Online Safety Act: What went wrong?

Post by BizarroLand » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #91

holowoodman wrote: post #53

The world isn't child-safe. Nobody would want children to play on a motorway, nobody would feed children xxxtra-hot curry of death, nobody would want children to drive a car or play with kitchen knifes. Yet none of those far more problematic things comes with an age check, a fence, government controls or any special kinds of locks. We just educate children, and parents pay attention. Children that are too young to un…

> Yet none of those far more problematic things comes with an age check, a fence, government controls or any special kinds of locks. I was thinking about this the other day: everyone has knives at home. Sharp and deadly. Yet I've never heard of somebody putting a lock on their knife drawer. Instead, the knives are almost always easily accessible to anyone, including kids. Yet somehow that is not a hugely dangerous sa…

Post by trallnag » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

vaylian wrote: post #56

fidotron wrote: post #11

Absolutely nothing about it has gone wrong. They have collected some personal data from law abiding pornography consumers: obvious perverts who should know better anyway. If their information gets released it will be their own fault. Some other stuff got hidden, but that's no problem as the BBC will tell you anything that you need to know anyway. They can, and will, readily ban VPNs later, since those have no legitim…

> obvious perverts who should know better anyway. Why are these perverts obvious? > They can, and will, readily ban VPNs later, since those have no legitimate purpose for individuals, and will only be allowed for licensed operators like banks, hospitals, and defence manufacturers. This is not true. All kinds of companies and private people use VPNs to safeguard their computer infrastructure.

Post by hdgvhicv » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 11:09 PM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #43

john01dav wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer the HTTP header be on the response. That way, it can't be used for fingerprinting and can easily put the website in a more fine grained category (e.g., porn, gore, political extremism) and the user agent can be configured to filter based on this. You could then create limited but present liability for mislabeling.

You’d have to come up with a technical spec on the category definitions though. For example, what is porn and what is political extremism? That has always been the struggle.

Post by exasperaited » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 11:32 PM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #84

exasperaited wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard of MPs making (moronic) suggestions such as selling kitchen knives without the point on it. I've literally seen this advertised as a solution on the news. As someone who is clumsy and easily distracted, I have such a kitchen knife. They are commonly available. It works absolutely fine and it has three times minimised an injury that would have been nasty because I am an easily-distracted tired old idiot.…

A tipless knife may prevent accidents, but if you purposefully tried to stab yourself or someone else with one of those knives, do you honestly believe it wouldn't tear right through your flesh? Neither my butter knives or bread knives have tips, and yet I could easily stab people with them.

Post by XorNot » Fri, Aug 01, 2025, 11:49 PM UTC

FerretFred wrote: post #39

XorNot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no possible way to achieve this goal without 4 happening though: or moreover, without it being possible. Your prior 3 ideas all end up at "potential government surveillance of the people". There is no way to implement verification like this without surveiling everyone, even if you don't plan to use the data - the possibility will always be there.

Yes, and this is one reason why we (Brits) have resisted Government ID cards for so long.