121–130 of 480 posts
Good example of why you need to fight even for big tech rights.
The “reigning in big tech” thing that’s been going on for all this while is really a ruse to limit citizen freedom while coming up with laws that only big tech can comply to. I wish it was more widely recognized and understood by more folks.
Which law in particular?
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> [Preventing public discourse] is, I believe, also the intention behind the calls to repeal Section 230 What do you think about calls to remove platform immunity from algorithms that have an editorial effect?
> What do you think about calls to remove platform immunity from algorithms that have an editorial effect? You mean, "repeal Section 230"? Because the entire point of Section 230 is to allow imperfect biased moderation without having to eliminate all user content. Such calls are ridiculous, stupid, or malicious on a host of levels. Making editorial decisions about what to allow on your own private property is core 1A…
So everybody around the world could and should register with them and basically perform a DoS at that very first step of the process?
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Well said. Breach of social contract. The problem is that others think it is advantageous to close their mouth. Of course this is not possible by the laws of Nature.
Precisely. What cannot be said will find an outlet elsewhere. We'll soon find that having some potty mouths are far better than the alternatives.
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> Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV that they already understand. Unless the UK significantly increases its military capacity and sets up world government, they will not be able to shut down the internet. The internet will still exist. The best they can hope for is a great firewall / North Korea type situation which would require a much more authoritarian (moreover fu…
1) The point isn't to regulate the internet, it's to regulate what UK citizens can see. 2) The great firewall was complicated by the design goal of accessing some, but not all, foreign websites. The UK could accomplish their goals in a day or two by just cutting all the underwater cables. That sounds like an impossible crazy thing, but so did Brexit a couple years ago.
A large amount (if not the vast majority) of fibre optics from Europe to Americas, go though the UK and cutting them off cuts off the biggest parts of the world from each other.
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It just underlines what should be fairly obvious: that such official meetings are not how things are actually decided in representative democracies. I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system, where members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences.
> I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system, where members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences. yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. And those seats are expected to vote as a block…
That was (and to a degree, still is) also the intent in the British system: you would primarily represent your constituency, not your party. This is why you have constituency surgeries where you meet your constituents, maybe address some concerns, etc. which are similar to the "town hall meetings" you have in the US. The US essentially copied the British system.
I don't know how well it worked in the past as I'm not that familiar with the history; in HMS Pinafore there's already a joke about it ("I always voted at my party's core and never thought of thinking for myself at all"[1]) which is from 1880 or thereabouts, so I'm guessing not very well shrug
It's natural for like-minded people with similar ideas to gravitate towards each other and form political parties for strategic and social reasons. In the US the founding fathers set up the system to work without parties, only to found the first political parties themselves a few years later, so that idea broke down pretty quickly.
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My immediate thought as well. As this law will apply to ANY service available to UK users the only feasible solution for smaller websites and app developers will be exclusion to avoid liability. So UK users will simply start using VPNs to by pass region blocks.
Ah, the familiar HN bubble, where people instinctively think of "simply start using VPNs" as the solution. No; some tiny minority of UK users may do that, but the overwhelming majority will just use whatever services are "approved" (follow whatever rules they have to, to stay in the market) and remain available by default.
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If this UK bill passes, I'd simply return HTTP 451 with a note that although the UK is blocked from my site, VPNs are not.
Promoting VPN usage could be construed by the UK courts as an attempt to commit subterfuge or dodge jurisdiction. They will not take kindly to this. You really want to make it perfectly clear that you want nothing to do with Britain as long as they have crazy laws on the books. Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR, blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law applies on the basis of citizensh…
No it doesn't. depends on location only. A US, or any other, citizen is protected by GDPR when they access the web from within the EU
This is insane - and worse the UK is just, just small enough that you could if you wanted, turn off the service to those geo-IPs and carry on.
I wonder. If any non-English speaking country tried it, it would almost be guaranteed