[HN Gopher] Your compliance obligations under the UK's Online Sa...
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Your compliance obligations under the UK's Online Safety Bill
Author : Arkanum
Score : 465 points
Date : 2022-07-11 13:19 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (webdevlaw.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (webdevlaw.uk)
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I found the comparisons to the EU privacy regulations a bit
| annoying. I think the article would be stronger without them. I
| think they give too rosy an impression of the EU regulations
| (which can also be bad or burdensome) and that makes me think the
| U.K. regulations are less bad (rather than that they are so bad
| they make the EU regulations look good, I suppose).
| IshKebab wrote:
| > As with the previous post, this is tremendously long: 4100
| words. There's really no way to make it shorter.
|
| There definitely is.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| I like how the English write. Maybe it's because it was
| originally their language and so they teach it well in their
| schools.
|
| As an American, I rarely see young people able to write like this
| anymore.
|
| On the topic: are they trying to kill their startups? Because
| this is how you drive startups out of the UK.
| [deleted]
| groffee wrote:
| > Or it would have, if the nine MPs across three parties who were
| scheduled to attend actually showed up. Only one did.
|
| Everything else aside, if MPs don't show up for a scheduled
| meeting they should just be sacked.
|
| How many of us can just blow off meetings like that with no
| consequence?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| It should be noted this meeting was in the middle of a
| political crisis where half the government had resigned. I
| don't know who those MPs were or what they were doing, but I'm
| betting they suddenly found themselves overloaded with this
| crisis and this meeting fell through. It's not that uncommon
| for something like this to happen. I'm not saying it's great
| this happened, but it happens - MPs are humans too.
|
| I wouldn't be so quick to judge in this case. I think the
| extremely high expectations and little room for error ("they
| should just be sacked") is part of the problem. If you bollock
| a child every time they do something slightly wrong they will
| learn to lie and hide things very quickly.
| TillE wrote:
| It just underlines what should be fairly obvious: that such
| official meetings are not how things are actually decided in
| representative democracies.
|
| I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system,
| where members are nearly always expected to vote the party line
| or face consequences.
| mellavora wrote:
| > I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system,
| where members are nearly always expected to vote the party
| line or face consequences.
|
| yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system.
| A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to
| have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins
| 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. And those seats are
| expected to vote as a block unless there is an extreme
| question of conscience.
|
| You could contrast with for example the US system, where the
| original intent was that the senators/representatives would
| represent their state, not the party. Worked well for a
| while. Now, however, they also follow party line or face
| consequences. But there are realistically only two parties,
| and the the "first past the post" system locks us into 2
| parties.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > You could contrast with for example the US system, where
| the original intent was that the senators/representatives
| would represent their state, not the party. Worked well for
| a while.
|
| That was (and to a degree, still is) also the intent in the
| British system: you would primarily represent your
| constituency, not your party. This is why you have
| constituency surgeries where you meet your constituents,
| maybe address some concerns, etc. which are similar to the
| "town hall meetings" you have in the US. The US essentially
| copied the British system.
|
| I don't know how well it worked in the past as I'm not that
| familiar with the history; in HMS Pinafore there's already
| a joke about it ("I always voted at my party's core and
| never thought of thinking for myself at all"[1]) which is
| from 1880 or thereabouts, so I'm guessing not very well
| _shrug_
|
| It's natural for like-minded people with similar ideas to
| gravitate towards each other and form political parties for
| strategic and social reasons. In the US the founding
| fathers set up the system to work without parties, only to
| found the first political parties themselves a few years
| later, so that idea broke down pretty quickly.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBxI9yKLgw
| cronix wrote:
| > So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the
| seats. And those seats are expected to vote as a block
| unless there is an extreme question of conscience.
|
| Yes, essentially we can just keep the main leaders of each
| party and assign them everyone's votes from their
| respective parties (35% in your example) that "won" and get
| rid of everyone else and end up with the exact same
| outcome, except orders of magnitude cheaper and more
| expedient. If you're a member of x party and x party won,
| why are you actually needed if you're not the leader? Your
| salary, benefits, retirement and as well as every single
| person on your staff are all a waste at that point, because
| you're going to vote for x's position, which is decided by
| the leadership.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems
| tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party
| that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats.
|
| lolnope, this is a FPTP country.
|
| The last election, the Conservatives got 43.6% of the vote
| and 57% of the seats.
|
| Even more extreme, although overall irrelevant, the SNP got
| 45% of the popular vote in Scotland, resulting in _48 out
| of 59 seats_ won in Scotland.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > And those seats are expected to vote as a block unless
| there is an extreme question of conscience.
|
| Actually no. It depends on the "whip" guidance (in the UK)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_(politics)#Instructions
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| > yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary
| system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary
| systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So
| a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats.
|
| Important context since this is about the UK: we don't have
| a representation seat distribution like that, we have first
| past the post. In the last election (2019) these are the
| results for each party with at least 10 MPs:
|
| - Conservative Party, 43.6% of votes, 56.2% of seats
| (outright majority).
|
| - Labour Party, 32.1% of votes, 31.1% of seats.
|
| - Scottish National Party, 3.9% of votes, 7.4% of seats.
| The SNP only campaign in Scotland and win most seats there,
| which makes them extremely over-represented by FPTP.
|
| - Liberal Democrats, 11.6% of votes, 1.7% of seats.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| In 2015 UKIP got 12.6% of the votes, making it the third-
| largest party in terms of votes cast by quite some
| margin, and they got just one seat.
|
| In 1983 the Conservatives had 1.5% fewer votes compared
| to the previous 1979 election, but ended up with 7.7%
| mote seats resulting in the largest majority in decades.
|
| I think it's a real missed opportunity that the Blair
| government didn't change anything when they had a large
| majority in the 90s/00s. They said they would, but it
| fell by the wayside. The problem is that Labour always
| thinks _this time_ it will be different and _this time_
| they will come out on top. And for a while they will,
| right up to the point they don 't.
| ranko wrote:
| > a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats
|
| At the last general election to the UK parliament (2019),
| the Tories won 44% of the votes, and ended up with 56% of
| the seats - first past the post strikes again!
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat
| distribution
|
| > the "first past the post" system locks us into 2 parties.
|
| What you say is true, but while we're discussing an article
| about the UK, it is worth stating, for the avoidance of
| doubt, that the UK also uses the First Past The Post
| electoral systems (for its national parliament) and
| therefore doesn't have a representational seat
| distribution.
|
| Indeed, that may be part of the reason that such an extreme
| policy from such an unpopular party is being put forward at
| all. (The current government won 43.6% of the vote at the
| last general election, with 67.3% turnout, meaning it had
| the support of 29.3% of the electorate, but won 56.2% of
| the seats).
| kodah wrote:
| It would be nice if those who didn't vote actually
| affected the power of the parties. Not voting is a valid
| choice, it says, "All the options you gave me suck. Try
| again." Otherwise you run into a system where people
| start trying to calculate the delta between two evils and
| think we're making progress.
| Thiez wrote:
| How do you see this work in practice, and wouldn't it
| just lead to calculating the deltas between three evils,
| the third being abstention? How would this be better than
| getting rid of the first-past-the-post system?
|
| We saw this is the Netherlands a while ago. There was a
| referendum about whether there should be closer relations
| between the Netherlands and Ukraine, and the options were
| "agree" and "disagree", but many people who were in favor
| of closer relations chose not to vote at all, hoping that
| the referendum would fail to hit the minimum turnout. So
| the minimum turnout _was_ hit, and afterwards they were
| all whining about it, because they disagreed with the
| result, but had intentionally chosen not to vote.
| kodah wrote:
| Your example isn't quite the same thing.
|
| More or less, I want my lack of voting to be a signal to
| the Democratic party that, "Your vision is out of whack
| and does not serve me". Today, when someone doesn't vote
| the party and constituents try some mental gymnastics to
| put fault on people who don't vote as if they don't care.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Vote for an independent. Any one. Just to show you did
| bother to vote. If enough people do that, the major
| parties will try to win those "stolen" votes back by
| offering you what you want.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| When this bill passes, I am going to do everything to make my
| internet traffic hard to track. Mainly as a FU to this country.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I dread to think what this will mean for the free and open
| Internet - the source of much mirth, yes, and much dread. But
| that's just a reflection of the human condition. It should be
| just left be.
|
| Another case of myopic, joyless stodges ruining what they don't
| understand.
|
| I've paid enough taxes to this worthless, bloated institution
| that claims to 'protect my liberties' - is it too late to get a
| refund? Don't they owe me something for clear breach of contract?
| The 'social contract' isn't what it was when I was born!
| cowtools wrote:
| Brits don't have freedom of speech AFIK. it was never in their
| social contract.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| We had it through negative liberty, opposed to positive
| liberty. The approach was that everything was permitted
| except that which is forbidden.
|
| So, instead of a 'right to' free speech, rather we _would_
| have no laws restricting freedom of speech (libel and
| incitement excepted). This was the understanding that
| would've permeated Parliament, the courts, the palace, and
| the hearts and minds of everyone who understood it.
|
| More or less, until 1997.
| gpt5 wrote:
| The constitution's amendments are different from other
| laws. Instead of restricting the people, it restricts the
| government power. It is there to make it harder for the
| government to devolve into a tyrannical one. The historical
| context (the US fighting against the monarchy of England
| for independence) is why it's there and it explains many of
| its regulation (including the right to bear arms, which was
| needed in order to fight against England).
|
| The UK doesn't have it, which makes it a lot less stable,
| as seen in 1997
| omginternets wrote:
| What happened in 1997?
| nickmyersdt wrote:
| What happened in 1997?
| rikroots wrote:
| Probably the Treaty of Amsterdam - one of the EU's more
| entertaining reads
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/treaty/pdf/amst-
| en.pdf
|
| The UK Human Rights Act landed in 1998. Schedule 1 Part I
| Article 10 covers "freedom of expression"
|
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/p
| art...
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Even prior to the Human Rights Act the UK was bound by
| Article 10 of the EChHR, it just wasn't directly
| enforceable by UK courts (one first had to exhaust
| domestic legal challenges and then bring a case in
| Strasbourg at the ECtHR)
| HeckFeck wrote:
| The onset of Blairism, which accelerated all previous
| statist trends with a smiling face and suave media
| personality.
|
| So we ended up with the Communications Act (2003) and its
| dreadful Section 127. As well as admission to PRISM, and
| making ourselves one of the CCTV capitals of the world.
|
| And he's still taking aim at freedom from beyond the
| grave: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/does-tony-
| blair-think-fr...
| notahacker wrote:
| The Communications Act Section 127 was based on the
| existing Malicious Communications Act (1988) passed by
| the Thatcher government. And the UK has had plenty of
| other speech restrictions like blasphemy laws (
| _abolished_ by Blair) to suspiciously broad offences
| against obscenity existing since time immemorial.
|
| The Online Safety Bill is the brainchild of a
| Conservative government, included as a flagship
| commitment in a Conservative manifesto aiming to appeal
| to conservatively minded voters, a successor
| administration to the Conservative government who brought
| us the national porn block. Nothing makes it easier for
| such legislation to be passed more than revisionist
| nonsense about how the wonders of negative liberty meant
| we never needed any of the positive protections this law
| specifically supersedes and it's all the left's fault
| anyway.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Until the Human Rights Act 1998 established it as a
| positive right.
|
| > _would_ have no laws restricting freedom of speech (libel
| and incitement excepted)
|
| This is optimistic ahistorical nonsense; the UK had a
| censorship regime until the Lady Chatterly trial. There has
| been intelligence service related censorship as long as
| those have existed, as well (see Spycatcher, Zircon). And
| let's not get into Northern Ireland. Nobody old enough to
| remember "Gerry Adams has his voice read by an actor" would
| claim the UK used to be a bastion of pure free speech.
| andai wrote:
| What happened in 1997?
| Sakos wrote:
| I assume he means the McLibel case
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_case).
| xdennis wrote:
| There's a 84 minute documentary about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V58kK4r26yk
| Nasrudith wrote:
| There is a noisy contingent extremely proud of that fact for
| some bizzare reason. I can only hope they are an extreme
| minority.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Err... you might want to give the ECHR a read, and in
| particular Article 10.
| fithisux wrote:
| Well said. Breach of social contract. The problem is that
| others think it is advantageous to close their mouth. Of course
| this is not possible by the laws of Nature.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Precisely. What cannot be said will find an outlet elsewhere.
| We'll soon find that having some potty mouths are far better
| than the alternatives.
| getSood666 wrote:
| b3rv34v3ev4 wrote:
| This is NOT regulation of big tech.
|
| This creates a barrier to entry that allows ONLY big tech access
| to the playing field.
|
| These types of barriers to entry already exist in other areas
| like the pharmaceutical business and finance. Now we're getting
| artificial barriers created in IT.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The extra-territoriality part is interesting. It's still part of
| the post-Brexit hangover. GDPR got enforced globally because a)
| it covered 500 million rich europeans so you could not ignore
| that market b) it was the first and not insane.
|
| This is insane - and worse the UK is just, just small enough that
| you could if you wanted, turn off the service to those geo-IPs
| and carry on.
|
| I wonder. If any non-English speaking country tried it, it would
| almost be guaranteed
| notnotjake wrote:
| What is the mechanism that allows it to apply
| extraterritorially? How can they make me comply?
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Arrest you when you change planes at Heathrow. It's nuts;
| most of the Internet will be locked off from UK users.
| flipbrad wrote:
| The worst thing is, with the EU DSA coming in, a lot of this is
| probably completely unnecessary. So it creates extra bureaucracy,
| and gives the UK establishment a new boot to place on the necks
| of those that carry others' speech (and also pose a threat to
| traditional media), for very limited gain.
| Folcon wrote:
| What is the current direction of that looking like?
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| We're all sitting here shaking our heads wondering how we got
| here.
|
| The answer is we demanded it.
|
| Instead of parents taking responsibility for what their children
| see on their phone, we tried to push a parental responsibility
| into the service provider, that they're simply unable to
| logistically comply with.
|
| This is the end result of trying to solve a problem in meat space
| with legislation. Everyone that sat around going "Hurr hurr XKCD!
| Slippery slope! Seat belts and road safety!" are complicit.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Just ignore it - if everyone ignores it it will be impossible to
| enforce.
| _dain_ wrote:
| What do each of the Tory leadership candidates think of this
| bill? I'll back anyone who'll scrap it.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Kemi Badenoch seems to be anti.
| codedokode wrote:
| If UK government really cared about children, and not about
| surveillance and censorship, they would solve the problem another
| way.
|
| The only way protect children online is to ban them from
| Internet. Children should not have access to normal laptops and
| smartphones, instead they should use "kid phones". Such phones
| would allow children to communicate only with people approved by
| parents or teachers and visit only approved sites. This way they
| will enjoy perfect safety which this Bill fails to provide.
|
| Every site which wants to become approved, must fulfill all the
| requirements from the Bill and indicate this with a HTTP header.
| Kid phones and laptops should allow only to visit such compliant
| sites.
|
| Kid-oriented phones and laptops must be visually distinctive: for
| example, have a shape of a cute animal. In this case teachers,
| parents or police will be able to instantly spot and confiscate
| illegal devices.
|
| This is a win-win plan: kids would be safe and adults would be
| safe from government overreach. Obviously no government will
| agree to such plan.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| You just came up with a better idea than the entire UK
| government ever has.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Only until you discover kids selling "adult phones" in the
| playground at school. This is as much as a parent problem as
| content author of a internet website. My parents tried, they
| installed web filters, everything. I still got round them.
|
| I bought a BB gun at school, even a butterfly knife. I feel
| that it's education on how to use the internet that's missing.
| As well as finance.
| baobob wrote:
| We're actively discussing this at the moment, and the only
| solution we have is judicious bugging of a real 'adult' phone
| for the kid. If they're old enough to know Santa Claus
| doesn't exist, they'll also be old enough to know the phone
| company wasn't reporting on their naughtiness to their
| parents, it was just the phone that was rigged by their
| parents before they ever got a hold of it all along
| eikenberry wrote:
| Our system for our kids was no smart phone until ~14 and not
| taking it to bed until senior year. With all computers, each
| person has their own, in a shared family office. That and
| answering questions and talking to our kids about the
| internet, the good and the bad. No filters or other bullshit.
| So far (oldest is about to head to university) so good.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| The truth of cause, it is about control. The kids part is to
| allow for a moral panic that the government needs to "save the
| kids" from. It would be profitable if you could charge a
| monthly fee for a kids specific social network that parents had
| control over who the kids could chat to and what news they
| could read.
|
| The funny thing is that if I created a phone that had a kids
| mode lock-down (with kids friendly appstore, social media,
| browser and education content) with a monthly fee and no-ads.
| The government would scream that I was harming competition and
| locking people out by daring to charge for a product that would
| be expensive to operate.
| vgel wrote:
| If I, a US citizen, started an online service that attracted
| Ofcom attention, what binds me to following UK regulations? The
| article mentions "extraterritorial enforcement", but what does
| that mean? Will the US extradite me to the UK if I don't put
| monitoring in place? Will I get arrested if I visit the UK? Will
| they try to sue me in US court?
|
| I mean realistically if it became a problem I'd just IP-block all
| of the UK because they're small, but I don't understand what the
| legal framework for "extraterritorial enforcement" even is.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| In theory yes, in practice the US basically never extradites
| people to the UK and if they tried you would probably have a
| good defence (against extradition) under various parts of the
| constitution.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Weird how it only goes one way, isn't it?
| streblo wrote:
| Is it?
| Shuang1 wrote:
| It's not really weird. We have rights guaranteed to us in
| the United States that no other country has, so it makes
| sense we would not extradite.
| rsstack wrote:
| The US extradites people, including US citizens. That is
| required from the federal government by extradition
| treaties that are signed voluntarily by the US (in
| exchange for extradition _to_ the US). It is uncommon
| because they require escalations through the Department
| of State and not many crimes are serious enough to
| justify extradition.
| AustinDev wrote:
| The US does not extradite for crimes committed in the US
| to other countries at least I'm not aware of any cases.
| rsstack wrote:
| No, there is not a precedent for that AFAIK. But the US
| does extradite, as we don't have "rights guaranteed to us
| in the United States that no other country has".
| Spivak wrote:
| Well in this specific case it would be pants-on-head stupid
| because this person committed no crime while under UK
| jurisdiction.
|
| Like how would it even work if Alabama made it a crime for
| anyone in the world to have an abortion, extraditions all
| around?
| rsstack wrote:
| States aren't allowed to have treaties with foreign
| countries, so no country could have an extradition treaty
| with Alabama even if Alabama wanted to and that country
| agreed to it (in exchange for something has Alabama has
| to offer?).
| rsstack wrote:
| "From January 2004 to the end of December 2011, seven known
| US citizens were extradited from the US to the UK. No US
| citizen was extradited for an alleged crime while the person
| was based in the US."
|
| https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/100739/response/25520.
| ..
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9237663/No-
| America...
| intunderflow wrote:
| The Senior Managers Liability part means it's a criminal
| offence in the UK - so basically you could never visit the UK
| for fear of arrest.
| muyuu wrote:
| as stupid as this sounds the US does the reverse already
| mike_hearn wrote:
| With respect to the politicians not turning up, it's worth noting
| that at least some of the candidates for PM are against the
| Online Safety Bill and want to scrap it. So for them, campaigning
| to become the next leader may actually be a more useful way to
| spend time than hearing what they already know.
|
| It appears the OSB has become a victim of incoherent requirements
| specifications. It's grown enormously during its gestation period
| and is now trying to do way too much, including things that are
| self-contradictory. Some politicians recognize this, for example
| Kemi Badenoch:
|
| https://order-order.com/2022/07/11/watch-badenoch-slams-onli...
|
| but I recall others saying similar things. I just can't find the
| references right now.
| causi wrote:
| _who also has skin in the game about being on the receiving end
| of the most horrific online abuse_
|
| Do people just not get educated in online literacy anymore? An
| adult getting abused online is like getting third degree burns
| because you laid your hand on a hot burner and refused to take it
| off. If people saying mean things to you is disturbing your
| groove so much you're calling it "abuse" maybe you should _stop
| reading them_. This is stuff from the first week of 1990s
| computer class in elementary school.
| darkhorse222 wrote:
| You're talking like someone who doesn't live in a hyper-
| connected, hyper-online society. The same poor argument could
| made to verbal harassment. "Put in some headphones!"
| causi wrote:
| I _would_ make that argument if I could push a button and
| make that person disappear from my sight and hearing.
| Ironically verbal harassment is much more protected. I 'm
| free to get a group of people together and go chant "You're a
| cunt!" outside the Palace of Westminster.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You don't have to be hyper-online or hyper-connected.
|
| I spend time with people in person or on the phone usually.
| We, gasp, _do things_ like go to restaurants or go camping.
| Sometimes we all sit on the sofa in a big pile and share
| snacks and watch movies or talk about life.
|
| It's nice. Sometimes I'm even alone and get to read a dead
| tree book or just enjoy nature.
|
| What happens "on the internet" is of very low importance,
| slightly below my choice of socks or what brand of snack to
| get.
| yaseer wrote:
| > _An adult getting abused online is like getting third degree
| burns because you laid your hand on a hot burner and refused to
| take it off_
|
| This analogy is broken on quite a few levels. When did the
| internet become a hot burner?
|
| The internet is not _designed_ to get hot - it 's not a cooking
| device. If your laptop consistently got so hot it burned your
| lap, you'd try to fix it, not say "of course it does that".
|
| > _If people saying mean things to you is disturbing your
| groove so much you 're calling it "abuse" maybe you should stop
| reading them_
|
| There are laws governing abusive behaviour in person. Our
| society does not just advice people to "just not listen".
|
| Why would you expect different principles to apply to online
| and in-person behaviour?
|
| https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/verbal-abuse-and-harassmen...
| causi wrote:
| _Why would you expect the internet to be governed by
| different laws to in-person behaviour?_
|
| Because you can't instantly erase someone from your
| perception in person to person interaction. Online you can
| even proactively protect yourself, such as by adding words
| and phrases you don't like to your blocklist. Suppose I
| decide I don't ever want to interact with someone who still
| uses the word "retard". My computer can preemptively block
| those people on my Twitter, my email, even pages containing
| the word on my browser. It takes only seconds to wipe entire
| categories of people and opinion from every facet of your
| online experience.
| yaseer wrote:
| > instantly erase someone from your perception in person to
| person interaction.
|
| As easily as you can block a message, so too can abuser
| create a new account.
|
| Online harassment can be as persistent as in-person
| harassment - there's countless stories of people being
| continuously harassed. If it were so easy to block people
| online 'cyberstalking' wouldn't be such a big problem in
| the same area.
| causi wrote:
| That's when _you_ create a new account. The obsession
| with linking your real life to your online life is the
| most toxic change to internet culture since the web
| started.
| antonymy wrote:
| Thank you. I see so many people here who seem intent on
| linking their online identity to their real life
| identity, a trend popularized by social media and which
| is in direct contravention to the common sense advice we
| used to give people: don't upload PII on the internet.
|
| I understand many people rely on social media for
| professional networking but there's absolutely no reason
| why you have to use this professional networking account
| to trade verbal jabs with people on contentious topics,
| or confront trolls, or start political debates, etc. Make
| an alt if you want to slum it in the comments section.
| Again, this was common sense 20 years ago, and now seems
| like it's lost knowledge.
| adolph wrote:
| all ephemeral, leave no trace or context
| pjc50 wrote:
| And yet people keep complaining about "cancel culture".
|
| People saying things about you can affect you _even if you don
| 't read them_.
| red_admiral wrote:
| No, it is not. Examples of online abuse that go well beyond
| "disturbing your groove" are well documented. Online abuse,
| like climate change, is proven beyond reasonable doubt and we
| should probably do something about both.
| reaperducer wrote:
| While I don't disagree with you, it's important to remember
| that these companies spend billions of dollars to literally
| make their product addictive.
|
| In school we teach kids how to be responsible with alcohol and
| drugs. But some still become addicted. The same applies to
| social media.
|
| The difference is that instead of the pusher being some shady
| character at the back of the school bus, it's a massive company
| with marketing, public relations, and lobbying teams.
| causi wrote:
| Sure, and doomscrolling, misinformation, and the constant
| need for external validation are horrific problems. I don't
| think they're quite on the subject when we're talking about
| people's refusal to disengage with online hostility. It's
| like trying to make it illegal for people to flip you the
| bird in traffic. Is it a nice thing to do? Absolutely not,
| but letting it ruin your life is completely optional. The
| same thing applies to people on Facebook telling you to go
| fuck yourself.
| calibas wrote:
| I don't think you've really experienced online abuse.
|
| If you get in an argument with someone and they start saying
| nasty things, then it's simple to disengage. You just stop
| replying and you don't go back to the thread. In this scenario,
| your comment makes sense, but you should count yourself very
| lucky if this is the worst you've experienced.
|
| Personally, I pissed off a cult leader and she sent her
| followers to harass me. They used email and social networks,
| among other methods, to send me regular messages accusing me of
| all sorts of horrible things. If I followed your suggestion of
| " _stop reading them_ " it would mean I no longer check my
| email or social networks...
|
| For those inexperienced with these matters, it may seem like I
| can just block the messages, but in many cases that's near
| impossible. A "professional" abuser knows all about VPNs and
| will just keep creating new email addresses.
| causi wrote:
| Not a coordinated campaign like yours but I've been doxxed
| and had half a dozen death threats.
|
| _A "professional" abuser knows all about VPNs and will just
| keep creating new email addresses._
|
| You had no luck with keyword filters? You have my sympathy.
| calibas wrote:
| Keyword filters simply don't work unless the abuse follows
| a very specific pattern that legit messages do not. It's
| not an effective method of curtailing abuse.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| My belief is that the open internet began to pose a threat to
| those in power, they now seek to divide the internet back up
| along national boundaries via absurd regulations in order to for
| the traditional institutions to maintain their power. We are
| already seeing it with many sites being unwilling to deal with
| the compliance headache of GDPR and just blocking European users,
| plus it seems like half the internet is off limits to China
| because everyone blocks Chinese IP addresses because of their bad
| behavior.
|
| Ultimately the only people who benefit as the internet gets more
| and more locked down and more and more regulated is the people at
| the top who are able to reassert control of the information those
| unwashed masses receive.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| TBF, it's not just those in power; there _are_ differences
| between nations (in terms of both culture and rights
| perceptions), and a lot of policies like these have popular
| support as well.
|
| From the American point of view, the entire EU has bought into
| something very heavy-handed in terms of the GDPR, but IIUC the
| GDPR is pretty popular in the UK (though full compliance with
| it _technically_ requires one not even run a default-configured
| Apache server).
| jacooper wrote:
| I think its really unfair to compare the GDPR with this, the
| GDPR is a good law, which is actually possible to comply with
| and has reasonable limits to where it applies[1]
|
| 1. https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/
| noduerme wrote:
| ok123456 wrote:
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > passing legislation that people want that addresses their
| material concerns
|
| Is it though? The same problem that gave us the Capitol's
| storming also skews those people's concerns, so the
| legislation they'd demand would be anything but reasonable.
| ok123456 wrote:
| The mid-west and south were on-board when democratic
| party still stood behind the New Deal and before NAFTA.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > a few confused people mill around the rotunda and take
| selfies.
|
| That's like calling 9/11 "a few planes being temporarily
| diverted from their flight paths".
|
| The facts[0] paint a different picture:
|
| "13 percent of those nearly 700 arrested as of early
| December are members of militia groups like the Oath
| Keepers or extremist groups like the Proud Boys."
|
| > could have been avoided by winning by clear and
| resounding margins
|
| If you don't care about the clear and resounding margin of
| the popular vote, or care about the voter suppression
| efforts in red states, or the fact that Biden won 74 more
| electoral votes than Trump, then I don't know what to tell
| you.
|
| > by having a track record of passing legislation that
| people want
|
| You're basically saying "Unless the winners pass exactly
| the legislation that the losers want, then the losers will
| resort to violence". You're advocating for terrorism.
| Anyway, you might be surprised to know that the Republicans
| had control of at least half of the legislature since 2015,
| so the 1/6 rioters really should have directed most of
| their anger towards the GOP.
|
| [0] https://slate.com/news-and-
| politics/2022/01/january-6-capito...
| ok123456 wrote:
| >That's like calling 9/11 "a few planes being temporarily
| diverted from their flight paths".
|
| Yeah it wasn't 9/11. It was more like a 2005 myspace
| flash-mob that was part of a poorly thought out product
| promotion.
|
| > ... popular vote ...
|
| We don't elect by the simple popular vote. Amend the
| constitution to change the rules. By the current rules,
| it was a squeaker. The "battle ground states" are battle
| grounds not because of widespread voter suppression, but
| because the brand of the other team is so bad there.
|
| > You're advocating for terrorism.
|
| Yeah. Medicare for all is terrorism I guess.
| noduerme wrote:
| root_axis wrote:
| > _You watched a few confused people mill around the
| rotunda and take selfies._
|
| This characterization is dishonest.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iludfj6Pe7w
|
| Please don't bother with equivocations.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I clicked your video and it was run of the mill protest,
| crowd control, and milling around the rotunda taking
| selfies.
| jlokier wrote:
| Longer video, has more of the event.
|
| https://youtu.be/UdnNIQQOANk
|
| Link that doesn't require YouTube age assertion:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/video/2022/jun/10/unseen...
|
| I agree that the characterization as "people milling
| around the rotunda taking selfies" is grossly misleading.
|
| At least some of the people were plainly not intending or
| doing "run of the mill protest".
|
| Listening to Trump on that day, his speech is worse than
| I'd thought. (I'm not connected to the USA so I don't
| follow closely.)
| the8472 wrote:
| If we cannot trust the masses to inform themselves then
| democracy is dead, with it relying on on informed voters. If
| people are only allowed to see the pre-approved narratives
| then we get into the situation where the WHO claiming that
| covid-19 being airborne is misinformation and the dumb proles
| spreading messages to the contrary get banned (the former
| happend, the second thankfully did not).
| mixtur2021 wrote:
| You are coming across here as a terrible elitist. Language is
| unnecessary. Referring to people as the "unwashed masses" and
| then a comparison to chimpanzees. In the context, this reads
| like de-humanization.
| noduerme wrote:
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > What I've come to realise since then is it's not a joke. That's
| the intention. Make it too prohibitive, risky, or impossible for
| public discourse to flow on smaller platforms and services;
| require the larger ones to become speech police and societal
| monitors
|
| This is, I believe, also the intention behind the calls to repeal
| Section 230. It takes politics back to the simpler age where
| there were just a few entities deciding what the public were
| talking about, and they could be reached with either a bribe or
| an arrest warrant.
|
| For a lot of politicians, who don't understand social media and
| mostly receive criticism on it, I can imagine them not caring if
| the costs of pre-screening all content ended up making social
| media accounts require annual payments. That would have the
| immediate effect of removing anonymity from users, and limiting
| online comments to people with disposable income (who could be
| profitably sued for insulting politicians).
| pydry wrote:
| >That would have the immediate effect of removing anonymity
| from users, and limiting online comments to people with
| disposable income (who could be profitably sued for insulting
| politicians).
|
| This must be what they meant by "Singapore on Thames" coz it's
| certainly not about good economic policy or building enough
| social housing.
| [deleted]
| com2kid wrote:
| > ended up making social media accounts require annual payments
|
| So, an end to social media companies that are actively hostile
| to their users? No more psychologically deceptive tactics to
| force engagement at any cost? No more ad tracking? An end to
| foreign spam accounts?
|
| Looks like quarterly ARPU is about $12 per US user per month.
| So a $5 a month subscription would destroy their business
| model. However go back 6 years and $5 a month was what they
| were bringing in from ads, and Facebook wasn't exactly
| suffering as a business 6 years ago.
|
| In Europe, ARPU is just $6 per month right now, though I'd
| presume UK is higher, since EU is very diverse in terms of
| country economies.
|
| Of course most people would leave Facebook if it was $5 a
| month.
| kergonath wrote:
| > So, an end to social media companies that are actively
| hostile to their users? No more psychologically deceptive
| tactics to force engagement at any cost? No more ad tracking?
| An end to foreign spam accounts?
|
| We pay for TVs (the physical objects), and most of them are
| still riddled with ads. They _will_ double dip if they can.
| The reasoning won't be "if we charge them this much we can
| drop ads and not lose money", it will be "if we charge them
| this much we can have it _on top_ of however much we are
| doing with ads".
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > They will double dip if they can
|
| If they can, yes. But it will now open them to competition.
|
| Not to mention, if the law is structured in such a way that
| advertising-based business models remove their (UK
| equivalent) of Section 230 while purely fee-based models
| don't (as you'd assume fee-based models benefit equally
| from any content, where as ad-based models benefit from
| _certain_ content more than other) then they can 't double-
| dip since the extra liability will wipe out any advertising
| profits.
| com2kid wrote:
| That is because the price of TVs has been dropping while
| the # of features (and sizes of the TVs) have been
| increasing.
|
| Modern smart TVs are subsidized to heck and back.
|
| You can actually get smart TVs w/o lots of ads, Sony's
| Android TVs give you a slew of opt-out options when you
| first turn them on.
|
| Roku is the worst about this, they show ads to customers
| and try to collect $ from the streaming platforms.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Those things won't change, the charge will just be on top.
|
| And if they judge you broke a rule that will be an extra $50.
| But you can appeal for $200?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > the charge will just be on top.
|
| Disagreed - if ad- and engagement-based social media
| becomes a regulatory minefield then other monetization
| models suddenly become attractive. The final price will
| always only be limited by what the market is actually
| willing to bear.
| Clubber wrote:
| What are the alternatives from a advertiser's perspective
| though? Put an ad in the paper? TV? Radio? Those just
| don't have the viewership anymore.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Put an ad in the paper? TV? Radio? Those just don't
| have the viewership anymore.
|
| Ultimately people have a specific amount of disposable
| income regardless of how much advertising you throw at
| them, so the market will rebalance. There might be _less_
| advertising overall, which is a good thing for many
| reasons but one of them would be that the advertising
| that remains becomes more effective. The mediums you
| mention _currently_ don 't have the viewership because
| all attention is consumed by social media - this may very
| well change.
|
| In addition, the issue only applies to the common
| definition of internet advertising. Advertisers can still
| produce first-party content just like any other user on
| the platform and people will like/follow/share it if it's
| useful or entertaining to them. Product placement will
| still work, and so on.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > And if they judge you broke a rule that will be an extra
| $50. But you can appeal for $200?
|
| The fact that money is involved would put them under legal
| scrutiny. It may not actually be a bad deal - the fee can
| be refunded if the appeal is legitimate (the fee is just to
| deter spammers) and if they still act maliciously you can
| take them to small claims court since there's now a defined
| monetary loss.
| roody15 wrote:
| This is absolutely the intention.
|
| Western Governments are looking to control the discourse and
| are following the footsteps of China.
|
| Honestly sad to see the web move in this direction :/
| Zak wrote:
| > _[Preventing public discourse] is, I believe, also the
| intention behind the calls to repeal Section 230_
|
| What do you think about calls to remove platform immunity from
| algorithms that have an editorial effect?
| root_axis wrote:
| Absurd. It would effectively make personalized social media
| timelines illegal. This idea also doesn't make any logical
| sense, we all expect that a person or entity that posts
| illegal content is liable for posting it, foisting that legal
| burden on the website where it is posted is clearly the wrong
| thing to do (unless the site is soliciting the upload of
| illegal content or is refusing to remove illegal content,
| both of which is already illegal).
| dane-pgp wrote:
| If the goal is to prevent the ambiguous harm of "editorial
| effect", then I don't think it is fair to remove all platform
| immunity and punish the platform every time it fails to
| implement the correct, government-approved "editorial effect"
| instead of its own.
|
| It seems like the proponents of such a rule change are being
| underhanded, thinking "We can't ban companies from having a
| political bias, so we'll say that if the company has a
| political bias (i.e. any editorial/content policy), it
| becomes liable for any libel, or scams, or threats (written
| in any language) that appear anywhere on its platform".
|
| I might support a narrow form of this, though, which says
| that if a platform doesn't let you opt out of (legal content)
| filtering/re-ordering of content, then the platform has
| profited from you receiving messages with an unwanted bias
| (i.e. commercial speech), and therefore owes the user a small
| amount of statutory damages each time the user suffers some
| harm.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It is called the goddamned First Ammendment. What you are
| stating is legally speaking speaking complete nonsense like
| insisting that a coffee shop cannot be a resturant.
| camdat wrote:
| >algorithms that have an editorial effect?
|
| Isnt this every non-chronilogical sorting algorithm?
| kergonath wrote:
| Even chronologically sorting ones. _Any_ choice made is an
| editorial choice.
| xoa wrote:
| > _What do you think about calls to remove platform immunity
| from algorithms that have an editorial effect?_
|
| You mean, "repeal Section 230"? Because the entire point of
| Section 230 is to allow imperfect biased moderation without
| having to eliminate all user content. Such calls are
| ridiculous, stupid, or malicious on a host of levels. Making
| editorial decisions about what to allow on your own private
| property is core 1A Freedom of Speech, with caselaw dating
| back to well before the web.
|
| "Editorial effect" is also an utterly meaningless phrase. You
| probably have some silly politics thing in mind, but
| moderating against porn or violence also has an "editorial
| effect". So does having a forum devoted to aircraft or cats.
| I think trains and birds are great too. But if I want to run
| a forum specifically about aircraft or cats, I need to be
| able to delete train or bird posts, and if necessary ban
| users who won't follow the rules. This is all completely
| biased and has the editorial effect of shaping the forum to a
| specific niche of speech, there is nothing common carrier
| about running a focused forum. And politics could indeed
| enter into it, what if some political group proposes a law
| banning aircraft or cats? Rallying and organizing against
| that could include being biased against those who want to
| support that law. Colorful and strident invective may be
| featured. Such is life in a free society.
|
| If you want a soap box that does something else, the law also
| protects _your_ ability to make that (or to group up to do it
| or pay someone else to do it or whatever else). And as a
| practical matter it is now easier and cheaper to do so and
| get to a potential global audience then at any time in human
| history (let alone the history of the US). Win the argument
| in the marketplace of ideas, not using the state monopoly on
| violence.
| Zak wrote:
| The main thing I have in mind is machine learning
| algorithms that optimize for engagement. Those aren't
| necessarily biased in favor of a specific political
| position, but tend to amplify rumors over well-sourced
| reporting, demagoguery over reasoned debate, and often
| malicious false claims.
|
| Off the top of my head, I don't have a good way to
| differentiate those algorithms in legal terms. As another
| comment points out, even sorting chronologically has an
| editorial effect of sorts, but these things are different
| and _I know it when I see it_. Perhaps someone wiser than
| me has an unambiguous definition.
| xoa wrote:
| OK, that's at least a more reasonable thing to be worried
| about [0], but as you say trying to use the law there
| would be damn near impossible. Take the case of a law
| against airplanes/cats again. I'd definitely feel very,
| very strongly about such an effort, and want very, very
| much to defeat it. In the democratic system that means
| rallying a critical mass of fellow citizens. If it so
| happens my airplane/cat platform is pretty popular and
| likely would share my interests amplifying that would be
| a reasonable way to go about it, using algorithms that
| optimize for results. You might say "well, commercial use
| restricted only" but how would that be different the
| typical ad testing runs which have existed forever, where
| they are constantly testing to try to figure out what
| engages people and what doesn't? If it's "malicious false
| claims" then that's already a violation of defamation,
| there isn't any need for additional law on that front,
| but for anything else how can we decide in a way that
| can't be used the other direction?
|
| That's always the rub and the core issue of free speech:
| there are no oracles. You have to imagine what your worst
| most hated enemy demagogue would do with the tools you
| propose to create, because they will have them. Nobody
| can be trusted with the power. It is hard though, and I
| won't completely dismiss the idea that the scale
| networking/storage/ML offers can create emergent effects
| that don't show up at a smaller level. The legal notion
| of tracking for example.
|
| ----
|
| 0: though "amplify rumors over well-sourced reporting,
| demagoguery over reasoned debate" = the tabloids that
| exist right there at a large percentage of supermarket
| checkout aisles, remember nothing new under the sun, you
| might be surprised at some of the content of regular
| newspapers for that matter in the 1800s say.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| This is a great argument. I couldn't put it better.
| rconti wrote:
| Larger businesses have economies of scale in all things,
| including regulatory compliance. It's a great reason to be
| thoughtful when crafting regulations. Although, in this case,
| as you point out, that may be a feature.
| di4na wrote:
| To be fair re Section 230, the interpretation the court have of
| it is... wildly on the side of the platform. In particular, it
| allows a company to wiggle out of its TOS if it seems the TOS
| could be construed at being more stringent than Section 230.
|
| There is definitely _some_ change to do to section 230. I do
| not think it needs a repeal, but i do think it needs some
| rethinking and probably some more regulation on privacy and
| safety.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Bullcrap. There is nothing to wiggle out of because they
| don't have any actual obligation. Terms of service are a
| mutual courtesy and not a legal contract. They cannot have
| you arrested or fined for posting swears on their Christian
| Minecraft server but they can ban you.
| comex wrote:
| If there's an "I Agree" button you have to click, it's a
| "clickwrap" contract, which courts in the US generally
| treat as enforceable. [1]
|
| If the terms are just linked somewhere, it's a "browsewrap"
| contract, which may or may not be enforceable. [2]
|
| Other jurisdictions may differ.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browse_wrap
| llamataboot wrote:
| I don't know about intentions, seems like the intention behind
| a ton of this stuff is to "protect the children", or "fix a
| problem" etc etc, but there just isn't enough awareness of
| possible side effects - not unique to tech legislation - just
| look at the policy ratchet of "you can always run by being
| tougher on crime, very hard to run on being not as tough"
|
| --
|
| and arguably there is also some interaction with tech companies
| doing malicious compliance as well which generally means that
| the original intent of the legislation gets lost and user
| experience further degrades (cookie popups anyone?)
|
| --
|
| I think it's too simplistic to make this a "politicians want to
| control the discourse" - there's always a bunch of tradeoffs in
| these things, and arguably the edge cases /are/ the base case
| (anyone that has done content moderation for a reasonably large
| community knows that it is very hard to make any sort of
| blanket rule, even if you have blanket rules)
| philipov wrote:
| That's not intent, that's pretext. Pretext is the
| justification you tell people to get them to agree with your
| plan. Intent is the effect you actually want it to achieve,
| which you don't tell people. It is important to distinguish
| between the two. I think the intent of most laws is "Get me
| reelected," and that is where we need to discuss Perverse
| Incentives of professional politicians. Reelection pressure
| is clearly not working as an incentive for keeping
| politicians focused on the public good.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's a good mental practice to always be aware that stated
| intentions and actual reasons are entirely separate things.
|
| They do sometimes, mostly by chance, coincide.
|
| The advanced level of this is to be aware this applies even
| to your own actions.
| llamataboot wrote:
| The super advanced level is to realize it applies to all of
| your /thoughts/ which is mostly a pattern matching brain
| and personality built around the ways it found to make
| sense of some things justifying the chaos in retrospect :D
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Correct but this is a different phenomenon. You are
| talking about post hoc justification for your behavior,
| where your brain is very good at making up stories that
| have nothing to do with the original motivation.
|
| I believe GP is referring to the fact that the true aim
| of much of this legislation had nothing to do with
| protecting kids from the beginning. They use that
| rhetoric because it's easy to get people on board and
| much more difficult to explain the real world
| implications for security.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think it's a mix of cynical PR campaigns and honest
| activism, and I'm not smart enough to say which is the
| biggest factor in each instance.
|
| Separately, the honest activists are often lying to
| themselves, in the sense that their real motives are not
| what the they tell themselves and others.
| dcow wrote:
| I didn't get that impression. You're not wrong that
| something can be justified "for the children" but have an
| ulterior motive. But I think what's being argued is that
| the initial motive is actually honestly _for the
| children_ and that that goal blinds people to the reality
| of how bad or pointless or even perversely harmful the
| proposed solution is.
| yboris wrote:
| A great book to realize that the reasons people give for
| what they do are not the real reasons is _Elephant in the
| Brain_
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-
| Everyda...
|
| A great book to realize that the reasons you give for what
| you do are not the real reasons is _Strangers to Ourselves_
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Ourselves-Discovering-
| Adapt...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yes, I learned much of this from Elephant In The Brain.
| Biggest shock to my belief systems this century.
|
| May have to read Strangers to Ourselves as well.
| joering2 wrote:
| > If a British child could merely type your URL into a browser,
| the site is in scope.
|
| Seems incorrect, no? The visit is more important than just typing
| URL. Worst-case scenario I will check your IP and if its in UK/GB
| scope, you will see "Unable to browse this site due to your-
| stupid-anti-blah-blah-UK-policy"
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| The whole article is written like this - hyperbolically
| presenting the least generous reading she possibly can of the
| proposed law.
|
| > _[A pretty reasonable set of questions that companies must
| consider regarding how children might be harmed on their
| service]_
|
| > "you're probably curled up in a ball crying"
|
| No actually, I wasn't.
|
| Filtering out the breathless commentary, the actual proposals
| don't seem that bad...? Certainly no worse than GDPR
| obligations and nowhere near the kind of regulatory compliance
| industries like Manufacturing, Construction and Medicine have
| to meet.
|
| Admittedly I didn't make it to the end of the article because
| the tone was beginning to grate too much.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Do you think prosecutors won't use the least generous reading
| of the law?
| dogleash wrote:
| > presenting the least generous reading she possibly can of
| the proposed law
|
| It's fine if you don't like the flourishes in her writing,
| but this is the correct way to read proposed legislation.
|
| If the uncharitable reading describes the law
| enabling/preventing things in a way the authors don't intend,
| all they have to do is clarify the scope in the text of the
| bill.
|
| The light least favorable to the drafting party is needed
| now. In 5 years when there are legal cases over the bounds of
| the law, the courts will use the text of the law rather that
| call in the authors and politicians that voted for it and
| check what they intended for the law to mean. Or maybe they
| would, I don't know how British courts work.
| Folcon wrote:
| Tone aside, she does point out one clear way this bill does
| hurt tech compared to other industries.
|
| The cost of entry into this space is really low compared to
| most other industries. You can very cheaply provide a
| reasonably competitive product.
|
| One of the aspects of this bill that I do find worrying is
| that there are clear costs being added on that we're
| obligated to pay likely before we've validated the business
| works.
|
| I do feel a lot of side-projects that could have gone to
| become viable businesses will never be released with this
| bill in place. Who wants to expose themselves to costs to try
| out a fun idea?
|
| A lot of what she's arguing for could have been covered
| similarly to GDPR if there were carve outs for smaller
| entities, which would have been easy to mention, the absence
| of them lends weight to her assertion that the goal of this
| bill as it stands is to generally increase political control
| of the tech sphere.
|
| Even if that control only extends to and harms UK
| businesses...
| hedora wrote:
| Well, they'd have to press enter. Once that happened, it sounds
| like you'd have to run through certifications to make sure that
| the phrase "your-stupid-anti-blah-blah-UK-policy" isn't
| potentially harmful to minors, and then also (at a minimum) put
| in business processes to make sure that the approved text
| didn't change.
|
| Then, moving forward, whenever you changed any (unrelated)
| business process, you'd need to re-up your business process
| certifications.
| Shuang1 wrote:
| As an American who has no desire to visit the UK, is there any
| particular reason I need to care? The article says it would
| affect me but they don't have any jurisdiction over me.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| This woman is a great writer!
|
| This article doesn't really apply to anything I'm doing (at
| present), but I enjoyed the read.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It seems to me that the solution to all the woes of this bill is
| to just _not allow any content to be shared_. That basically
| eliminates this being a problem for 95% of all companies.
| buro9 wrote:
| The bill covers this site... HN.
|
| And it covers Stack Overflow.
|
| And Mumsnet.
|
| And basically any site that takes user generated content of any
| kind.
| verytrivial wrote:
| Content presumably includes prose.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Correct, taking down all of one's websites is the easiest way
| to comply with this bill.
| hedora wrote:
| That, and hiring a large number of lawyers, paying regulatory
| fees, etc.
| Havoc wrote:
| The whole thing is so completely and utterly braindead that it
| must surely be an attempt to shift the overton window &
| subsequently pass something slightly toned down.
| rlpb wrote:
| The article says:
|
| "Is it possible for your site, service, or app, which allows
| content to be shared and/or people to communicate with each
| other, to be accessed by any adult or any child within the UK?
|
| Then you're in scope.
|
| NB "accessed" doesn't necessarily mean that a user can set up an
| active account on your service. If a British adult can merely
| download your app on the app store, the app is in scope."
|
| However, the draft bill doesn't seem to say that. I found the
| draft here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-
| online-safe... (and note that the article doesn't seem to link
| it, which seems odd).
|
| The bill says:
|
| "In this Act "user-to-user service" means an internet service by
| means of which content that is generated by a user of the
| service, or uploaded to or shared on the service by a user of the
| service, may be encountered by another user, or other users, of
| the service.
|
| That seems reasonable to me. There are more details, but as far
| as I can see, the ability to merely download an app _does not_
| put it in scope contrary to the claim in TFA.
|
| I now find myself doubting the the other claims made by this
| author.
| Brybry wrote:
| The "has links with the UK" portion of the "regulated service"
| definition says if UK users are a "target market", or if the
| "service is capable of being used in the United Kingdom" and
| there's user generated content with a "material risk of
| significant harm" then it "has links".
|
| If an app is available in an app store are the users who can
| access it not a target market?
|
| I'm not really sure what "material risk of significant harm"
| means for the second qualifier but if it means "users can
| potentially post bad things" then that seems very broad too.
|
| I feel it's telling that they had a need to make exceptions
| explicitly for email/voip/sms texting.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >However, the draft bill doesn't seem to say that. I found the
| draft here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-
| online-safe... (and note that the article doesn't seem to link
| it, which seems odd).
|
| You're linking to the _draft_ bill. Burns has linked to the
| _actual_ bill as amended in the Commons:
| https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0121...
| (it's linked under the heading of "How to read this post")
| rlpb wrote:
| Ah, thanks. Looks like there's not an actual bill yet, but
| there is a _second_ draft bill.
|
| However, I looked at the definitions in there and they remain
| essentially the same. My concerns still stand.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > Ah, thanks. Looks like there's not an actual bill yet,
| but there is a second draft bill.
|
| No, there's definitely a bill. It's had its first and
| second readings and it's in committee stage in the Commons:
| https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137
| _fat_santa wrote:
| If this applies to every site that hosts user generated content
| then that's nuts. When the internet first started, part of the
| appeal is that you could just make stuff without people looking
| over your shoulder, asking for forms, etc. Seems that the
| internet we created today is technically the same as the one from
| before, but now with governments throwing up red tape at every
| corner.
|
| Makes me wonder what a site like HN would have to do in order to
| stay in compliance. While on the one hand HN could make the
| argument that the site is not geared towards children so this
| kind of stuff is not a concern, regulations will say: well
| TECHNICALLY a child could use HN, and TECHNICALLY a predator
| could message with them, and therefore there is TECHNICALLY a
| risk, so please pay up $20k/yr for compliance costs.
|
| I use HN as a stand in example for many many sites and services
| out there. IMO, I don't think it will be that enforceable. Sure
| the big tech companies will comply, anyone that runs a smaller
| service outside the UK will just tell the UK govt to kick rocks
| if they come knocking (what can they do besides blocking the site
| in the UK).
|
| If this bill gets passed were going to get the following:
|
| - Big tech company scandal over CSAM.
|
| - A heartbreaking story over some small time website owner facing
| prison time over non-compliance.
|
| - Opinion pieces from the tech community about how it's a
| terrible idea all around.
|
| - Puff pieces from non-tech outlets that praise the legislation
| without fully understanding the technical ramifications.
|
| - Flame war between techies and non-techies over competing puff
| pieces.
| 7952 wrote:
| I wonder if it could apply to internal company systems. Like
| the corporate SharePoint or file server. And a lot of those
| kind of systems have external users also. If a client uploads
| some data do I have to scan it for illegal content?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| right now or say 10 years ago til now, before the whole
| encrypted chats came into the picture, how many people have
| been convicted of CSAM in the UK, USA or somewhere else? is it
| in thousands? millions? if people were not getting convicted
| left and right before encryption, why is suddenly encryption
| the #1 enemy?
| carom wrote:
| In addition to this, if they actually cared about children
| they would up the penalties for crimes. In the US it is 4
| years in prison. Let's make it 20 years per image. That is
| what Maxwell got for literally trafficking children. But hey,
| let's add some red tape to the internet, mind numbing.
| jacooper wrote:
| Because its not about the children, it never was.
| ejb999 wrote:
| I'll admit, I haven't read the entire article - but the obvious
| question to me - using your example of HN - what authority does
| the UK have over a website hosted in another country at all?
| They can pass all the rules they want, but how do they propose
| to enforce them on a company that does not operate in the UK?
|
| If that was possible, wouldn't CCP or Russia be ordering
| websites all over the world to shutdown to control information
| they don't like be visible?
| voxic11 wrote:
| But hackernews does operate in the UK. I have accessed it
| from there before.
| Vespasian wrote:
| The UK government can't influence the US government (or any
| foreign government at all) to enforce their laws.
|
| So companies can choose to comply or not.
|
| You and I are probably violating several (severely)
| punished laws from around the world every day but the
| respective authorities can't do anything about it.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Our government can't enforce rules on foreign owned websites,
| but they can force ISP's to block them.
| jacooper wrote:
| Which is fine, the UK users and economy will be the one
| losing really.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| We're also going to get the big companies triggering
| investigations of smaller up-and-comers to stamp out
| competition. Better Reddit? Think of the children. Better
| Twitter? Think of the children. Facebook without the algorithm?
| Think of the children.
|
| Just like what we see with the DMCA. Cheaper toner cartridges?
| Think of the creatives!
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Honestly this impact can't be overstated. If the bill passes
| I'm leaving the UK
| muyuu wrote:
| over the last 10-15 years there has been an open war on the
| early, wild internet model - not just from governments (early
| on it was just the so-called autocracies, now it's pretty much
| all of them) but also from Silicon Valley/Big Tech themselves
|
| this will set a massive barrier for all but a few whitelisted
| giant entities to host user-generated content, and then it will
| be massively censored and used to prosecute people
| dp-hackernews wrote:
| Surveillance and censorship by way of enforced regulation - Hello
| 1984!
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| hmmm how many countries are there 180+? must be fun to be
| compliant to all of them. Either rules should apply to only
| within the country or be handled by international organization.
| About time we created lawmaking internet committee, there are
| many for technical standards already.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| As someone from the EU, with no money or anuthing coming in from
| the UK, why would I even care about this?
|
| The GDPR has teeth only because the EU is big enough to make
| companies care. It is a watered down version from some privacy
| rights compared to the old laws in my country. But the old laws
| were ignorde by US tech because why wouldn't they.
|
| So as the UK left the EU, they are now a small country in the
| computer world. I'll ignore its laws just as I ignore Afghan laws
| requiring women to stay at home or whatever country's laws to
| forbif gays from existing.
| hedora wrote:
| If the article is to be believed, then simply ignoring this law
| would open your company's leadership up to criminal liability
| in the UK. This probably doesn't matter too much, assuming they
| never fly through Heathrow or something.
| jacooper wrote:
| I mean you can just ban all UK IPs and be done with it.
|
| Its clearly not a sensible law, and blocking users will send
| a clear message to them that they should complains about it.
| connordoner wrote:
| Realistically, are they going to complain? I don't ever
| remember a mass revolt over US websites blocking EU users
| because of GDPR.
| jacooper wrote:
| The GDPR is a way way more realistic law, there is no
| comparison here.
|
| Also the EU is a way bigger user base than the UK, and
| being complaint with the GDPR is actually possible
| without needing to pay anyone anything.
|
| I think the affect of this law is going to be way bigger
| than the GDPR.
| odiroot wrote:
| Imagine if they fly through Stansted. That's a punishment in
| itself!
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Yeah, this already happens to some extent with American and
| Asian sites blocking Europe and the UK because they don't want
| to deal with GPDR.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| As an American visiting the UK and the EU, I got to see what
| the GDPR has done to the online experience over there for the
| first time.
|
| Wow, does _that_ suck. I see about 20% of the "cookie track
| consent" popups Stateside that I saw browsing from the EU.
| jacooper wrote:
| Well that's the websites problem, no body told them to
| include 50 trackers. And there are many filters to kill
| cookies banners. Also AFAIK now there is an enforced Reject
| All button.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's also the user's problem because there aren't
| websites to go to that _aren 't_ showing those banners.
|
| Well, except the big, commonly-used ones where you've
| already consented (or not). Facebook, for instance. It's
| like this law was hand-tuned to consolidate users into
| only visiting a few commonly-accessed sites to save
| themselves the UX annoyance at the cost of the broader
| Internet's discoverability.
| jacooper wrote:
| I don't agree, many websites don't have it. Its a choice
| that these we sites that they want to still track
| everyone, and they are paying for it in bad UX.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's the safest choice given the incentives.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| So you prefer being tracked without you knowing rather than
| being asked and easily opt out?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Personally, yes. I think most of what the GDPR intended
| to accomplish could have been accomplished more easily by
| public education campaigns and broad cultural adoption of
| no-track plugins. That would have done a lot less damage
| to the user experience than naively assuming that if one
| pushed the educational burden onto sites, the sites would
| cease to do the tracking that triggered the educational
| burden rather than just bother their users forever with
| government-mandated information placards.
|
| Especially given that what constituted "tracking" was so
| broad that a lot of sites took the "better safe than
| sorry" approach because it was cheaper than a full audit
| of their tracking and a lawyer to interpret whether, say,
| Apache logs that show IP address constitute "tracking."
| sterlind wrote:
| If this UK bill passes, I'd simply return HTTP 451 with a
| note that although the UK is blocked from my site, VPNs are
| not.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Promoting VPN usage could be construed by the UK courts as
| an attempt to commit subterfuge or dodge jurisdiction. They
| will not take kindly to this. You really want to make it
| perfectly clear that you want _nothing to do_ with Britain
| as long as they have crazy laws on the books.
|
| Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR,
| blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law
| applies on the basis of citizenship, not territory. If an
| EU citizen accesses your website in America, that's still
| within GDPR scope. If you have EU business assets, ship
| things to the EU, or have any other ties to the EU, then
| they still have jurisdiction and you certainly still have
| to comply with GDPR.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > because the law applies on the basis of citizenship,
|
| No it doesn't. depends on location only. A US, or any
| other, citizen is protected by GDPR when they access the
| web from within the EU
| whakim wrote:
| > If an EU citizen accesses your website in America,
| that's still within GDPR scope.
|
| No, that's not correct. You have to be clearly intending
| to (not just incidentally happening to) offer goods or
| services to an EU data subject.
|
| > ship things to the EU
|
| This wouldn't be enough to make the GDPR applicable.
| You'd have to be specifically targeting EU customers in
| some way, such as allowing users to pay in euros - not
| just incidentally selling some stuff to folks who live in
| the EU. Your other examples (such as having EU business
| assets) hold because they would make you an EU entity.
| tzs wrote:
| Targeting EU data subjects with goods and services is
| just one of two ways GDPR asserts extraterritorial
| jurisdiction.
|
| The other is when you are processing personal data of EU
| data subjects that is related to "the monitoring of their
| behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within
| the Union".
|
| There's a recital that adds:
|
| > In order to determine whether a processing activity can
| be considered to monitor the behaviour of data subjects,
| it should be ascertained whether natural persons are
| tracked on the internet including potential subsequent
| use of personal data processing techniques which consist
| of profiling a natural person, particularly in order to
| take decisions concerning her or him or for analysing or
| predicting her or his personal preferences, behaviours
| and attitudes.
|
| Unlike the recital that explains the goods and services
| case, which talks about it only applying if you envisage
| offering goods and services in the Union as opposed to
| your site merely being accessible from the Union, the
| monitoring case doesn't seem to have any requirement that
| you are intending to monitor EU data subjects.
|
| That's pretty broad as written. From what the recital
| says it even applies if you are gathering data the
| _could_ be used for profiling even if you are not
| actually currently profiling.
|
| As noted in the article at gdpr.eu that a parallel
| commenter cited:
|
| > If your organization uses web tools that allow you to
| track cookies or the IP addresses of people who visit
| your website from EU countries, then you fall under the
| scope of the GDPR. Practically speaking, it's unclear how
| strictly this provision will be interpreted or how
| brazenly it will be enforced. Suppose you run a golf
| course in Manitoba focused exclusively on your local
| area, but sometimes people in France stumble across your
| site. Would you find yourself in the crosshairs of
| European regulators? It's not likely. But technically you
| could be held accountable for tracking these data.
| whakim wrote:
| > That's pretty broad as written. From what the recital
| says it even applies if you are gathering data the could
| be used for profiling even if you are not actually
| currently profiling.
|
| I'm not aware of legal cases that have specifically
| hinged on this issue, but _Soriano v Forensic News LLC_
| (from 2021) touched on this clause, and seemed to doubt
| that merely collecting information (e.g., using cookies)
| without further processing it with the intent to profile
| would make you subject to the GDPR.
|
| I didn't specifically mention Article 3(2)(b) - the
| clause you're citing - because the post I was responding
| to didn't really mention profiling in any way. Still,
| it's good to note that the legal landscape on this
| particular point isn't totally clear as far as I'm aware.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR,
| blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law
| applies on the basis of citizenship, not territory.
|
| Argh, why won't this misinformation die? You are
| completely, utterly, 100% wrong.
|
| The GDPR applies if _either_ the data controller is
| established in the EU _or_ the data subject is physically
| in the EU.
|
| Article 3 (territorial scope) is incredibly short, read
| it: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
| mitjam wrote:
| Yes and this may be a UK citizen on a trip to Paris
| jacooper wrote:
| However, the GDPR doesn't really apply if you don't
| intend to target Europeans(2)
|
| And the GDPR is a way way more sensible law than whatever
| the UK is trying to do here, nobody will comply and no
| body will care, its only going to Hurt UK citizens and
| The UK's economy.
|
| I care about privacy and really like what the EU has
| passed with the GDPR and DSA, but unfortunately we will
| have countries that does stupid things like this.
| Hopefully they aren't that important so no one complies.
|
| 2. https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/
| nbevans wrote:
| Doesn't matter if they ignore the laws as then they have to pay
| fines which bolsters the Treasury anyway. It's win-win. That's
| why the EU itself loves to regulate in this way because dishing
| out tickets to American big-tech is a big money spinner for a
| superstate that is fast running out of money. The real problems
| start when these fines are being seen in the halls of power as
| disruptive to trade; as then it becomes a bilateral political
| issue which can of course blow up in a full blown trade spat
| very quickly.
|
| Also your example of ignoring Afghan laws on women doesn't
| work. If you tried to setup a business in Afghanistan that was
| say an online tutoring programme tailored for Aghan women. How
| quickly do you think your DNS will get pointed to 0.0.0.0 on
| the Afghan internet? And how quickly will they seek to
| prosecute you as a director of that business? As a foreigner
| living abroad, you'll probably be fine but you won't be making
| money from your target market. So you're finished. The law
| worked and you didn't ignore it.
| LegitShady wrote:
| the louder someone tells me in advance they don't care, the
| more they care about something going on here, and in your case
| its to talk about the EU and the UK. This was an article about
| the UK, if you didn't care you didn't need to post here at all,
| just as people from the US don't need to post to say "I'm from
| the US, why do I need to care about EU laws?" you don't, but
| you also don't say anything intelligent about it by saying you
| live somewhere else.
|
| Posting to say you live somewhere else and don't care about the
| article doesn't contribute to any intelligent conversation, and
| usually means you do care about something involved, strongly,
| but aren't willing to say so.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| But it does. Laws like this tend to spill over to other
| countrys, unless the politicians in question have to tiptoe
| away from the mess they created. So one way to fight this law
| is to make clear the rest of the world is not going to play
| along.
|
| So as a person, I of course do care. The UK used to be fairly
| good concerning human rights, privacy, cooperation, ... This
| represents another step back. So the best thing to do is
| ignore this insanity as good as possible.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _So as the UK left the EU, they are now a small country in
| the computer world. I 'll ignore its laws_
|
| _Laws like this tend to spill over to other countrys,
| unless the politicians in question have to tiptoe away from
| the mess_
|
| Pick a lane.
| jacooper wrote:
| These are different things.
|
| You can ignore its laws by blocking users, and clearly
| saying you won't comply with such stupid laws.
|
| Being concerned that this can spread to other countries
| is a big reason why you have to be clear about not
| playing along.
| LegitShady wrote:
| the rest of the world is not a monolith, and nobody speaks
| for the rest of the world in aggregate, so 'making it
| clear' doesn't matter. They left the EU so they could
| control their own laws, I don't think someone from the EU
| being childish about "I live in the EU, I don't care" about
| UK law makes a persuasive statement about politics.
| noduerme wrote:
| Here's something novel, then: I've lived all over the world,
| but I wouldn't step foot in post-Brexit, xenophobic Britain
| if you paid me. I'm reading this gleefully thinking of ways
| to flout whatever implementation is settled upon, while
| homegrown British companies rot. I am, in fact, rooting for
| your economy to utterly collapse.
| LegitShady wrote:
| As I said, its not that you don't care, its that you care
| very very strongly, but wanted to pretend you didn't care,
| which was why you posted to say 'but I don't live in the
| UK' as if it was relevant to anyone but you.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You're responding to two different people as if they were
| the same person.
| LegitShady wrote:
| didn't notice, but again, same thing with both of them.
| "Here are some laws in the UK" - they respond with "let
| me tell you about the UK, I don't care about it but here
| are the reasons why I care..."
| timellis-smith wrote:
| Out of interest, have you seen the list of potential future
| PMs. I would say it is far more diverse and less xenophobic
| than most European countries.
|
| But yeah believe what makes you happy. Just don't let the
| hate get to you to much.
| aembleton wrote:
| Which of the candidates aren't British?
| timthorn wrote:
| At least one of whom has stated that the bill in question
| would not be taken forward under her leadership.
| [deleted]
| mixtur2021 wrote:
| In perception polls on xenophobia across Europe, UK scores
| very well. Here is a report from the EU from 2019:
|
| https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2
| 0...
| yrgulation wrote:
| > So as the UK left the EU, they are now a small country in the
| computer world.
|
| Umm yeah no. Perhaps regulation wise but no, the uk is not a
| "small" country in the "computer world".
| tomjen3 wrote:
| It has fewer people than Germany, and only low double digits
| compared to the EU.
|
| With this legalization I would IP ban the UK, then grow the
| service and look into opening up for the UK when my service
| was big and the lawyers didn't matter.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Typing this using a british designed arm cpu powered phone
| using the protocol made by a british guy on a forum
| cofounded by a british american venture capitalist. But the
| UK is "small" in the "computer world". Perhaps we should
| ban german IP instead so we can read less about german
| nationalist pride and instead focus more on what makes
| countries competitive and what not in modern tech.
| donkarma wrote:
| yeah that's all good for you but it doesn't change the
| fact that the UK is not that big of a market to cause all
| this trouble
| swores wrote:
| I think (as a Brit myself) you're being overly defensive
| and inferring insult where there was none.
|
| Suggesting that the market size of the UK might not be
| big enough to make up for the costs of complying with a
| law like this is not at all the same as saying that
| people from the UK are not capable of making using
| industry contributions.
| yrgulation wrote:
| You are right i am overly defensive.
|
| The term small used by op can also be read as a
| pejorative term meant to describe uk's would be weakness
| post brexit - often used by a small but vocal number of
| eu citizens that like myself (a uk person as well) have
| been against brexit. And i've it read as such.
|
| The uk market may be small in size in comparison with the
| whole of the eu, but the uk is by no means a small player
| in the "computer world", whatever that means.
|
| Indeed due to its size it may not hold much legal clout
| over the eu, and the eu being protectionist as it is it
| might even seek to punish british isps or web companies
| by the excuse of having different laws. Thats not in
| anyone's interest and it reflects poorly on the eu and on
| those people here proposing a ban on uk ips because of
| some silly laws. I despise the mindset of those who only
| seek "sanctions" and "punishment" instead of actual
| solutions and are constantly spewing nationalist nonsense
| as if, say, germany isnt full of crap and a root cause of
| quite some major issues on the continent right now.
|
| So yeah I am pretty much bored by all this nonsense. How
| can we fix the issues that such legislation is causing?
| Before the righteous ban our ips - not that we'd lose
| much.
| 9dev wrote:
| What else would it be? There's about 67 million people living
| in the UK, compared to the 447 million in the EU - depends on
| your definition of "small", but our company will likewise
| ignore any specific UK regulations. The handful of customers
| there isn't worth any additional overhead compared to the
| EU+US.
| nsteel wrote:
| Perhaps we should be counting computers, rather than
| people, in the "computer world". Although I am not saying
| you'd come to a different conclusion.
| theptip wrote:
| Of the countries in the world, the UK ranks sixth in GDP.
| cge wrote:
| The problem with that measurement is that top GDPs fall
| off quickly. While the UK is the sixth, it's only around
| 3-4% of the global GDP, and while I can't find values
| from the same year at the moment, likely has a lower GDP
| than California. The EU is around 18% of the global GDP;
| the US, China, and EU together make up around 65% of
| global GDP, and each of them has at least triple the GDP
| of any other individual country.
| 9dev wrote:
| Most of that money is bound in the financial industry,
| though. Unless you're in the sector, the GDP rank doesn't
| matter much for doing business with the UK.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| A quick search suggests the UK digital market was nearly $50
| billion on 2021.[1]
|
| 1. https://www.statista.com/topics/7208/digital-economy-in-
| the-...
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Good example of why you need to fight even for big tech rights.
| [deleted]
| stevewatson301 wrote:
| The "reigning in big tech" thing that's been going on for all
| this while is really a ruse to limit citizen freedom while
| coming up with laws that only big tech can comply to.
|
| I wish it was more widely recognized and understood by more
| folks.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >a ruse to limit citizen freedom while coming up with laws
| that only big tech can comply to.
|
| Which law in particular?
| amoe_ wrote:
| The OSB has become a big bucket which UK politicians can point to
| and say "see, we're doing something". When faced with a question
| about the internet, the stock response of Tory MPs is to say
| "wait for the Online Safety Bill". In that way, it's quite
| similar to the situation before Brexit, where representatives
| would evade responsibility for policy by claiming that their
| hands were tied by Brussels.
| drumhead wrote:
| One of the candidates for the Tory party leadership has already
| spoken out against it. I get the impression its not that popular
| and might well be scrapped or dropped.
| s1k3s wrote:
| Does anyone have a tldr? Respectfully to the author, I don't have
| the patience to read through this blog post full of metaphores
| and anecdotes. So what happened?
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| tldr: In the name of "protecting the children," the British
| government wants to create an ultra-efficient police state so
| they can instantly hoover up information about every British
| user of the Internet, on a scale that would make the Chinese
| government blush.
|
| Like the Chinese, they propose to put executives of ISPs and
| websites in jail if they fail to assist the government in the
| creation of this police state.
|
| Unlike the Chinese, part of the plan is to make a few companies
| [more] fabulously wealthy: Namely the biggest tech giants like
| Alphabet and Meta who can afford the enormous costs of
| compliance, as well as certain homegrown British companies who
| specialize in estimating a user's age by _using AI to analyze
| the size of a user 's head in a webcam image._
|
| Super-important points:
|
| 1. This is not about "adult content" websites. It covers just
| about any website that uses technology more advanced that
| static HTML files, regardless of content.
|
| 2. The provisions apply to any website worldwide that can be
| accessed in Britain.
|
| 3. The provisions make it effectively impossible to browse the
| Internet anonymously in Britain. The government also wants
| browser makers to make special British versions of browsers to
| assist them in deanonymizing users.
|
| 4. The cost of compliance for any small business will be so
| astronomical that GDPR compliance will seem trivial by
| comparison.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Do you think non-giant non-UK websites will be just ignoring
| this, even though theoretically if their website is accessible to
| those in the UK, the UK wants their compliance?
| toldyouso2022 wrote:
| First they cane for my cookies and I said nothing because I just
| had to shill 30bucks...
| [deleted]
| fleddr wrote:
| Whilst this draft bill is laughable and outrageous, isn't a
| similar concept in the making for the EU? One not emphasizing
| children but copyrights and such instead? Article 13, I think
| it's called.
|
| I consider them conceptually similar because in both cases it
| means that permission-less publishing will ultimately die. Right
| now the consensus is to allow publication, after which a
| reasonable effort is made to moderate, including the typical
| "report" function where you correct after publication.
|
| It looks like we're swinging in the direction where whatever you
| publish (by means of your users) makes you fully accountable
| hence the only way to dodge that legal liability is to pre-check
| instead of post-check.
|
| There's some hope in the sense that none of this can actually
| work nor is it enforceable. GDPR is a fine example of that. In my
| country, privacy authorities are a few hundred in staff only.
| When you report a violation to them, absolutely nothing will
| happen. They're 2 years behind and the cases they do handle
| almost never lead to any kind of verdict. No government is going
| to add thousands in staff just to regulate cookies, as surely
| they have better things to do with a budget. As such, the
| strategy seems to be to occasionally make an example out of a few
| by applying severe fines, just to scare everybody else and remind
| them that this legislation is a thing.
|
| Let's also not underestimate the ability for people to revolt. If
| memory serves me well, article 13 had a modification so that
| people can continue to meme, lol.
| dadjoker wrote:
| Orwell was prescient.
| pmontra wrote:
| > In addition to the risk assessments, you will have
| administrative compliance obligations to Ofcom as your content
| regulator. [long list follows]
|
| So everybody around the world could and should register with them
| and basically perform a DoS at that very first step of the
| process?
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Can someone explain why this won't result in a renaissance for
| peer to peer and e2e encrypted chat/forums/social media etc.?
| When government or industry makes it nearly impossible for
| consumer needs to be met we inevitably see a grey and black
| market spring up to meet those needs. My prediction is that if
| legislation like this becomes widespread we'll see a freely
| distributed application rise to prominence among a gaggle of
| others, it'll dominate the chat and social market until even
| grandma is using it and the establishment will have a right
| proper freak out as other social media giants implode and
| everyone is communicating anything they want with zero oversight
| from the government or industry. This is roughly how I remember
| the Napster affair going when DRM was pushed hard by the
| recording industry, it eventually collapsed but not before
| dealing a massive blow to the status quo and forcing a transition
| to streaming.
| namlem wrote:
| It will probably just lead to a rise in VPNs to access services
| that block British users.
| antonymy wrote:
| My immediate thought as well. As this law will apply to ANY
| service available to UK users the only feasible solution for
| smaller websites and app developers will be exclusion to
| avoid liability. So UK users will simply start using VPNs to
| by pass region blocks.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Ah, the familiar HN bubble, where people instinctively
| think of "simply start using VPNs" as the solution.
|
| No; some tiny minority of UK users may do that, but the
| overwhelming majority will just use whatever services are
| "approved" (follow whatever rules they have to, to stay in
| the market) and remain available by default.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| > If there is any hope, it lies in the proles.
| antonymy wrote:
| A VPN is a service that people who are not privacy
| conscious (which is most people) tend to only use if they
| have a particular need for it, such as circumventing a
| region block for some service they want to use. This
| isn't a very common problem for the average person living
| in Britain right now, but it's about to be. So I think
| it's pretty fair to assert VPN usage is going to become
| more common, as it is a pre-existing, ready-made solution
| to the problem millions of British people are about to
| have.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| My twelve year old son told me very casually a few months
| ago that he had installed a VPN to bypass the schools
| internet filters. It was clearly no big deal to him, it
| sounds like that is what all his friends are doing. At
| home they are of course doing this to bypass any parent
| filters to allow them to look at certain content.
| iasay wrote:
| I don't think that's the case. I know someone who has no
| involvement in anything technical in his entire life and
| is using VPNs and torrents fine. He can surely work it
| out if demand requires it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There are literally network television commercials that
| advertise VPNs now, and they've written software to make
| setup trivial.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Are there any YouTube users who still haven't heard of a
| VPN? They seem about as niche as TikTok at this point.
| flir wrote:
| Funnily enough I had to explain what a VPN is to one of
| my kids this weekend.
|
| But... if the need's there, people figure it out (as he's
| doing right now - for him it's something gaming related).
| chongli wrote:
| Loads of people in China use VPNs every day to bypass the
| great firewall and access foreign sites. They even rotate
| among many different VPN services when the ones they're
| using get blocked.
|
| I see no reason UK users couldn't do the same. All it
| takes to get grandma on a VPN is for an enterprising
| grandson to set her up.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >Loads of people in China use VPNs every day to bypass
| the great firewall and access foreign sites.
|
| For what it's worth, in my experience when I was in China
| it was trivial to bypass the firewall using a VPN
| service.
| corobo wrote:
| Sucks to be us idiots that happen to be working on tech
| businesses in the UK.
|
| I wonder if I can put an IP block on my own site and just
| ignore it all too. Dumbass country.
| stickfigure wrote:
| More likely it will result in crippling the domestic UK tech
| industry while everyone else in the world ignores it. I really
| don't see most countries extraditing someone for the high crime
| of "let british users access a website without verifying their
| age".
| goatcode wrote:
| After my ears bleeding from trying to understand the
| legislation, I know I'll be ignoring it.
| solarkraft wrote:
| This has been said about the EU, but the market has proven to
| just be too big to ignore.
|
| It could also be the reverse (see authoritarian countries),
| with international players leaving the market and local ones
| filling the space.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Very few websites comply with GDPR. Based on recent
| interpretations, it's essentially impossible for any US-
| owned or US-hosted site to comply with GDPR. The EU is just
| being extremely selective about its enforcement. If they
| ever decided to follow the law to the letter, most of the
| Internet would have to disconnect the EU. Theoretically the
| EU could make clones of all international sites like China
| has with Baidu and Weibo, but it's hard to see how that
| would be good for them.
|
| The UK's law is obviously a bit different as international
| companies _can_ comply with them, but it would essentially
| just limit legal websites to big tech who have enough
| market reach that all that compliance could pay for itself.
| akavel wrote:
| Regarding GDPR, citation needed - do you have actual
| links you can share to those claimed "recent
| interpretations", and whose in particular they are? I'd
| be quite interested to see them, if true ,which I
| seriously doubt - for the time being, as an EU citizen,
| my understanding is, and continues to be, that it's
| totally possible for US corpos to adhere to GDPR; it
| would just require _some_ money and effort to be spent by
| companies that blatantly hoover and hoard personally
| identifying data in hopes of squeezing some monies from
| it. And having to spend some money on anything that is
| not an investment into more money in the future seems to
| always trigger over-the-top allergic reaction in
| corporations. Until they feel the teeth of real law in
| painful fines, when suddenly "impossible" things will
| magically become possible.
| mminer237 wrote:
| They're decisions by the governments of Germany, France,
| and Italy:
|
| * https://rewis.io/urteile/urteil/lhm-20-01-2022-3-o-1749
| 320/
|
| * https://www.cnil.fr/en/use-google-analytics-and-data-
| transfe...
|
| * https://www.gpdp.it/web/guest/home/docweb/-/docweb-
| display/d...
|
| So far they've just been enforced against companies that
| use Google Analytics, but the reasoning behind it has
| been that having users connect to a US server enables
| that server to know EU users' IP addresses (which are
| legally PII), which would be subject to US government
| subpoenas to collect such, and the US government has not
| agreed to handle data in compliance with the GDPR,
| therefore it's illegal to have users connect to any US
| servers. It has nothing to do with "hoover[ing] and
| hoard[ing]" data.
|
| The only way for an American website to comply would be
| to form a separate company not subject to US control at
| all. However, at that point it's not really an American
| website, since no data or control can go to the US.
|
| Theoretically you could use some international service to
| handle all primary routing and get users to waive their
| rights under the GDPR before connecting to your website
| proper, but I'm not aware of such a service at this time.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I don't really think being a good 'worldwide' business
| can exist when longterm there are conflicting views held
| by governments about what is right. The fact is some
| governments and societies values are objectively better
| than others
| akavel wrote:
| Doesn't seem so clear cut to me yet, but I see what
| you're hinting at. The first one seems about Google Fonts
| specifically, together with IPs indeed, but not
| mentioning US govt subpoenas at all (at least in the
| English translation of the abstract). Personally, I long
| believed Google Fonts are a risk from privacy standpoint
| and not really necessary, just easy - this seems to
| basically be reflected in the abstract and makes me quite
| happy. Interestingly, it seems to mention _severity_ of
| the privacy abuse potential vs. benefit, which again
| sounds great to me. Now, the 2nd one mentions GA and
| subpoenas, so this becomes more tricky and I wonder what
| will come of it. Though for the time being, GA is exactly
| a target I hoped would be regulated, so again rather
| happy for now, though I see how this seems indeed a
| concern dealing with any US company. And how connecting
| the two (i.e. IPs as PII + US govt subpoenas) becomes a
| concern as well. IANAL, obviously, though. But
| interesting, thanks!
| rarec wrote:
| The EU's a bit bigger than the UK by a fair margin.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Probably by about 5x. If the UK makes things difficult,
| they can just be ignored.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I don't see how these multinational companies like Apple,
| etc don't end up with their own armies again like age old.
| stickfigure wrote:
| By "ignore it" I mean "ignore the law", not ignore the UK
| market. At some point the idea that countries can regulate
| the internet outside their borders falls apart. The US
| succeeds in enforcing its gambling laws WRT Americans, but
| that only works because other nations agree to do the
| enforcement.
|
| I just don't see that happening here. So maybe the UK
| becomes a no-travel zone for anyone in the worldwide tech
| industry? That would be sad, but it's a plausible outcome.
| gravitate wrote:
| It could mean choosing a life of crime if the regulations are
| too draconian. Now that your legit business enterprise can't
| succeed because of Stasi tactics by the UK government, you are
| forced to go underground and build something to sidestep the
| measures.
| __alexs wrote:
| Because the bill will never pass. It will be quietly swept away
| when new Tory leader is elected.
| flir wrote:
| I dunno. There's always a chance it's Braverman.
| muyuu wrote:
| at some point e2e encrypted comms will be grounds for getting
| swatted
|
| don't think this is a bridge too far, covering your face in the
| presence of public CCTV got you fined/arrested the week before
| covering your face with feel-good masks was compulsory
|
| don't @ me telling me it's stupid, I know it is, but this govt
| doesn't believe in free and private communications and it's
| working hard in progressively eradicating what's already out
| there, with full support from the main opposition party
| orangepurple wrote:
| Fortunately, where there is a will, there is a way.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209044791.
| ..
| muyuu wrote:
| only a tiny fraction of the people will bother with the
| immense overhead of steganography
|
| it would much more practicable to resort to alternative
| channels outside the internet, like mesh networking using
| direct comms (typically ad-hoc wifi modes and other radio
| protocols to avoid the liability/detectability of cabling),
| sneakernet, IP over Avian Carriers - those are all
| cumbersome and rather slow typically, but still orders of
| magnitude better than trying to pass stuff over ISPs using
| steganography
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Can someone explain why this won't result in a renaissance
| for peer to peer and e2e encrypted chat/forums/social media
| etc.?
|
| Simple, because if that because popular, new laws will be
| drafted to ban all of that from all app stores for
| circumventing this or some other reason.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| There are other methods of distribution than app stores.
| People didn't buy their copy of Napster from GameStop back in
| the day, they downloaded it from a website.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > There are other methods of distribution than app stores.
|
| And all of them are completely irrelevant because only us
| nerds would even know about them let alone how to use them.
|
| > People didn't buy their copy of Napster from GameStop
| back in the day
|
| Those days are long dead.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > won't result in a renaissance for peer to peer
|
| This horribly written law can easily be interpreted to apply to
| ISP's as well - so if the ISP is allowing these peer-to-peer
| systems that allow "unsafe" content to be shared, they're
| liable for it too, or they have to shut down the peer-to-peer
| systems.
|
| Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the
| easily regulable cable TV that they already understand.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I keep hearing this but there is a big difference between the
| public facing platform and the pipe to my house.
|
| Where is the law vague? Your ISP is not a platform. I feel
| like this is a scare tactic.
| cowtools wrote:
| The law could create a precedent that leads to greater
| censorship in the future.
| cowtools wrote:
| Sure, but there is some limitation to what they could
| feasibly restrict. Tor with WebRTC bridges?
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| You could conceivably implement a fully encrypted p2p
| social network over WebRTC within the browser. You would
| obtain the app by simply visiting a website that hosts it
| making it nearly unblockable since anyone could stand up a
| page. Public key crypto could allow you to verify your
| identity or send private messages across the network. The
| hardest part is establishing the initial connection but
| since this can be done with a variety of methods I'm sure a
| sufficiently creative person could come up with something
| fun and easy for people to use. Maybe some form of
| steganography where you post an image to your social feed
| and others can point their phone's camera at it and get the
| SDP offer and then post the answer as a reply or something.
| A more automated method would probably be better but that's
| left as an exercise to the reader.
| cowtools wrote:
| I've looked into this the other month. There are a number
| of obfuscation networks that have tried this to some
| extent (including IPFS and GNUnet), but I am yet to find
| a network that works exactly as you've described: where
| you can just access a "tor web portal" in your browser or
| something. I think an obstacle would be preventing
| fingerprinting inside a non-fingerprint-proof browser.
| You might be able to do this if you ported something like
| tor's fingerprint-proof browser to emscripten and have it
| render to an HTML canvas!
|
| So far Tor has implemented WebRTC[0], but that's just for
| bridging to their main network.
|
| [0] https://snowflake.torproject.org/
|
| P.S. I've also considered the "decentralized p2p social
| media" idea myself, but mostly because I believe the
| ideas we have currently behind online voting, ranking and
| moderation are completely at odds with IRL discussions
| which are P2P and based on "forwarding" ideas to known
| peers (friends, family, community members, countrymen)
| rather than posting and ranking content with anonymous
| peers (which are susceptible to Sybil attacks). The fact
| that so much discussion takes place on corporate-owned
| forums (Including this one, regardless of how benevolent
| ycombinator may be) presents a major threat to democracy
| in general.
|
| Instead of "liking" or "upvoting" a post on a centralized
| forum, why not "rehost" or "forward" a post on a
| decentralized forum: essentially seeding it like in
| BitTorrent or "pinning" it in IPFS. "Followers" of a user
| donate their storage and bandwidth to them, combating
| bureaucratic attacks like delisting and DDoS against
| popular users.
|
| If you could port IPFS to run completely in a browser you
| would have this complete "pseudo-social-media"
| functionality. They have something called "IPNS" where
| instead of giving someone the hash of a file like in
| BitTorrent's DHT, you could give them a public key which
| you use to sign the latest version of a file that is to
| be fetched. The Public/Private keypair could represent a
| user's identity, and the file in this case could be a
| blog or account page which is updated with new links to
| the user's posts, or links to other user's posts.
|
| So if you ported IPFS to work within a web browser, it
| would just be a matter of implementing a user-interface.
| Boom, social media solved. You could maintain parity
| between desktop and web versions by using libraries like
| libdatachannel[1] and datachannel-wasm[2]
|
| [1] https://github.com/paullouisageneau/libdatachannel
| [2] https://github.com/paullouisageneau/datachannel-wasm
| zarzavat wrote:
| > Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the
| easily regulable cable TV that they already understand.
|
| Unless the UK significantly increases its military capacity
| and sets up world government, they will not be able to shut
| down the internet. The internet will still exist. The best
| they can hope for is a great firewall / North Korea type
| situation which would require a much more authoritarian
| (moreover _functioning_ ) government than even the UK can
| muster.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| 1) The point isn't to regulate the internet, it's to
| regulate what UK citizens can see.
|
| 2) The great firewall was complicated by the design goal of
| accessing some, but not all, foreign websites. The UK could
| accomplish their goals in a day or two by just cutting all
| the underwater cables. That sounds like an impossible crazy
| thing, but so did Brexit a couple years ago.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| The EU might see that as an act of war......
|
| A large amount (if not the vast majority) of fibre optics
| from Europe to Americas, go though the UK and cutting
| them off cuts off the biggest parts of the world from
| each other.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The EU might also see the UK as an inspiration!
| 1991g wrote:
| I do not think the European perception of the UK could
| accurately be described as "inspirational" at the moment.
| olivermarks wrote:
| 'Cutting' is extreme but the spooky filtering that is
| almost certainly already in place certainly isn't, as
| Chinese citizens are all too aware
| Iv wrote:
| Conservatives all over the world dream of setting up a
| chinese-style firewall in their countries. They are angry
| that it was first done by a clearly authoritarian regime
| which brings some resistance to the idea, but otherwise, in
| the name of fight against terrorism or child pornography,
| they would have set it up already.
| Agamus wrote:
| By conservatives, do you mean the same people who believe
| we should be conservative in our application of
| government?
|
| Are you sure you are not speaking of liberals, who
| believe government should be applied liberally?
|
| Not like any of them act as they speak, but if I am not
| mistaken, that's what the words mean.
| goodpoint wrote:
| You are mistaken.
| [deleted]
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > believe we should be conservative in our application of
| government?
|
| No, they believe "traditional" systems should be retained
| (i.e. conserved).
|
| > government should be applied liberally?
|
| That is almost diametrically opposite to the use of the
| word liberal as applied to politics.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Conservatives are, by definition, people who want to
| _conserve_ the status quo. They believe society is good
| as it is (or as it was in sine possibly imagined past)
| and seek to use the power of the state to prevent
| changes, and to revert any changes that are pushing
| society away from what they believe is the status quo.
| Conservatism has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
| "being conservative in application of government". In the
| USA, it happens that part of the status quo that many
| conservatives want to conserve is a weak federal
| government. In the UK, conservatives are typically
| monarchist, which is essentially the opposite position.
|
| Either way, many conservatives are collectivists: they
| believe the needs of society and preservation of
| tradition outweigh the desires of individuals, and so
| they tend to be in favor of concepts such as the
| traditional family excluding gay people, the rule of
| mothers in child rearing being more important than the
| freedom of women to pursue careers and so on.
|
| The opposite of conservatives are progressives, people
| who believe the status quo is not generally good, and who
| seek to use the power of the state to change the status
| quo in a direction they believe is progress.
|
| There are also many collectivist progressives, and as
| such tend to want things like egalitarian schooling even
| if certain extraordinary kids may be kept behind, or
| supporting progressive taxation such that those who have
| more have to give more to the collective.
|
| On a different axis, we have liberals, who are the
| opposite of collectivists. Liberals can be conservative
| or progressive, but they ultimately believe that the most
| important value is individual freedom.
|
| An example of a liberal conservative is someone like Ron
| Paul. He believes the status quo is generally good and
| shouldn't be changed to much, except where he thinks
| government has over reached. However, he also believes
| government shouldn't involve itself in people lives, even
| to preserve societal values, so he tends to support the
| legalization of Marijuana and perhaps even gay marriage
| (though given electoral realities, in not sure of his
| public position on the second). Contrast this to a more
| collectivist conservative like justice Clarence Thomas,
| who believes the state should ban gay marriage and even
| sodomy and contraception.
| knewter wrote:
| Clarence Thomas believes that the federal government
| overreached its constitutional powers. He's one of the
| people whose job it is to make that determination.
|
| Your assertion that his desire to see the federal
| government restricted by the document that exists to
| restrict it is equivalent to promoting particular laws at
| the state level belies either ignorance or
| disingenuousness. Which?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Clarence Thomas believes these things should be
| prohibited. He has stated some of these things before,
| especially about gay marriage - he doesn't believe it
| should be permitted in the United States, regardless of
| how that permission is achieved. He doesn't necessarily
| believe that the Supreme Court should or can ban it, but
| he certainly believes it _should_ be banned, in an ideal
| world.
|
| He doesn't believe that the Supreme Court has power to
| prohibit them, so he's trying to do the next best thing:
| make sure that the Supreme Court doesn't _prevent_ the
| federal or state governments from prohibiting them.
|
| Also note that Roe v Wade has nothing whatsoever to do
| with the federal government. It has everything to do with
| individual rights, which don't come from the government,
| they are natural rights. The government can only
| recognize or fail to recognize them.
|
| His predecessors recognized that these wildly popular
| natural rights exist and are compatible with the
| Constitution, so they made sure all states are compelled
| to recognize them.
|
| The current highly partizan court has decided to ignore
| these natural rights in favor of their political agenda.
| That they couch this in the language of overreach is just
| an obvious rhetorical ploy.
|
| If the federal government makes a law prohibiting
| abortion in any state, this same Supreme Court will argue
| that is obviously in the power of the federal government
| to regulate. If the federal government possess a law
| guaranteeing abortion, they will find that it is
| unconstitutional, tidying done other legal reasoning.
|
| You may choose to fall for the rhetoric of demagogues
| like Thomas, but most people who think critically quickly
| see past it.
| canadiantim wrote:
| From what I can tell it's more the progressive wing of
| most countries who are pushing for authoritarian
| censorship of the internet. Just look at Canada
| metadat wrote:
| <Citation requested>
|
| Is this common knowledge? It's the first claim I've
| encountered of Canada attempting Internet censorship.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| It's a big topic right now in Canada.
|
| Pre-Elon Twitter compared Canada's proposed regulations
| to North Korea and China.
|
| >Newly released documents reveal Twitter Canada told
| government officials that a federal plan to create a new
| internet regulator with the power to block specific
| websites is comparable to drastic actions used in
| authoritarian countries like China, North Korea and Iran.
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-twitter-
| com...
| zo1 wrote:
| I googled it and found Bill C-11. Not going to dig deeper
| into it and confirm details, but maybe you didn't hear
| about it for a reason?
| metadat wrote:
| Thanks, I'm not living in .ca at the moment. I do believe
| Canadians appreciate their Internet freedom.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > ... it's more the progressive wing of most countries
| who are pushing for authoritarian censorship of the
| internet
|
| China, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Russia...
| Aren't progressive by any metric.
| earth_walker wrote:
| I agree that the Liberal's current push to degrade
| Canadian's privacy is worrisome - and their excuse is "we
| need expanded surveillance powers to make sure your
| privacy is protected..."!?!
|
| I disagree that this is a partisan thing however. Whether
| it's Canada, the UK or anywhere else it seems each party
| in power just pushes for more surveillance and more
| censorship, just using different excuses to justify their
| actions.
|
| For example, Harper's conservative government put forth
| bill C-13 (online crime excuse) and C-30 ('think of the
| children' excuse), which arguably laid the way for much
| of the spying apparatus that is currently in place
| against Canadian citizens. And while Obama allowed the
| NSA's warrantless internet surveillance program, Trump
| extended it until 2024.
|
| All governments want to spy on you, and all governments
| want to be able to control what you say, period. They
| just want you to beg for it first.
| bigfudge wrote:
| It's kind of you to say 'even' the uk could muster, but at
| this point functioning government seems a forlorn hope
| here.
| tgv wrote:
| > Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the
| easily regulable cable TV
|
| It's a tad more nefarious. Say what you want about cable tv,
| but it doesn't track your every move.
| metadat wrote:
| Actually the cable providers can and do track everything
| about what you watch. There are also no rules or
| regulations about how they can use the data they harvest
| from you.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Does-the-cable-company-know-what-I-
| am-...
| zhte415 wrote:
| Facebook will be easier than what you mentioned.
|
| Napster took off because it meant not spending 10 or 15 pounds
| or dollars or euros on a CD. THhe DRM came later, and what
| really killed DRM was the change in business model to iTunes
| with individual songs, the transformation of the 'star' from a
| face on a CD to a bigger product.
| fguerraz wrote:
| Don't worry, blocking p2p is the next step and is extremely
| easy to do.
|
| China has done it already and it's very effective:
|
| * Force every service provider to register their IPs and
| domains (for CDN use)
|
| * Force every ISP to do stateful firewalling and block every
| attempt to establish a new connection unless the destination IP
| is on a whilelist maintained by the government.
|
| Problem solved.
| swayvil wrote:
| Wifi mesh nets in the city. Sneaker nets in between
| crmd wrote:
| Matrix over avian carrier
| chihuahua wrote:
| ants carrying ATM packets
| HappyDreamer wrote:
| But ... the Anti Avian Artillery?
| tacocataco wrote:
| Deploy the wifi bats!
| TeeMassive wrote:
| wyager wrote:
| Please don't use this thread to shill a shitcoin that
| doesn't even remotely attempt to solve the issue being
| discussed in the thread. Even if the shitcoin itself
| weren't stupid, it's specifically targeting low-power iot
| devices, not general internet usage.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I thought I was mocking them, but whatever.
| darepublic wrote:
| Autonomous pirate satellite internet
| jerf wrote:
| Men with guns.
|
| Yeah, they can't 100% win. They don't need to. In fact,
| even if they did 100% win, they'd _still_ find reasons to
| need to crush some people just to keep people reminded of
| who has the guns.
| omginternets wrote:
| The "men with guns" bit cuts both ways, though.
| jerf wrote:
| Not in the UK.
| omginternets wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure. Riots don't require guns to have
| an effect, as the UK has seen quite recently. Point
| being: an analysis that draws its conclusion from the
| presence of state violence is incomplete if it doesn't
| also consider violence on the part of citizens/subjects.
| swayvil wrote:
| High altitude balloon laser net
| trasz wrote:
| It's very effective because people just use (illegal)
| streaming services instead :-)
|
| Otherwise one can run p2p over VPNs, like for many other
| things.
| [deleted]
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Exactly. P2P file sharing only died due to the advent of
| streaming services.
| getSood666 wrote:
| There are options to take things dark
| https://github.com/squat/kilo
|
| The right bash script can set that up with a UI on all 3 major
| OSs. iDevices work with Wireguard
|
| The "open web" would suffer but so would the panopticon which
| is more valuable to the masses long term
|
| A new counter culture is needed. The old one went corpo rent
| seeking, as hippies do when they age.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Peer to peer needs a business model. E2EE social media involves
| storing tons of large binary blobs (images and video) for
| people, and they need to cover that cost somehow. Since it's
| already been established that social media is supposed to be
| free, a lot of people aren't going to want you to charge for
| it, no matter what advantages you have over other market
| participants.
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