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

forums.hexus.net

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

#231

Post by zinekeller »

pushcx wrote: post #227
rsync wrote: post #191

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…

In addition to the "you're not fooling anyone" bit about piercing the corporate veil that's already well-addressed, you missed provisions of the OSA. 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…

For those who do not know, Peter (pushcx) operates Lobste.rs, and even though he and the website is US-based, it looks like there will be repercussions too for them (basically geoblocking UK, for reference see https://lobste.rs/s/ukosa1 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152178)

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

#232

Post by CursedUrn »

csense wrote: 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…

The US owner would still be obliged to follow the UK rules, apparently. It's unclear how punishment will be enforced exactly.

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

#233

Post by dabluecaboose »

CrossVR wrote: post #184
psunavy03 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 US, contrary to your implication, has much stronger controls on automatic firearms than Switzerland does, in the forms of the 1934 National Firearms Act (makes them illegal to manufacture or purchase without a permit and exorbitant tax), the 1968 Gun Control Act (Massively regulates gun stores that are allowed to sell), and the 1984 Hughes amendment to the FOPA (makes new production machine guns illegal for civilians to buy)

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, I could have a fully automatic SIG 550 in about two weeks with some paperwork. In fact, the harder part is finding a range to shoot the damn thing at!

"Good Reason" carry permits, meanwhile, are looked down on due to their messy history of being Jim Crow laws. Generally, the "good reason" was "being white" and this was used to ensure that the Black community was disarmed when the Klan rolled in.

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

#234

Post by absolutelastone »

notatty wrote: post #202
ipaddr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution was for a school to use their resources not on their students but for the general public? I guess they spent a tiny bit of money so why not 1000% times more? I don't mind giving your child some candy on Halloween but I'm not going to pay for braces. Even though he may really need them.

As we all know, there is no middle ground between "paying for video captions" and "financing all money ever for the rest of time", and I think that's unfortunate.

I feel like there is a logical paradox here. You're using a bigger hyperbole to criticize a hyperbole. If this argument is valid then it invalidates itself.

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

#235

Post by rsync »

pushcx wrote: post #227
rsync wrote: post #191

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…

In addition to the "you're not fooling anyone" bit about piercing the corporate veil that's already well-addressed, you missed provisions of the OSA. 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…

"There's personal liability attached to being the named senior manager ..."

Thank you - that's a missing piece that helps.

"In addition to the "you're not fooling anyone" bit ..."

I don't suggest a corporate veil as a ruse - it's a tool that has a function and I think this is certainly it.

My sense is that enforcement for small operators is unlikely but the potential liabilities skew the risk dramatically. Pointing the initial enforcement at a corporate entity could change that risk assessment.

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

#236

Post by throwaway48476 »

__float wrote: post #189
jameskraus wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember some of the Berkeley genetics lectures as some of the best learning materials I could find for my upper-level courses. Later I tried to refer to them and found they were all gone. I wish there was any other option vs. just taking them down.

I mean, there was the obvious solution of paying the money to have it captioned, which was the original order. Berkeley instead offered this alternative solution, because they did not want to pay.

It would be nice if they revisited it in light of AI captioning services.

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

#237

Post by throwaway48476 »

CursedUrn wrote: post #232
csense wrote: 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…

The US owner would still be obliged to follow the UK rules, apparently. It's unclear how punishment will be enforced exactly.

Just create a block page for UK IPs with VPN ads.

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

#238

Post by throwaway48476 »

hexator wrote: post #178
gotoeleven wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You mean moderation. People are freaking out because they were banned from places for saying awful shit. Removing section 230 removes the right to moderation, which would kill the internet as we know it. It would become like cable internet. EFF summary on Section 230: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

Moderation wouldn't disappear, it would just become controlled by the user.

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

#239

Post by beeflet »

kieranmaine wrote: post #197
mjburgess wrote: post #44

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…

In the linked PDF, where does it say you can't discuss using drugs?

Table 1.1: Priority offences by category

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

#240

Post by beeflet »

ninininino wrote: post #119
jonatron wrote: post #75

HEXUS stopped publishing in 2021, and the company no longer exists. The forums were kept because they don't take much work to keep online. Now, there's a lot of work to do, like reading hundreds of pages of documents and submitting risk assessments. There's nobody to do that work now, so the idea was it could go into read only mode. The problem with that was, some users may want their data deleted if it becomes read…

Sort of like burning down a library because you can't make it ADA compliant and install a wheelchair ramp.

It's more like shutting down a library because you are unwilling to censor the books
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