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Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

express.co.uk

251–260 of 735 posts

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#251
post #177

WhatsApp, Telegram and everyone else should pull out of EU in protest of Chat Control. Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, and citizens will finally feel enough pain to contact their representatives ;)

> feel enough pain to contact their representatives It doesn't work like that because the European "Parliament" is a joke. For starters, they can't initiate anything, they can only approve or reject (of course that it's almost always approve) stuff that is being passed to them from higher up, most of the times from the European Commission, if I'm not mistaken. Ah, they can pass/generate "resolutions", which are basic…

>Second, the people there don't "represent" anyone,

I think that's largely down to people not taking EU elections as seriously as national elections.

The ones elected by my country are always largely the most doldrum people from the main parties that aren't charismatic enough to win in national elections (The b-squad basically)

... and a handful of the kind of people that think windfarms generate wind and that we need to leave NATO.. even though we haven't joined NATO. The kind of people you vote to send to the EU so that you don't have to see them.

There was an election in 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_elect...

For people unfamiliar with it https://elections.europa.eu/en/

The parliament is elected by people in each country, those elected them elect the commission. So a form of indirect elections.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#252

As a Brit. Good - cause the maximum amount of pain, start pulling services across the board - the more it happens the more painful it becomes for the government to defend it.

Likewise, as a Brit, I hope more mainstream sites do this until people realise how stupid or authoritarian (but I repeat myself) the UK's Online Safety Act is. VPN companies must be enjoying these shenanigans.

It would be more effective if this was about the online saftey act. Ironically Imgur is probably already compliant with it (they already have moderation policies that go above what the OSA requires)

This is about a GDPR violation. I'm not sure that cheering for our right to have our privacy respected by companies revoked is really what we want.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a conflict that was baked into the Internet at its conception. A non-geographic service overlaid on top of a world with a huge amount of geography and borders.

Yeah. We had a chance to invent our own governance on the internet. But we abdicated, and made the internet a free for all. As a result, national governments have stepped in to provide the governance we didn’t program in. And they do it - of course - in an inconsistent, ad hoc way. There was a period a couple hundred years ago when it was all the rage internationally to write constitutions. Lots of countries got cons…

I don't think it would make much difference; an internet constitution would be worth about as much as the paper it's not written on.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transactional services (I don't know if that's the right word), where you have a known user, is different from passively providing web pages that people can read and you don't track them or ask them to register for an account. But I think that distinction was pretty moot when web 2.0 came along. Imgur's entire purpose is clearly to host user generated content though, so you can't argue it's not "providing services".

> Imgur's entire purpose is clearly to host user generated content Not at all. Imgur does the passive side too. And by number of operations, it is by far the biggest one.

Without user-generated content there is nothing to host. And in any case they long ago turned from an image hosting site into a social media site. There's reactions and commenting as a core part of the service now.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way?

You cannot delete your comments.

Are public comments in a public forum classed as private data under GDPR?

for example the only thing that can really be classed as PII is my username. does it count as reasonable to request it be deleted?

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#256
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear to me, it's a huge risk for any company to allow access to UK visitors at this stage. All companies should be blocking all UK visitors. It's just too much risk for them to take. The fault is obviously an incompetent and authoritarian UK government, but that's what the UK overlords have agreed.

So GDPR, which protects people from companies abusing personal data (which this case is about, not the online safety act) should be repealed? (no, its not the cookie law either.)

No because GDPR is better implemented and there are clear and reasonable guidelines to follow. This is just clueless policy makers fucking around.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#257
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So has alot of Europe to be fair, I think it's a cultural thing honestly.

Wait, so you can host a torrent site in the USA and not get your domain ceased by the FBI?

No because torrenting is anti-capitalism and that's not tolerated culturally (Communist behaviour). However I doubt they'll be blocking WhatsApp and iMessage any time soon, or making people upload their ID to watch "adult content".

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#258

How is one country able to fine businesses in other countries? What legal authority or ability do they have to do anything?

I invite you to search HN for 'libor' and see how many of the American users of this website were affronted by the vast fines dished out by the US government to UK-headquartered banks for manipulating the LONDON Interbank Offered Rate from their offices in London, UK. If you can find a single one I'll eat my hat.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#259
post #68
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with harmful content it’s about managing children’s data you collect.

So if I (not really) a 13 year old of the UK provide my email address to HN, how is that managed?

that's not data.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#260
post #237

The UK has been doing this sort of stuff for at least a decade. For example they have the PIPCU which under the guise of copyright threatens 10 years in prison for sites not even in their jurisdiction. https://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-launch-campaign-to-shut-d... And with that, they have at the least gotten registrars not located in their jurisdicrion to transfer domains https://easydns.com/blog/2013/10/08/whatever…

The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content. Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state. And there's a lot of confusion here between basic consumer data protection laws and (IMHO massively overreaching) "Online Safety" laws. This isn't Imgur making a stand for free speech, this is Imgur wanting to trac…

The notion that a 17 year old cannot consent to user tracking is absurd
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