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UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

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Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#191

Post by wzdd »

dustincoates wrote: post #5

Without passing judgment on the act, this is incredibly misleading. I found the source of the original quotes[0], and they are taken quite out of context. From the article: >First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primari…

The source includes a direct comment from the secretary of state that Category 1 of the OSA is about regulating sites with a significant influence over public discourse.

Therefore it makes perfect sense to say that the OSA is at least in part about regulating sites with a significant influence over public discourse. I find that at least somewhat alarming; is the "incredibly misleading" part that this is not all that the OSA is about?

(For reference, a rough description of the Categories are: you use a recommender system or allow sharing the site's content (1), you're a general-purpose search engine (2A), or you allow DMs between users (2B). Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174 )

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#192

Post by crtasm »

icarouse wrote: post #15
dustincoates wrote: post #5

Without passing judgment on the act, this is incredibly misleading. I found the source of the original quotes[0], and they are taken quite out of context. From the article: >First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primari…

This is unfortunately quite a common tactic being used by people opposed to the OSA. Recently there was an article in the i newspaper which claimed you have to show ID to order pizza online, and it's because of the OSA. Turns out their source was a misleading tweet by a political activist who had ordered from Deliveroo or similar and were seeing the usual message shown to people who order alcohol. Nothing to do with…

So the journalist or their editor didn't do any basic fact checking, that's also a sadly common tactic.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#193

Post by desas »

khalic wrote: post #102
esskay wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a new political party to succeed in the uk you need millions in funding, and nobodys going to fund something that potentially affects their vast sums of money. "Just start a new party and tell people about it" is perhaps the most misleading and flawed idea you could present unfortunately. There have been new parties, there are new parties at every general election, you never hear about them for good reason.

Ok I don’t know enough about this political system to contribute on that, there are some political systems built like that, like the US.

The same thing applies in the US doesn't it? There has essentially only been two political parties (three if you squint hard enough) for nearly the entire existence of the country?

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#194

Post by jbjbjbjb »

omnicognate wrote: post #136
jbjbjbjb wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the main parties are behind it, some say it doesn’t go far enough. The vast majority of the British public absolutely love to ban things. If you listen to talk radio or daytime tv most of the time they’ll be having a discussion on banning something. We have a nanny state and the public like it that way. Personally I use an allow list for my kids internet access and don’t rely on the state to parent them. I guess…

> allow list for my kids I do the same but let's not pretend that's within the technical ability of the average parent. Of course, it should be and that would be a far better place for the government to direct its efforts.

That’s fair but I use iOS features for it and they do have more simplified set ups like blocking mature content that they define. I wonder how many people take the time to set up screen time for their kids? That is as easy on the level of signing up for a website or managing your online orders.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#195

Post by crtasm »

abtinf wrote: post #132
esskay wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else. It's hard to take this seriously, especially when if I ask for citations it'll likely be a couple of extremely obscure cases where the details are being conveniently glossed over.

Wikipedia literally has an extended section on this issue. No one is going to give you citations for something trivially googlable. > In September 2022, a British woman was arrested and charged for holding up an "abolish monarchy" sign at a proclamation ceremony for King Charles III in Edinburgh. Similar arrests throughout the country around this period over anti-monarchy republican sentiment have alarmed human right…

That's bad, but it is not an example of someone going to jail.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#196

Post by extraisland »

khalic wrote: post #166
extraisland wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of issues with this view: - I've been to many protests in my time and often I believe them to be counter productive e.g. Critical Mass. I travelled to London twice to see what the protest was about. This was in the mid-2000s. I saw lots of annoyed commuters, lots of people getting drunk/high and it was more of a social gathering than a protest. - Street movements are easily infiltrated by malign ac…

You’re analysing things in a vacuum, there are historical and contemporary examples of public protest, pressure campaigns and civil disobedience leading to policy change, and you’re arguing they’re what, all CIA plants or impossible? If not, please make your point clearer. Have you any proof that these rent a mob thing exists? You used “maybe part”... Please find a specific service for renting a mob, not a single ind…

> You’re analysing things in a vacuum, there are historical and contemporary examples of public protest, pressure campaigns and civil disobedience leading to policy change, and you’re arguing they’re what, all CIA plants or impossible? If not, please make your point clearer.

I am not analysing things in a vaccum. I gave you some reasons why I don't believe these things are productive today.

One of those is an example from my own personal experience of being at a protest that literally had 1000s of people there.

I don't believe that all of it was CIA plants and never said that.

I explained how street movements are infiltrated by malign actors and how some intelligence agencies have used these techniques.

> Have you any proof that these rent a mob thing exists? You used “maybe part”... Please find a specific service for renting a mob, not a single individual or small group. Or proof that this service exists, because this is an awfully convenient way to bend the narrative to your side “they were all faking it” is almost never a valid hypothesis.

It is well documented. Just not commonly known. TBH you could have looked this up yourself.

It isn't really any different than hiring extras for a TV/Movie production (as I previously stated).

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rent-a-crowd.asp

Companies and political parties have been doing it for quite a while.

e.g.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-aide-says-paid-actors-...

or some of the sites themselves give you examples of where they have done it.

https://www.rentacrowduk.co.uk/hire-a-crowd-case-studies/

Here are some companies that literally offer it as a service, I found these after doing a two minute google:

https://www.envisagepromotions.co.uk/services/crowd-services...

https://www.rentacrowduk.co.uk/

https://dreamsagency.co.uk/hire-a-crowd/

I am sure there are many others.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#197

Post by pera »

Since this is in relation to "Category 1 services" of the OSA:

> Category 1: should apply to services which meet either of the following conditions:

> Condition 1 – uses a content recommender system; and has more than 34 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service, representing around 50% of the UK population;

> Condition 2 – allows users to forward or reshare user-generated content; and uses a content recommender system; and has more than 7 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service, representing c.10% of the UK population.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#198

Post by matthewmacleod »

xienze wrote: post #161
matthewmacleod wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very significant concerns about the actions of the Westminster government recently no doubt – this is stupid legislation, and it compounds with other stupid legislation (see the recent arrests for supporting proscribed groups). Everyone should be protesting this nonsense. That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking le…

Ignoring the usual baiting about how those brown people are illegal aliens and that’s the underlying reason they’re being rounded up — European countries are always held up as the standard the US should strive towards. So yes, it’s fair game for us to criticize them when they do things like police “offensive” speech.

No, this isn't baiting – it's an actual thing that's happening, regardless of how much you want to remain in denial about it. And I don't care about whatever weird preconceptions you've imposed – European countries have their own struggles to deal with and equally can do it badly. None of this is interesting discussion, and focusing on these weird "purity tests" around hypothetical freedom when ignoring the actual substantive impacts of the policies is why these people keep getting away with their terrible legislation.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#199

Post by matthewmacleod »

dgroshev wrote: post #162
matthewmacleod wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very significant concerns about the actions of the Westminster government recently no doubt – this is stupid legislation, and it compounds with other stupid legislation (see the recent arrests for supporting proscribed groups). Everyone should be protesting this nonsense. That said, there is equally a clear and obvious effort to distort what is happening. And I don't think anybody should really be taking le…

The government in power has little to do with the Act, it was passed two years ago by a different party that is now refusing to own the mess that they created. Sure, one can say that the government could be more diligent at repealing bad laws, but the Parliament had quite a few things on its plate already, so it's not surprising that this Act coming into power during the summer recess wasn't high on the agenda.

This is entirely not true, and the government is entirely free to withdraw this stupid, harmful legislation. Do not make excuses, because this is how the Labour Party get away with this sort of stupid action.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#200

Post by liveoneggs »

esskay wrote: post #82
ap99 wrote: post #18

For the Americans looking at this act, you're maybe putting it in the context of American politics and thinking who cares if the porn sites have my face or id. But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.

> But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else. It's hard to take this seriously, especially when if I ask for citations it'll likely be a couple of extremely obscure cases where the details are being conveniently glossed over.

30 arrests per day and increasing

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

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