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UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

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Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#441

Post by Defletter »

ipaddr wrote: post #437
Defletter wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For you the issue is a left right issue and if the opinion matches yours it is acceptable and seen in a positive light but if it's the other side you have no tolerance. When you remove all content and context from what is actually being said and done, then yes, this is fairly accurate, but it's also an entirely meaningless framing. But you have fallen into the trap of thinking I only support protests that I agree w…

Many people share your viewpoint on the left and right. It's natural to support free speech for what you agree and censor what you don't. It's part of living in a left or right ghetto of thought. Take a step back. The right is in power you are not allowed to speak your ideas. The left is in power you can say anything that supports their agenda. What you can never do is speak against the government right or left Why w…

> It's natural to support free speech for what you agree and censor what you don't.

Y'all really don't make a convincing case for freedom of speech when you cannot even read. Let me repeat: "You have fallen into the trap of thinking I only support protests that I agree with, which is the usual response for these kinds of discussions, sadly. If you want your climate-contrarian protest, by all means do so. Unironically do Straight Pride if that's what you want. I believe protest, and expression more generally, is a fundamental right."

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#442

Post by cbeach »

ben_w wrote: post #395
qcnguy wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious answer (that HN hates) is that the right can stop them. The only party in the UK against the Online Safety Act is Reform. The only party that wants to shrink the state is Reform. Every other party is supportive of this kind of thing. This makes sense because every other party in the UK is left wing. This isn't a problem of one country's specific culture. Australia and Canada are doing the exact same thing…

> This makes sense because every other party in the UK is left wing. Definitionally not. Left and right are always relative to the local average, "left wing" and "right wing" are nothing more than a seating arrangement turned into a badge. The Conservatives are, famously, right wing by British standards. If you think the Tories are lefties, you're so far to the right you can't even see the UK's Overton Window from wh…

It’s mostly the Tories that were responsible for the drafting of the Online Safety Bill, and let’s not forget the downright evil Investigatory Powers Act. Another Tory creation.

The OP was correct. The Tories were left wing and authoritarian. They raised taxes, and failed to shrink the UK’s bloated state and civil service.

Only Reform have made a stand against the Online Safety Act and other creeping dystopian measures.

I don’t know if I fully trust Reform to deliver, but by a country mile, they’re a safer choice than Conservatives, Labour or Lib Dems in 2029.

The next General Election cannot come soon enough.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#443

Post by Forgeties79 »

piker wrote: post #440
Forgeties79 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can be hard to wrap your head around it from the US, Come on. Was that necessary? I understand what we are talking about, I am saying none of those articles indicate that there is some huge thing going on where people in the UK are being arrested by the tens of thousands for irreverent memes or whatever. The issue is not my understanding, it’s the handwaving and vague generalizations that are causing issues. It’…

I don’t think you understand. Either of those arrests are unconscionable by American standards. Most U.S. folks would be shocked to ever see such a thing, so it’s necessary to first show it to level-set that non-US jurisdictions don’t have any concept like the 1st Amendment. It wasn’t a slight in any way. It was to say: even a single arrest on those grounds would be national news in the U.S. and quickly over turned b…

I feel like we are talking at cross purposes here and this all feels very broad, so I’m still not entirely sure what you are driving at other than “in the UK people are being silenced and arrested for what I consider to be acceptable speech” in some general sense. I don’t know what the line is, I don’t know what the numbers are, I really don’t have any sense of the scale or specifics of your claim.

I was responding to the initial comment at first: that upwards of 10,000 people are being arrested annually now in the UK for irreverent posts online and the like. The sources that were shared do not show that. Now you’re saying it’s really about any single incident being unacceptable and how an American can’t fathom it.

Do you see why I’m having trouble following this conversation?

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#444

Post by tick_tock_tick »

bamboozled wrote: post #330
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean all of those are downright minor compared to what's happening in the UK. Seriously it's creepy how many people try to gaslight Americans that what we are seeing isn't one of the largest trampling on the rights of free speech in the west.

You are a boiling frog, "oh it's minor, it's minor, it's just jokes, it's just a little bit"...

lol I mean it's objectly minor compared to the UK I'm not going to say it's great over here but we aren't jailing people for mean tweets.

Seriously get some perspective man.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#445

Post by tick_tock_tick »

dmix wrote: post #345
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain has been in love with this idea for decades at this point. It's not a surprise 1984 was British. But yes in the last ~20 years are so it's somehow become a top EU goal as well.

3-in-5 british people supported the Online Safety Act (age verification) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GxxNnMsWUAALm75?format=jpg&name=... Far more people strongly support it than strongly oppose The idea it's being done in spite of the public doesn't seem to track with reality. You also don't have to look very hard on social media to find lots of British people supporting strong government policing of the internet.

I don't think I really implied the people of the UK didn't want it? The UK and most of Europe seemingly love the government policing their speech even in private communications.

The concept of free expression basically doesn't exist in most of the UK/EU today and that's scary.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#446

Post by beeflet »

bamboozled wrote: post #362
beeflet wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All operations as a public institution should be transparent. We fund them through taxes, we have a right to know what is going on. I don't know what you are getting at with "self serving and harmful to other citizens"? Like a private institution? a company? Of course private companies are self-serving. All of them could be described as perpetrating some subjective and nebulous "harm". There are already transparency…

The institutions you're talking about are under attack by online propaganda and smear campaigns by countries that want to see them taken down. Open online speech is important but it's also been hijacked to do a lot of harm. Personally I think we're cooked but I can understand why some people are trying to take action and destroy online anonymity. Ideally we'd just live in a world where people can run their own mail s…

Oh no, online propaganda and smear campaigns

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#447

Post by ben_w »

cbeach wrote: post #442
ben_w wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This makes sense because every other party in the UK is left wing. Definitionally not. Left and right are always relative to the local average, "left wing" and "right wing" are nothing more than a seating arrangement turned into a badge. The Conservatives are, famously, right wing by British standards. If you think the Tories are lefties, you're so far to the right you can't even see the UK's Overton Window from wh…

It’s mostly the Tories that were responsible for the drafting of the Online Safety Bill, and let’s not forget the downright evil Investigatory Powers Act. Another Tory creation. The OP was correct. The Tories were left wing and authoritarian. They raised taxes, and failed to shrink the UK’s bloated state and civil service. Only Reform have made a stand against the Online Safety Act and other creeping dystopian measur…

> It’s mostly the Tories that were responsible for the drafting of the Online Safety Bill, and let’s not forget the downright evil Investigatory Powers Act. Another Tory creation.

Read enough of my old comments, and you'll know that the Investigatory Powers Act is a big part of why I left the UK. The other half was how I expected Brexit would be used as an excuse to leave things like the European Court of Human Rights and thereby make it harder to fight such things.

Pleasant surprise that the UK is still bound to the human rights stuff, especially given Theresa May's opinion of such things and prior reputation the Home Office.

> The Tories were left wing and authoritarian.

No, they're right wing and authoritarian. Or at least, there's enough of an authoritarian streak in it to be a problem.

> They raised taxes, and failed to shrink the UK’s bloated state and civil service.

You didn't notice all the austerity policies, I take it? Their approach to the civil service was basically a government self-lobotomy, reducing state capacity to be competent.

Not that size of government is hugely important to the left-right split in the UK; that seems to be a much more American dividing line, from what I see in the American stories that make it across.

> I don’t know if I fully trust Reform to deliver, but by a country mile, they’re a safer choice than Conservatives, Labour or Lib Dems in 2029.

The other things Reform (or, given that it's owned by the leader, he) have called for include, to quote the Wikipedia page:

  leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and replacing it with a new law; disapplying the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention (ECAT); creating detention powers without Hardial Singh constraints;
To be against these things is not the indication of someone who dislikes authoritarianism.

The only thing I see him calling for that I actually agree with is basically an example of "left wing" by UK standards: the nationalisation of the steel plant in Scunthorpe.

Not that I expect him to succeed. His experience of politics combines is much the same as Jeremy Corbyn: to be the one who opposes everything, not the one who has to take responsibility. Look how bad Corbyn was for Labour, that's my median for how bad Farage would be for the UK.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#448

Post by cyanydeez »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #253
iamacyborg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Days? > The police can hold you for up to 24 hours before they have to charge you with a crime or release you. > They can apply to hold you for up to 36 or 96 hours if you’re suspected of a serious crime, such as murder. > You can be held without charge for up to 14 days if you’re arrested under the Terrorism Act. https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights/how-long-you-can-be-...

but then once charged you can be held for years on remand [0], there is no limit to how long the court can take to actually getting around to holding your trial. The law says now 8 months, but (as this site says) people are held for years. [0] https://legalknowledgebase.com/how-long-can-someone-be-held-...

Yeah, and once your speech incites people to set a hotel full of people on fire, some of them can die forever! It really makes you think.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#449

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

complianceowl wrote: post #364
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that same logic you could describe hitler as just a man concerned about the economy of his country.

The fact that you're linking my logic to Hitler is representative of how lewd your thinking has become.

No it’s pointing out that your argument sounds like it’s intentionally missing critical information in a way that makes your audience think or feel a certain way.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#450

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

kubb wrote: post #425
Amezarak wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we have seen, it is very easy to declare certain beliefs beyond contestation and any disagreement with them as insulting/inciting hate/etc. That's why freedom of speech must entail the freedom to say things people find offensive, or there's no free communication of ideas at all. The state and ruling elites will determine that there is a set of proscribed ideas and a set of approved ideas and yours fall into the wr…

“Country X should change it’s laws because Y” is a belief you can have even if Y is not shared by enough people in Germany to make that change. Claiming that Germany recently introduced a law prohibiting criticism of politicians is an admission of belief in something demonstrably incompatible with reality.

My mistake. My comment should have been "doesn't Germany have laws criminalizing the insulting of politicians?"
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