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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

bbc.com

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#811

Post by monooso »

bratbag wrote: post #729
monooso wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single Labour politician who voted on this bill voted against it. Peter Kyle was one such MP, and now he's making statements like: > I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he’s going to overturn these laws. So you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence. Nigel Farage is on their side. It's maddening. The worst part is that they've somehow put me in…

They voted against it because they thought it didn't go far enough.

Do you have any sources for that? I'm genuinely interested. I've heard it mentioned before as fact, but a quick search of Hansard[1][2] only turned up one very vocal Labour politician (Alex Davies-Jones).

[1] https://hansard.parliament.uk/ [2] It was a very quick search.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#812

Post by [deleted] »

johnisgood wrote: post #654
ozim wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels utterly demoralizing when you have to vote for lesser evil and not for someone you feel will be better for the future.

http://anthonyflood.com/rothbarddemocracy.htm still gets down-voted here, but perhaps we will finally see more people realizing that it is true, as it always has been. You talk about the lesser evil here, well, it is exactly what is written there. Some parts quoted: > Democracy suffers from many more inherent contradictions as well. Thus, democratic voting may have either one of these two functions: to determine gove…

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#813

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #648
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to demonstrate (3) for an age verification system - practical experience will amply demonstrate it to everyone. Voting is very different - you do need to be able to demonstrate the fairness of the process verifiably to everyone - not just crypto nerds. Age verification - well, some people might get around it, but if it generally seems to work that is good enough.

>It's easy to demonstrate (3) for an age verification system - practical experience will amply demonstrate it to everyone. No. Absence of evidence that I am not anonymous does not constitute evidence that I am anonymous. Verifiable unlinkability is also difficult to prove. It may be possible to create a system like this technically, but all social and economic incentives that exist are directed against it: - An anony…

Any well designed privacy system does not rely on the server components doing the right thing. Servers and providers and governments are the main threat actors to be defended against. There should be no way for third parties to compromise that, by design. Almost certainly involving advanced cryptography.

Unlinkabilty and anonymity is not that hard to demonstrate in the design. At it's core it just means each proof or token is unique each time it is presented, and having no mathematical relation to others (and therefore not tied to any persistent identity either).

Client implementations may need auditing of course to make sure they are doing the right thing. But this is not really different to any other advanced technical system which we rely on every day (e.g. TLS).

As you say though, most of the public don't massively care about privacy (unless you mean their visits to porn sites I guess). But they do seem happy to accept crypto coin security assurances without being crypto experts.

As for "the purpose can change" well - so? That is also true or anything else, it does not seem like a reason to avoid having good protection now. Any change that could compromise that would not be undetectable - the fundamental crypto should not allow it. We would know if it happened.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#815

Post by qcnguy »

gambiting wrote: post #801
qcnguy wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK didn't want unlimited immigration from the EU, and the EU refused to even consider the possibility of an exception, so the UK left. It's not complicated, it's old history, and the fact that people are still describing this as "brits dumb hurhur" is racist and abusive. The idea that it could have got an exception, by the way, is yet more federalist lying. Cameron did a tour around Europe directly visiting membe…

>>The UK didn't want unlimited immigration from the EU, It was never unlimited and it's yet another lie peddled by Farage and the Brexit campaign. UK could have always at the very least enforced the basic of the EU free movement principles in terms of limitations - namely that anyone without a job or means to provide for themselves for over 3 months can be kicked out. That would have solved most of the discontent aro…

The concerns of voters were absolutely not respected, you are completely right about that. The political class is completely bought into mass migration being a moral good, which is why getting it under control requires a complete replacement of that political class.

There were lots of things the UK could have done in theory which wouldn't have had any impact in reality. You can interview people and ask, do you have funds? Do you have a job? They say yes and go in, that's the end of it. There isn't a way under EU law to just say no there are too many people already, you can't come.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#816

Post by tracker1 »

neltnerb wrote: post #604
madaxe_again wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way this works is that the backlash would be directed at Wikipedia. Your average citizen neither knows nor cares about the legislative landscape - they just know that the daily mail says Wikipedia hates the U.K. and is staffed by communists.

Can't they make it so that anyone from that geographical location is required to prove their identity and log in to view the articles? That seems like it'd be sufficient and sure I'd be annoyed at Wikipedia but if they linked to the law I feel like people would get it. Of course now no one needs to visit Wikipedia because Google has already scraped them with AI so you can just see the maybe accurate summary. Seems ri…

Given the size of Google, I'm not sure if/how they're excluded from this and may actually ask for real identities of UK users they don't already "know" via other means of Google Wallet, etc.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#817

Post by bigyabai »

ljosifov wrote: post #223

US should slap travel bans on UK politicians travelling to Disney parks and similar in Florida with their families. And/or with their older children visiting NYC. The combined pressure of the wives and their children, will knock sense in their thick skulls quickly. In the sense of - being stupid is not cost free. Atm it's cost free for them, and costly for me.

If this is the biggest threat America can levy then the UK has already won.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#818

Post by tzs »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #765
tzs wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many sites were overzealously interpreting it. The difficulty of compliance depends on both how big the size is and the kind of site it is. Many small site overlooked both of those factors.

Again if it has to be applied to Wikipedia there's nothing meaningful beyond a static informational site it wouldn't apply to.

The overzealous interpretations where not over whether or not it applied. They were over what the providers would have to do to comply. That depends greatly on the amount of traffic the site gets and the type of content that is on the site.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#819

Post by thomastjeffery »

bbor wrote: post #250
thomastjeffery wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because they didn't challenge the overall law in court doesn't mean they wouldn't challenge it in a political sense. That's my point, though. This is the perfect opportunity to do so, and they aren't doing it . Instead, they are picking the smallest possible battle they can. That decision alone makes waves. > Certainly Reddit et al have similar general concerns with having to implement ID systems as they did a…

Thanks for the detailed answers! Again, I share at least some of your underlying concern, and don't want that to be overshadowed. That said, some responses: This is the perfect opportunity to do so, and they aren't doing it. Instead, they are picking the smallest possible battle they can. It looks like they've written three articles "strongly" opposing the "tremendous threat" posed by this bill: two when it was being…

> It's still a valid argument. Again I wasn't really endorsing any position there, but I do think that in general the government should try to protect children. The only way I could imagine you disagreeing with that broad mandate is if you're a strong libertarian in general?

My point is that it is not a strong argument. It isn't an argument at all! Instead, "think of the children" is a thoughtless appeal to emotion. The irony is that my position comes from actually thinking of the children. Censorship does not help children at all. Instead, it degrades well moderated platforms, which incentivizes children into interacting with poorly moderated platforms.

> I just don't see them as being in that significant of a position.

That's incredible to me. What website could possibly be more important to laypeople? Maybe YouTube or Facebook, I suppose, but neither of those could begin to replace Wikipedia.

> The real nuclear option--blocking the UK from accessing Wikimedia sites--would certainly garner some attention.

That's an understatement. Everyone would notice. Even more interestingly, it would illustrate to everyone the absurdity of internet censorship: everyone would immediately learn a workaround, because it's impossible to actually censor the internet.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#820

Post by mvdtnz »

lazide wrote: post #803
terminalshort wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people seem to not realise that they voted for hard labour This is incredibly anecdotal, a major victim of selection bias, and also there are possibly effects of agreeableness here b/c it seems like you may be part of a vocal minority on this issue (and I mean that with absolutely no negative connotations). That said, I don't automatically reject vibes based determinations like this because often the high band…

Eh, it’s kind of the opposite for me. I’ve never seen any legitimate vote in a democracy > 90%. Even if you put ‘we agree that puppies are cute and fluffy and deserve all the pets’, > 10% will vote the other way purely out contrarian ness. Or because they’re cat people. Or because fuck you, that’s why. And there is no way you can convince me 91% of New Zealand voters, where this is the common policy stance [ https://…

Modern slavery legislation passed in 2022 has abslutely no bearing on public opinion on crime and punishment for violent offenders in 1999. People in NZ have been fed up with soft on crime policies and short setences for violent repeat offenders for a long, long, long time (and continue to be today). Despite what the noisy left wing in this country might tell you.

It baffles me that you people think we didn't know what we voted for in a referendum question expressed in a single sentence which included the words,

> Should there be a reform of our justice system [...] imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offences?

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