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4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

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Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#671
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying this is the same, but there are depression forums where the admin / mods promotes and sells “permanent solution” kits. People really should turn to medical professionals and not internet strangers for help. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c... https://youtu.be/lUsO8ny_Dhg?si=FOPqCS2NKOZBQKg8

> People really should turn to medical professionals and not internet strangers for help. For your own safety, you are to only discuss your health with NHS certified healthcare providers and no one else. Doing so with others can lead to unprovoked, unsanctioned and dangerous anecdotes, advice and memes. Worse, you might find community and make friends with people who have similar life experiences, which can distract…

Your sarcasm sounds like we'd be living in some extreme 1984-like dystopia, while the reality is: there is more bullshit one can read online than a bullshit one can get from a poor doctor/therapist.

From my experience, the best one can do is to get a good and affordable therapist by a word of mouth.. and sometimes one can get lucky as such person is doing also service for a state, for free. Main point is to actively start searching

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#672

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> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally. How silly of them. Obviously, only the US jurisdiction can do that.

Good news/bad news, our current leaders are far too incompetent to successfully plan and execute a regime change operation. Bad news is they're stupid enough to try anyway and have a lot of weapons.

Which regime is trying to be changed though? The backlash to starting a war for no credible reason and tanking the world economy along with increased fuel prices could conceivably force a regime change in the USA.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#673

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That sounds so gross. Why do British people tolerate that? It’s as if British people belong to their government.

It’s as if British people belong to their government. Legally speaking, British people are subjects, not citizens.

This myth keeps getting repeated. It hasn't been true since 1949, when British subjects in the UK became Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies.

In 1983, the status of CUKC was renamed to British citizen (for those CUKCs resident in or closely connected with the UK: the situation in the remaining colonies was more complicated). At the same time, the status of British subject was officially restricted to those few British subjects who didn't qualify for citizenship of the UK or of any other Commonwealth country in 1949, and who were formerly known as "British subjects without citizenship".

So we are officially and legally citizens, not subjects.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#674

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Long dead? Within living memory. Britain still has colonies with millions of people in them.

>Britain still has colonies with millions of people in them. Britain does not have colonies. You might be thinking of the British overseas territory but the total population of those islands is less than 400,000

Not to open a can of worms, but there are probably people who still consider Northern Ireland a colony.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#675
post #599

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it's ironic though, that you wrote your comment in English.

That is only historic influence, though. Britain does not control the English language and cannot exert any further influence through it.

Well, Monthy Python does still reach some people, but apart from that it is fading away it seems ..

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#676
post #82

If it wasn't for 4Chan, we might never have solved the Haruhi problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,... I used to go on a curated version of 4Chan via Telegram. Yes there is a lot of racism (although it flies in every direction, between every ethnicity you could imagine) but there is also (due to the anonymous nature) some genuinely interesting discussions. I remember one thread about ai…

>There was a guy in Greece who had found out that as long as he never graduated, he could live a basic life for free at university. I remember him. Sadly he got evicted in the end. F.

More like Φ probably

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#677

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I do not think 4chan has executives.

I think the fact 4chan instructed a lawyer shows it does.

The lawyer is taking the case pro-bono.

I am not sure why you think running a website where people are free to say awful things about powerful people would be profitable.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#678
post #16

The response from Ofcom doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards). If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported. Jus…

I was surprised by Ofcom trying to use that analogy as it's not at all relevant. 4Chan isn't selling anything in the UK, so why are Ofcom harping on about consumer protection?

It's a stupid law and Ofcom are stupid. I wish that Labour hadn't continued with implementing the Tories authoritarian law, but then Labour seem to be a Tory-Lite party but with just less blatant corruption.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#679

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Like I said, it is a spectrum. You draw the line at physical violence, an entirely arbitrary line, whereas the U.K. goes further and continues to emotional violence. And before you argue that there is no such thing as emotional violence: do you agree that some emotional harm can be worse than some physical harm? I'd much rather be punched than subjected to the worst emotional trauma I've experienced in my life. > In…

> Like I said, it is a spectrum. No it really isn't. > You draw the line at physical violence, an entirely arbitrary line, whereas the U.K. goes further and continues to emotional violence. It must appear as a spectrum to you because you've been taken in by propaganda used by authoritarians and fundamentalists to justify using actual violence and censorship to crush dissent and criticism. There is no such thing as em…

Again, you're drawing an entirely arbitrary line between physical violence and "hurt feelings". You're reducing speech to just "other people's opinions" but as the U.S. courts have held many times, speech isn't just opinions.

> The other thing is that I guarantee you this is totally selectively enforced and prosecuted

Unlike all other laws? Tell me, who is more likely to end up on death row? To be prosecuted for drug possession? How much jail time is a rich white student likely to receive for rape compared to a poor black student? All laws are selectively enforced and prosecuted.

> I don't know what point you are trying to make here or if you know what freedom of speech is. Government schools and government education bureaucrats developing policies about curriculum and teaching materials doesn't seem to offer useful commentary about freedom of speech, so I really don't know how to respond to your question.

You don't understand that Florida schools banning books because they contain references to homosexuality is a free speech issue? Judge Carlos E. Mendoza in Penguin Random House v. Gibson said "The state’s prohibition of material that ‘describes sexual conduct’ is overbroad and unconstitutional.”. Unfortunately, many other judges did not rule the same way.

The point is that the "free speech" you lord over other countries is arbitrary, those who proclaim the U.S. to have true free speech and countries like the U.K. to be oppressive anti free speech regimes are delusional and have been conned by U.S. exceptionalism.

You can disagree with another county's choice to draw the line somewhere other than where the U.S. draws it but to proclaim the U.S. has real free speech that stands alone from other countries is lying to yourself. What, exactly, is unique about the U.S. free speech laws? That it is a constitutional amendment?

We could debate where the line should be, whether the U.K. or the U.S. has it right or wrong, but to argue that the U.K.'s laws are somehow distinct from the U.S. laws is nonsensical. I do not agree with where the U.K. draws the line. I also do not agree with where the U.S. draws the line.

> It must appear as a spectrum to you because you've been taken in by propaganda used by authoritarians and fundamentalists to justify using actual violence and censorship to crush dissent and criticism.

And for one last final point: how many protestors has the U.S. government killed this year? How many protestors have been killed by the U.K. government for protesting against government policy? I'm sure Renée Good and Alex Pretti and all the other murdered U.S. protestors are comforted in their graves by the glorious anti-authoritarian pro-dissent free speech laws that protected their dissent and protest so well.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Am I reading these views on HN? I had to check, it seems yes. :)

It used to be widely known that tech nerds are socially impaired.

Then they built the future and earned a lot of money and status, and now Silicon Valley is a hotbed of neofascist thought.

Turns out that if you give enough power to people who wrangle machines, they start thinking about wrangling people the same way.

Nerds are extremely dangerous. Through their work they quickly absorb the axiom of "predictability is good, unpredictability is bad" and from there to conclusions like "heterogeneity is dangerous and unpredictable" and "behavior of actors in a distributed system must be constrained". Put DevOps in charge of society and expect to get humans treated like cattle, not pets.

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