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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

#81
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As far as I am aware, 'probably' is about the best you can do, since the OSA is so vaguely defined, it's actually difficult to actually know what is and what isn't valid.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#82
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The externalities of this policy don't justify that small benefit.

Define small benefit.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#83

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…

The Internet has worked fine for the past 30 years without this. There is no reason for such filtering.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#84

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…

Adobe isn't the creator of child porn when Photoshop is interacted with a child pornographer.

So why are you considering xAI the creator when it's the tool that's being interacted with?

The human child pornographer using tools is the one who's creating it, not the tools.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#85

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…

The US model, where hurty words don’t invoke a SWAT team like the UK does.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#86

> A major expansion of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) has taken effect, legally obliging digital platforms to deploy surveillance-style systems that scan, detect, and block user content before it can be seen. If this is implemented as it reads, just a note to everyone else, everywhere in the world: For this policy to work, everything must be scanned. So now, every time you communicate with someone in the UK, your c…

Well, yes, because it is designed to protect UK citizens. As much as GDPR applies "everywhere in the world" when interacting with EU citizens.

Just as much as my communications are scanned when interacting with US citizens with PRISM. I'd argue that is exponentially more dangerous and nefarious given it's apparently illegality and (once) top secrecy.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#87

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…

> 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. I completely agree with this point. We also have some tech companies (X) openly hostile to the UK Government. At what point does a sovereign country say "you're harming the people here and refuse to change, you're blocked".

Well, X seems to only be “hostile” in the sense that it airs the uncomfortable truths that the UK would rather not have heard.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#88
post #30

So wait - would this be something like... you trying to send a dickpic via WhateverMessenger, the content would be scanned first and you would be presented with a message along the lines of "This message cannot be sent as it violates our T&Cs"?

scanned locally or externally? that's what i care about

Externally. When is anything ever scanned internally.

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't buy into that framing either. Optional scanning - if a user wants to, they are free to download government spyware onto their phone/computer and do all the scanning they want, local or otherwise. No new laws needed.

I agree. If someone is happy for a government worker/algorithm to snoop through everything they send to anyone, feel free to opt in, just don't force us to participate.

if it provably isn't networked and is ephemeral with no logging, then i potentially don't have an issue with it

Re: UK Expands Online Safety Act to Mandate Preemptive Scanning

#90

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…

The Internet has worked fine for the past 30 years without this. There is no reason for such filtering.

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