Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

It’s not whataboutism. It’s exasperated cleanupyourownbackyardism.

That HN collapses into hysteria over the slightest thing happening on the other side of the Atlantic while studiously avoiding any discussion of homegrown political insanity is basically laughable. You know nothing about us; as always we are essentially forced to know all about you in detail so we can fend it all off.

They could. But it is the world's 6th largest economy.

This is a failure of Operating System Vendors, in my opinion.

If Operating Systems had a way for parents to adequately monitor/administer the machines of their children, this would not be such a huge, massive hole, in which to pour (yet more) human rights abuses.

Parents have the right to have an eye on their children. This is not repressive, it is not authoritarian, it is a right and a responsibility.

The fact that I can't - easily, and with little fuss - quickly see what my kids are viewing on their screens, is the issue.

Sure, children have the right to privacy - but it is their parents who should provide it to them. Not just the state, but the parents. And certainly, the state should not be eliminating the rest of society's privacy in the rush to prevent parents from having oversight of - and responsibility for - the online activities of their children.

The fact is, Operating System Vendors would rather turn their platforms into ad-vending machines, than actually improve the means by which the computers are operated by their users.

It would be a simple thing to establish parent/child relationship security between not just two computers, but two human beings who love and trust each other.

Kids will always be inquisitive. They will always try to exceed the limits imposed upon them by their parents. But this should not be a reason for more draconian control over consenting adults, or indeed individual adults. It should be a motivating factor to build better computing platforms, which can be reliably configured to prevent porn from having the detrimental impact many controllers of society have decided is occurring.

Another undeniable fact, is that parents - and parenting - get a bad rap. However, if a parent and child love and trust each other, having the ability to quickly observe the kids computing environment in productive ways, should be being provided, technologically.

When really, we should be building tools which strengthen parent/child relationships, we are instead eradicating the need for parents.

Unpopular opinion, I know: but Thats The Point.

I'm a parent, I have researched it, and found it not great because it still involves third parties and doesn't promote local control/anonymity without involving some external entity - i.e. Apple requires accounts, Google still gets its metrics, etc.

Unless you've got some specific better examples?

> By my reading - there's a ton of red tape and paperwork.

It might help if you referenced the section what defines those requirements.

I don’t recall seeing anything that required such red tape unless there was special circumstances after the fact (for example, reporting child porn that was uploaded to your site, or responding to a police or court order).

But these kinds of rules exist for freedom of information et al too.

Maybe I’ve missed something though?

> Heck, there's a ton of work even getting to the point of understanding what work you need to do.

That is a fair point.

Unfortunately it’s also not novel to this legislation. Running any site that allows for public contributions opens one’s self to lots of different laws from lots of different countries. For some counties in the EU, Nazi content is illegal. Different countries have different rules around copyright. Then there’s laws around data protection, consent, and so on and so forth.

This law certainly doesn’t make things any easier but there has been a requirement to understand this stuff for decades already. So it’s a bit of a stretch to say this one new law suddenly makes a burden to run a site insurmountable.

However I do agree with your more general point that it’s getting very hard to navigate all of these local laws at scale.

> And dismissing the fear of life-changing financial liability as "being spooked" is not helpful.

It’s an unfounded fear though, so my language is fair. You’d use the same language about any other unfounded fear.

This is the crux of the point. People are scared, and I get why. But it’s completely unfounded. If people still want to discriminate against UK IPs then that’s their choice as they have to weigh up the risks as they perceive them. But it doesn’t mean it’s any likelier to happen than, for example, being in a plane crash (to cite another fear people overcome daily).

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That all said, maybe everyone blocking UK IPs could be a good thing. If everyone shows they don’t consider it safe to operate in the UK then our government might consider revoking this stupid law.