most dead sites this is an excuse for old admins to close the thing down because they got tired of running it. For sites with fewer than millions of users you basically needed to add a contact form and report button. These places are just deserted, and instead of having a few angry oldheads screaming at you, you can just blame the government
What features are lacking from vBulletin that prevents being compliant? I suspect some details are missing.
Forgive me if I’m being dense… I just read through the entire HN discussion about lobste.rs and continued down that rabbit hole to other discussions of forum, deletions, and the safety act, etc. The part I don’t understand is: Why aren’t these operators placing the forum into a corporate or partnership entity, without personal liability, that would be the target of some eventual enforcement? These very small forums A…
There's a requirement to name a senior manager: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/103
There's personal liability attached to being the named senior manager: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/110
Other nearby sections have additional personal liabilities. Like Sec 109 (5) (a) probably criminalizes your exact suggested response of walking away from Ofcom's inquiries: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/109 It depends on the legal definition of "permits the suppression of... any information required". We'd have to hire a UK lawyer for a confident answer.
All this is a couple sentences in the law. The law is 250 pages long. Ofcom's guidance was rounding 3,000 pages the last time I counted.
If you want to understand the OSA, I think the most accessible and valid writing available is by Neil Brown: https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/ There's a lot developing as Ofcom continues to publish new rules and ignore questions, so I suggest reading the 'Replies' tab of his fediverse account.
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> Liberal gun laws mean lots of people have them, logically leading to more people being shot. Explain Czechia and Switzerland, then, please.
Switzerland has a strong permit system allowing the government to control who can purchase a firearm. Automatic firearms and concealed carry permits are given sparingly and only for a good reason. Basically unlike the U.S. Switzerland doesn't view background checks and permits as a slippery slope to a dictatorship and implements them effectively.
The Swiss... since the 2000s
The US has had strict background checks since the 60s
The Swiss.... 1997? Maybe later, the EU forced them to change their gun laws.
The questions stands: more Swiss households have guns than the US, yet gun violence does not exist.
Why?
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…
I don't know the detail here, but in many of the discussions I've seen the operators themselves are based in the UK, and that changes the calculus.
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