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UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

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Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#51

Post by HPsquared »

flumpcakes wrote: post #45

Most of these comments I think are off the mark. For some reason anything to do with EU or the UK legislating to protect citizenry is seen as some Orwellian conspiracy to mind control people. I agree some of the policies feel like always using a hammer - but I strongly suspect it's because the tech industry is clearly not playing ball. Children being sent dick pics, or AI generated nudes of them being sent around sch…

The things you mention are already illegal. The effective proven solution is to enforce existing laws, to punish and deter bad behaviour like any other crime.

This incongruence is why a lot of people don't take the reasoning at face value and see it as only rhetorical justification for increased surveillance, which is widely understood as something the state wants do do anyway.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#52

Post by enderforth »

6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #44

I understand the rage generated here, but what is the alternative? If a service implements privacy invading 'features' then we have the choice not to use that service. Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL. What are we to do if not monitor? And how to make that scalable if not to introduce autom…

I don't know what the alternative is, but I don't think I've ever found a situation yet where the solution has been His Majesty's Government being able to exercise more control over what people can see and hear.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#53

Post by jpfromlondon »

6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #44

I understand the rage generated here, but what is the alternative? If a service implements privacy invading 'features' then we have the choice not to use that service. Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL. What are we to do if not monitor? And how to make that scalable if not to introduce autom…

>too many people leave morality at the door

Yep, that's life, if something bothers you and it's already a crime then report it.

There is precious little in life that can be undertaken without some risk of something unwanted however small (hah).

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#54

Post by flumpcakes »

mikkupikku wrote: post #34
flumpcakes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is implicitly allowing child pornography on his platform. There's no way around that. Apple/Google should have removed X a while ago.

Come on now. That's obviously not true. CSAM is absolutely banned on twitter, and all other American platforms.

Then why does Musk refuse to fix 'Grok' and allow it to produce CSAM? Is this what the billionaire class want? AI everywhere and then hide behind "it's not the AI doing it, it's the users prompting it!".

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#55

Post by jpfromlondon »

cjs_ac wrote: post #47
mikkupikku wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on now. That's obviously not true. CSAM is absolutely banned on twitter, and all other American platforms.

Grok AI generating child pornography has been a leading news story in the British press for the past few days.

to make the censorship more palatable to the general public.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#56

Post by flumpcakes »

cft wrote: post #49
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #44

I understand the rage generated here, but what is the alternative? If a service implements privacy invading 'features' then we have the choice not to use that service. Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL. What are we to do if not monitor? And how to make that scalable if not to introduce autom…

Goodbye all small independent forums with no AI budgets. An attacker posts a nude picture, 18m fine from OfCom ("whichever is larger", not proportional to revenue)

I don't think the fine is automatic like that, it's more if you don't have an appropriate mechanism to manage it. In other words you need a content policy that is enforced.

A mod who deletes nude pictures is probably enough to not get fined.

I think the real issue is what I just said... "probably enough"; that's the real problem with the online safety act. People are mostly illiterate on the law, and now asking them to understand a complex law and implement it (even when the actual implementation is not that much effort or any effort at all for well run spaces) is the real issue.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#57

Post by yladiz »

HPsquared wrote: post #51
flumpcakes wrote: post #45

Most of these comments I think are off the mark. For some reason anything to do with EU or the UK legislating to protect citizenry is seen as some Orwellian conspiracy to mind control people. I agree some of the policies feel like always using a hammer - but I strongly suspect it's because the tech industry is clearly not playing ball. Children being sent dick pics, or AI generated nudes of them being sent around sch…

The things you mention are already illegal. The effective proven solution is to enforce existing laws, to punish and deter bad behaviour like any other crime. This incongruence is why a lot of people don't take the reasoning at face value and see it as only rhetorical justification for increased surveillance, which is widely understood as something the state wants do do anyway.

How do you deal with a crime that isn’t reported due to things like shame?

Not to say that we need to scan messages to enforce nudes not to be sent, but I don’t think you can say “just enforce existing laws” and be done with it, it’s not that simple.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#59

Post by like_any_other »

6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #44

I understand the rage generated here, but what is the alternative? If a service implements privacy invading 'features' then we have the choice not to use that service. Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL. What are we to do if not monitor? And how to make that scalable if not to introduce autom…

> but what is the alternative?

We already have alternatives, this legislation is taking them away. If I want heavily censored discourse, I can go to reddit. If I want the wild west, I can go to 4chan. If I want privacy, I can use signal. And lots of services on different parts of that spectrum, or where different things are allowed.

But the UK government wants to eliminate that choice and decide for me. And most importantly, they don't want to call it censorship, but "safety". To keep women and girls "safe" (but nobody is allowed to opt out, even if they're not a woman or girl, or don't want this "safety")

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#60

Post by flumpcakes »

jpfromlondon wrote: post #53
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #44

I understand the rage generated here, but what is the alternative? If a service implements privacy invading 'features' then we have the choice not to use that service. Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL. What are we to do if not monitor? And how to make that scalable if not to introduce autom…

>too many people leave morality at the door Yep, that's life, if something bothers you and it's already a crime then report it. There is precious little in life that can be undertaken without some risk of something unwanted however small (hah).

> Yep, that's life, if something bothers you and it's already a crime then report it.

I think that's the issue with this, and why we are seeing new laws introduced.

If someone is assaulted in real life, the police can intervene.

If people are constantly assaulted at a premises, that premise can lose it's license (for example a pub or bar).

When moving to the online space, you are now potentially in contact with billions of people, and 'assaults' can be automated. You could send a dick pic to every woman on a platform for example.

At this point the normal policing, and normal 'crime', goes out of the window and becomes entirely unenforcable.

Hence we have these laws pushing this on to the platforms - you can't operate a platform that does not tackle abuse. And for the most part, most platforms know this and have tried to police this themselves, probably because they saw themselves more like 'pubs' in real life where people would interact in mostly good faith.

We've entered an age now of bad faith by default, every interaction is now framed as 'free speech', but they never receive the consequences. I have a feeling that's how the US has ended up with their current administration.

And now the tech platforms are sprinting towards the line of free speech absolutism and removing protections.

And now countries have to implement laws to solve issues that should have just been platform policy enforcement.

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