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UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

ofcom.org.uk

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Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#321

Post by pjfin123 »

libertine wrote: post #318
pjfin123 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't trust the science on something I'm injecting into my body if it was illegal for people to disagree about it.

The point isn't about people disagreeing, but promoting that disagreement with the intent to misinform others. People are free to disagree as long as they don't put others and their children at risk - if that's the case it should be considered illegal. I'm all for people who promote misinformation to be allowed to present their peer-reviewed research in a special court.

How would this special court work? Can anyone including amateur scientists access it freely? Are the arguments public?

What's nice about free speech is it's a simple rule, "any citizen can speak about and promote any opinion they have." The fact that it's clear makes it difficult for the government to shut down opposition political speech.

I also think scientific inquiry should be an open process.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#322

Post by pasc1878 »

cjs_ac wrote: post #165
Zak wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment talks about large platforms with opaque algorithms showing some content to hundreds of thousands of people. I will not debate the merits of this law in that context here. My objection addresses your example of a "small Mastodon instance", which I'll extend to include a hobbyist forum, a blog with a comment section, or any similar website that can be run by a single person or informal, noncommercial group…

Blog and news website comment sections are explicitly exempted from the Act. > A universal duty to moderate will accelerate the disappearance of hobbyist websites and further entrench corporate social media. I think that's a bad thing. I also mourn the loss of the lawless Internet, but it's spilling out into the real world, and that's where I happen to live. We have to make compromises. When the English people decide…

Blogs are only not covered if the author of the Blog is the website owner. If the owner allows other people to post blogs - or in a forum start new threads then they have to take note of the law.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#323

Post by EpicQuest_246 »

pjfin123 wrote: post #313
EpicQuest_246 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you wasn’t but a lot of the discussion about these issues follows the same pattern of people pretending there isn’t an issue, then pretending that it isn’t as bad and then arguing over the minutia. This convo thread the same route of someone disputing the fact the journalists were having their homes raided, I couldn’t remember the name of the journalist or the exact time, so when someone does find it, we…

You were vindicated in this thread. It's insane that the U.K. is throwing thousands in people a year in jail for speech "crimes". I remember ten years ago when free speech was a sacred value in the West; as soon as non-institutionally-connected people got a platform with social media elites changed their mind though. They're estimates but I've seen some numbers that suggest the U.K. is imprisoning more people (per ca…

Thanks. People downplay what is happening in the UK.

Every-time this conversation comes up we have people downplaying what is happening. It is so tiresome.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#324

Post by cynicalsecurity »

Crazy stuff. This feels very Soviet and dystopian. This looks like something that would come from a Watchtower cult magazine. Anonymous experiences that can't be checked and conveniently and unanimously support the agenda, extended control over people's private life with severe punishment for even the slightest disagreement or god forbid an alternative opinion.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#325

Post by aguaviva »

pjfin123 wrote: post #313
EpicQuest_246 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate you wasn’t but a lot of the discussion about these issues follows the same pattern of people pretending there isn’t an issue, then pretending that it isn’t as bad and then arguing over the minutia. This convo thread the same route of someone disputing the fact the journalists were having their homes raided, I couldn’t remember the name of the journalist or the exact time, so when someone does find it, we…

You were vindicated in this thread. It's insane that the U.K. is throwing thousands in people a year in jail for speech "crimes". I remember ten years ago when free speech was a sacred value in the West; as soon as non-institutionally-connected people got a platform with social media elites changed their mind though. They're estimates but I've seen some numbers that suggest the U.K. is imprisoning more people (per ca…

They're estimates but I've seen some numbers

May we ask where?

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#326

Post by rlaksh »

Ok, "think of the children" again. If it were about the children, they'd simply forbid phones and unsupervised Internet for anyone under 16. Problem solved.

The issue of course is that the Internet is too valuable of a propaganda instrument. Children need propaganda, but they need our propaganda.

The offense list is in classic CoC style. Vague terms like terrorism have been abused in the U.K. for a long time and applied against journalists like the husband of Glenn Greenwald, who had been arrested in London for communicating with Laura Poitras.

Many journalists have been stopped and digitally stripped searched in the U.K. while traveling.

So what are websites to do to escape that? Perhaps put up permanent banners like "NATO must be prepared for a great patriotic land war with Russia" and "We need more immigration" in order to be safe.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#327

Post by scott_w »

monooso wrote: post #293
michaelt wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are these 'illegal harms'? I'm online 10+ hours a day for 10 years straight and never seen one. (not assuming they don't exist, but their prevalence/impact might be inflated). As I understand things, MPs who are on Twitter regularly get anonymous threats of rape, murder etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63330885 - credible threats, with two MPs murdered in the last decade. You and I have the luxury that we can…

> As I understand things, MPs who are on Twitter regularly get anonymous threats of rape, murder etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63330885 - credible threats, with two MPs murdered in the last decade. 1. Aren’t such threats already covered by existing laws? 2. They weren’t murdered on Twitter, so I fail to see how the Online Safety Act would have helped prevent this.

> 1. Aren’t such threats already covered by existing laws?

The Online Safety Act isn't about making these things illegal. It's about making it more difficult to do the illegal things in the first place. To take an analogy: money laundering legislation exists to make it harder to use the proceeds of organised crime in legitimate life. Being a drug dealer is already illegal, yet we don't use that as an argument against such laws and regulations.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#328

Post by michaelt »

monooso wrote: post #293
michaelt wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are these 'illegal harms'? I'm online 10+ hours a day for 10 years straight and never seen one. (not assuming they don't exist, but their prevalence/impact might be inflated). As I understand things, MPs who are on Twitter regularly get anonymous threats of rape, murder etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63330885 - credible threats, with two MPs murdered in the last decade. You and I have the luxury that we can…

> As I understand things, MPs who are on Twitter regularly get anonymous threats of rape, murder etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63330885 - credible threats, with two MPs murdered in the last decade. 1. Aren’t such threats already covered by existing laws? 2. They weren’t murdered on Twitter, so I fail to see how the Online Safety Act would have helped prevent this.

> They weren’t murdered on Twitter, so I fail to see how the Online Safety Act would have helped prevent this.

I mention that because in some online communities threats of rape and murder are bandied about jokingly. That 12 year old on Fortnite voice chat isn't really going to fuck your mom! That twitter joke trial where someone threatened to blow up an airport was ridiculous. Some might wonder - why can't these twitter-using politicians ignore a few murder threats from neo-nazis and islamists, like the rest of us?

The reason is the real, non-joke murders by neo-nazis and islamists.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#329

Post by cesarb »

archagon wrote: post #156

I wonder what happens with these sorts of regulations if an entirely decentralized social media platform becomes popular. Who do the authorities go after if there's no owner or server?

> Who do the authorities go after if there's no owner or server?

A "decentralized social media platform" implies the exact opposite of "there's no owner or server": there are many owners (in the extreme, each user is the owner of their own slice of the platform) and many servers (in the extreme, each user runs a separate server).

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#330

Post by pc86 »

daveoc64 wrote: post #314
pc86 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to give this comment a gracious reading. You can find videos on YouTube from the last couple months of police talking to people about comments they left online, and tweets, and FB posts, etc. So saying that practice "was put to an end a couple of years ago" is a complete fiction. The freedom/security quote, why should that be uniquely American? Human rights are human rights, and if something infringes on t…

>As an American (the horror, I know, that I deign to comment on something British), I'd love to know where your freedom of speech is codified and what a government would have to do if they wanted to change what counts as speech, what doesn't, and what's protected and what isn't. I suspect that you and I have very different definitions of what qualifies as free speech. There is nothing easy to point to, like the first…

I like this comment a lot. I can understand the argument to amend the Constitution for things like the Second Amendment (I disagree but I can at least see how you would believe we should do that).

Maybe I'm just too cloistered in my Americanism but I can't even comprehend the thought process that leads someone to believe in good faith that restricting someone's speech which doesn't incite violence and doesn't constitute fighting words to be a Good Thing.

The example I come back to is that saying "the holocaust never happened" will get you jailed in some European countries (and maybe Israel too? IDK). To me and my suburban American sensibilities going to jail for saying that is worse than saying it in the first place. Saying that is objectively wrong and it points to some related beliefs that I find abhorrent. Saying it does not incite any violence. Saying it does not harm anyone - in the real, physical way not the pseudo-"speech can be violence" nonsense way.

I think companies should be able to fire you for abhorrent speech. Platforms should be able to de-platform you. Business should refuse to serve you. I have no problem with any of that. But a government should be restricted in what it can do to people based on their speech.

The parliamentary note is particularly interesting. It was posted elsewhere that Labour got something like 1/3 of the vote this time around but due to the parliamentary system is basically running the government? The US is obviously very different where even having a majority doesn't allow you do whatever you want (by design, and IMO a good thing).

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