Do business in the UK? Then accept we prioritise our kids over your costs. Toodle pip.
Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
611–620 of 735 posts
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#612It's all a bit annoying. I gather imgbox is an alternative.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#613In short, governments and internet do no mix. Whenever they do, it ends in a disaster for the people.
Pretty much all countries have governments and the internet and I'd say it tends to end in annoyance rather than disaster, such as having to turn on a vpn to see junk on imgur in this case. The only actual internet caused disaster I can think of - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide - was caused by a lack of regulation and "let's kill them all" stuff on facebook. 25k+ dead.
Everything that Cambridge Analytica did is another good example [1]. Granted that it doesn't rise to the level of a "25k+ dead disaster", but it's not nothing, it's a lot of bad things. And it also stems from lack of regulation, not from the opposite. As will other examples.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#614I really don't remember voting on this web censorship issue, or ID cards, because both of those policies would have changed my vote, for sure.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still don't understand how someone is supposed to benefit from such a thing. If I want to use some service, I'll sign up for an account with it. The only thing a centralized ID is going to do is let the service correlate me with a different account on a different service, which is exactly the thing that I don't want. How is someone supposed to benefit from a thing whose only function is to reduce the friction again…
What I use my digital id for, is services, where the provider needs to know that I am me. I only use a small part of the services that we have in Norway that you can access with out digital id (BankID) solution, but those are useful for me, and I do not think all of them would exists without it. For governmental services, I use it for things like logging into health care services. Where I've used it for checking my p…
> where the provider needs to know that I am me
You and the provider may have different ideas about where that line is drawn.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was it? It did a tremendous amount of harm as well. Future historians may judge us very harshly for how cavalier and flippant we were in unleashing this technology onto the public.
Can you give us some examples of harm it's done?
There was the time facebook enabled a genocide in Myanmar, there is the Uber and AirBnb operating criminally without consequence having significant negative economic impacts to countless cities, there is all the research that shows the deep emotional damage done to teens on social media.
It enabled crypto, which is a criminal exercise to defraud people.
It also massively enabled echo chambers and conspiracy theories, undermining our social cohesion and community.
The way we rolled out the internet was a mistake and obviously so.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#617There's an opportunity for a service like CloudFlare here give people a simple toggle that manages geoblocks on legal liability factors. It's way too much for every organisation to individually track every country's laws day by day in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability. And it sounds like the UK would have just self-selected out of the list of "safe" countries. If something like this was in wid…
Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's. Fine/imprison parents. This is a parenting problem, not a technical/business problem. Remove the supply of children and things will get better. A business cannot make laws or override laws with ToS and invent their own moral compasses - rather it is the sole responsibility of the parent on what their child gets exposed to (whether politics, po…
> imprison parents.
I’m consistently shocked at how authoritarian and draconian HN comments can be. Throwing parents in prison if their 12 year old uses the internet? Jail them and send their kids to foster care? This is your plan for improving the lives of children?
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#618I really don't remember voting on this web censorship issue, or ID cards, because both of those policies would have changed my vote, for sure.
Of course you don't remember - you don't vote on individual laws, you vote for politicians.
Politicians always lie/"break promises", so whatever they say before an election only has a loose correlation with what they actually do. Pay attention to their track record and vote accordingly next time.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2023-24_Report Best I can find $ 132,466.01 Africa $ 4,902,373.13 Asia $ 49,423,340.29 Europe $106,546,895.77 N.America $ 2,509,299.46 Other $ 6,082,217.76 Oceania $ 944,844.22 S.America
It looks from another chart like 21% of revenue is recurring, so $10 million annually for Europe. Convert that to GBP and you get about £7.5 million. Figure that the UK accounts for about 15% of the European economy and assume it contributes to Wikipedia at about an equal share. That's about £1.125 million in estimated annual recurring contributions from the UK. You said 10-100/mo, so let's assume £55/mo or £660/year…
I'm surprised you're reiterating surprise: you were off by two orders of magnitude, and the initial surprise only had purpose as a rhetorical device, it wasn't based on anything (why is > 10 surprising? 70M people in UK...)
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
The internet is an extremely useful educational resource. It provides ways of communicating with people you want your kids to communicate with. it needs management by parents. My kids have learned a huge amount from the internet. I have guided them, discussed what are credible resources, the harms possible etc, who they talk to and what they tell them.... There are solutions that would make it easier for parents - pe…
> It provides ways of communicating with people you want your kids to communicate with Who do you want your kids to communicate with over the internet ?
Their friends and family, obviously.
I’m surprised by all of the comments assuming the internet can’t possibly have any value for kids in any way, shape, or form. Did HN commenters grow up and forget what it’s like to be a kid with friends? With an interest in games or technology or discovery?