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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

#331

Post by mhh__ »

pomatic wrote: post #301

The biggest issue is that legislation seems to be drafted by people who have little or no expertise in their area. We've seen other examples of poorly drafted legislation in the UK - eg Computer Misuse Act 1990, which is intended to address hacking but can be read in such a way as to outlaw firewalls, and so on. Parliament as a whole is in desperate need of reform, it's based on archaic principles that just don't wor…

Parliament is fine. Or at least the reforms people have in mind are usually insane slop that would only mean ramming more, worse, shit through the pipe.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#332

Post by Spivak »

nomilk wrote: post #194

> People in the UK will be better protected from illegal harms online 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). If you have to go looking for them, isn't this just 'whack a mole' (since 'online harms' will hard to 100% eradicate), but at the expense of destroying parts of the inte…

> Is there a single site that authors/proponents of this regulation can point to that literally 'promotes eating disorders'

Yes, Tumblr has quite a bit of this content. You're looking for terms like proana, thinspo, meanspo, mia, b/p, various misspellings of anorexic to avoid filters, and ironically "not pro just using tags."

If you want to see the content just create a Tumblr account, search proana, click past the eating disorder hotline message, and scroll through. It goes on forever. Fair warning, it's depressing.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#333

Post by mihaaly »

wkat4242 wrote: post #286
dang wrote: post #115

Looks like https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/16/britains-ofcom-brings-tough-... has some background. Readers may want to look at both.

And this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044 It shows the dark side of this coin. It's killing a lot of genuine volunteer initiatives because complying with all the red tape. I find that a huge loss because it drives us more and more in the arms of big tech who only have dollars as a goal, not helping people or establishing a community like these initiatives do. This law is aimed at big tech but it actuall…

We elect decision makers who are lazy to do their job so they put the difficult part on everyone's head, basically making everyone proactively proving that they are not criminals (including helping criminals by intent). Also the catching of the criminals are put on citizens too (those being directors or responible persons of an organization). I can collect perhaps dozens of such if I try apart from this example. First comes to mind is when you have to prove you are not money loundering when receiving a large sum or buying an expensive but essential to life thing (house). I lived in a country where re-registering your pre-paid SIM card is a yearly feat, otherwise it will be taken away, only because the officials did not notice criminals buying that by the 100's of thousands. No mistake, 200.000 suspicious purchase occurred. So, now everyone has one more small task to do, prove him/herself towards authorities because authorities are sooo incompetent and lazy. Fucking up the life for everyone bit by bit, slowly making it not worthwile to do anything meaningful, better just sit and exists silently.

We elect these inept parasites. It is on us.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#334

Post by mihaaly »

nomilk wrote: post #194

> People in the UK will be better protected from illegal harms online 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). If you have to go looking for them, isn't this just 'whack a mole' (since 'online harms' will hard to 100% eradicate), but at the expense of destroying parts of the inte…

Those wanting to do harm will adapt in seconds.

All others with no harmful intent will have their life a bit or much difficult.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#335

Post by ksec »

libertine wrote: post #308
ksec wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How would a site admin determine what is acceptable and what is not? I remember there were stories about GDPR at the time that some site simply decide to block all IPs from EUR, and some sadly because they believe they dont comply, simply shut down the site. In a world ( well US at least ) where the trend is moving to deregulate things. UK decided to quite literally regulate everything. This is sad.

> In a world ( well US at least ) where the trend is moving to deregulate things. UK decided to quite literally regulate everything. This is sad. This is being pushed by banks and tech billionaires, including the world's richest man. Why is that considered a good trend for regular people?

I dont think Banks and Finance should get less regulations ( May be in certain areas ). But there are certainly industry and sectors that needs less regulation.

To put it in a software development terms, a lot of laws and regulations need a major refactor.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#336

Post by bilvar »

michaelt wrote: post #328
monooso wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 twit…

You know political assassination was a thing even before Twitter right?

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#337

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

dTal wrote: post #306
TacticalCoder wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are numerous sites and social media pages on all the major platforms that literally promote anorexia. Although probably a just cause I'd say that the western world does have an obesity problem though, not an anorexia one. So a better example would be all the sites encouraging people being lazy and fat and eating junk while labelling anything criticizing the unhealthiness of obesity as supposedly engaging in "…

>the western world does have an obesity problem though, not an anorexia one It has both, and they are linked. It is a false ontology to place them in opposition, just because one is "too fat" and the other "too thin". It's also very arguable that obesity is the "worse" problem. Yes it causes negative health outcomes, and is more widespread, but anorexia is more immediately and dramatically harmful, even fatal, and di…

Also, it's become pretty clear that anorexia embodies a particular kind of dysfunctional dynamic between body perception and diet (one that is gaining recognition in other forms of dietary restriction, as sometimes seen in e.g. athletes and people obsessed with various categorizations of "natural" or "pure" foods). The vast majority of obese people aren't building an elaborate system of memes and rituals to force themselves to overeat because they look in the mirror and see themselves as thinner than they really are.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#338

Post by bilvar »

benj111 wrote: post #316
kybernetyk wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor MPs. Being power hungry must really suck in the age of social media :(

Really? You can disagree with the position, whilst accepting that MPs have been murdered, and MPs do get threatened online. What specific level of power hunger makes a threat to life acceptable? Further, I wasn't in favour of these proposals, but if you have people on HN of all places thinking its acceptable to threaten people, maybe we do need this law.

Threatening people online was already illegal.

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#339

Post by bilvar »

libertine wrote: post #304
jamiecurle wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes.

Why do you feel like allowing deliberate misinformation of people is a better standard for the jurisdiction in which you want to live?

Who determines what is misinformation? And after we have established this, who determines whether it was deliberate?

Re: UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

#340

Post by pjfin123 »

aguaviva wrote: post #325
pjfin123 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My guestimate.

The whole above thread is litigating the number of people in the U.K. arrested for speech crimes. It's hard to put an exact number on it but it seems like low single digit thousands (1k-5k).

The numbers from Russia are even more murky but it appears they're arresting a few hundred people a year for speech crimes (150-600). - https://apnews.com/general-news-0274242811894097a9d79f789002... - https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2022/08/22/what...

Russia has about double the population of the U.K. so per capita numbers are even more stark.

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