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UK Home Secretary considering removing right to anonymity on social media

91 points by ArchieMaclean 5y ago

c7DJTLrn 5y ago
UK is becoming more Orwellian by the day. Not sure if I really want to spend the rest of my life here when we're ran by nutjobs.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  It's not just the UK, is the whole world: "Privacy activists oppose EU plans for a GDPR-compliant Whois v2" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28892013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28892013
  - rektide 5y ago
    And the Orwellian aspects aren't just trying to change their fucked up little places, they're trying to redefine how the whole internet has to operate, demanding the world's information system caters to them. Even with projects like GDPR, we're trying to build some pro-citizen rules. But we've still done nothing to defend or enable individuals, to grant them powers & rights to operate independently & freely online. There's no bill of hosting rights, that I'm aware of, anywhere on the planet. I want to see a nation step up & try to enhance & promote speech & data of it's citizen's in an supernational context. Our citizens have a right to have their words online! We are actively building & encouraging hosting solutions to enable that!
    - userbinator 5y ago
      The US would've been the only nation to have the resources and attitude to want to do something like that, but currently it seems to be taking an Orwellian path of its own too.
      - rektide 5y ago
        Any random country could declare a slew of user rights. The country doesnt have to use big-stick behavior to insist upon rights: they can just tacitly support every unlocking, jailbreaking, right to repair, pro consumer move that comes along. Dont litigate for change, just provide a bastion of defence for the segment of the population working to spring free from the top down consumerization the world has fallen into passivity into.
- all2 5y ago
  We'd be glad to have you in the US. I'll continue to offer that so long as the 2nd Amendment stands (I presume the possession of lethal protective measures are a bulwark against infringements of other rights... we'll know if I'm correct in the next 10 or so years).
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Plenty of places going totally bonkers. I wonder if the world always seems like this in real time. When I first learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was described as a bit of a mild thriller with a happy end, much ado about nothing. But it must have seemed like apocalypse about to happen.
- tweedledee 5y ago
  I presumed Orwell was inspired by the UK and not the other way around
  - dTal 5y ago
    Orwell was inspired by - directly referencing, really - the Soviet Union. It's set in the UK for ironic contrast.
    - tweedledee 5y ago
      In 1984 I’d say he was more inspired by his time working for the UK government in Burma. Particularly the use of propaganda to control the population.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
One of the interesting documented effects of removing anonymity is that is lowers the input of moderate voices. People with extreme views don’t care if their voice is public.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  I would not describe today’s internet as promoting the sharing and reasoned consideration of moderate viewpoints. It turns out that anonymous sock puppets prevent communities from moderating extremism. We’ve invested two decades or more by now into the theory that anonymity will prevent the suppression of moderate voices, and we’ve failed. Time to try something else.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    > we’ve failed Extremism seems lower than ever to me.
    - Pyramus 5y ago
      Not sure if you are being satirical or not. Political extremism is at an all-time high in Western democracies: The US has seen a president that doesn't respect elections, an attack on the capitol, an ever widening gap between the left/right 'tribes', and poor and rich. Far-right extremism has overtaken Islamist fundamentalism. A decline of newspapers, 'the media' and journalism in general and the rise of Fox News and the like. That's not a US exclusive: UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland paint a similar, slightly less pronounced, picture. We live in a period of unprecedented peace in Western democracies and all signs are pointing towards increased nationalism and instability.
      - mdp2021 5y ago
        I am not sure where you see a rise of nationalism. Particularism for distrust of a broader subjection, for example, is more of a regionalism.
pacifika 5y ago
Does this require a Great British Firewall to enforce this?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Please, no. That's not an idea that we should be giving to them.
  - pmlnr 5y ago
    There's already the madness of https://www.iwf.org.uk/ https://www.iwf.org.uk/ which many ISP willingly follow, whereas https://www.virginmedia.com/help/list-of-court-orders https://www.virginmedia.com/help/list-of-court-orders is mandatory.
    - noiwillnot 5y ago
      I have bookmarked the second link long time ago. Incredible resource, thank you gov.uk
iso1210 5y ago
Context - a UK MP has just been killed by a constituent at a regular 'meet the MP' incident. This type of attack happened in 2016 when another MP was killed, in 2010 when it was an attempted murder (the MP survived), in 2000 (MP severely injured, his assistant was killed). Before that there was the attack on the entire government at the party conference in 1984 by the IRA which killed 5 (including one MP), and assassination of the Northern Ireland secretary in 1979.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  If only their response to 72 poor people dying in the Grenfell Tower fire was as swift and wide-reaching as their response to a millionaire Conservative MP being stabbed.
  - dash2 5y ago
    There’s been a very serious public enquiry about that. (There’s also now been a policy response.) Do you think the issues of Grenfell could have been solved by immediate action? I think an enquiry to figure out what went wrong was necessary. You also seem to think there’s been a swift, wide reaching response to the MP’s murder. I’m not sure what that is, since this policy proposal has merely been mooted.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      For example, nothing was done to replace similar cladding found in hundreds of other high-rise buildings. Or with similar, deadly fire hazard risks found in older council buildings. Or rather, not nothing. Live human watchmen are patrolling hundreds of buildings and will wake everyone up in case there’s a fire; because there are no fire alarms and if a fire does break out, you have no time to spare at all. Oh and the residents have to pay for this. But the people who built these, designed them, accepted as safe, or indeed set the regulation, that’s all fine. https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/waking-watches-the-scale-of-englands-building-safety-crisis-unveiled-65882 https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/waking-watch...
LatteLazy 5y ago
Don't worry, no one in the UK government actually had any idea how to do an internet. This will be the same as the last 3 porn bans.
sysadm1n 5y ago
It's actually tricky enough to setup an anonymous account on Facebook or Twitter. They essentially extort and harass you asking for a phone number, and if you don't provide it: no account for you. And for those crying 'Burner phone!'. Where I live you have to register your legal name and have it attached to the SIM card. And then there's the cellphone masts that record your phone's interactions and proximity, so it's a hard problem. Anonymity is hard. As for encryption, does this mean we can't do online banking if it's outlawed?
- nootropicat 5y ago
  There are specialized sites where you can buy those codes sent to temporary phone numbers. Telegram is the hardest to get anonymously now because they require app installation on a smartphone. I suppose it could be hacked with an android emulator + normal sms code, but it's much harder in practice.
- Shank 5y ago
  > Where I live you have to register your legal name and have it attached to the SIM card. This isn’t true everywhere, and phone numbers work internationally. I’ve got a Weibo account with a +1 US phone number and it works (surprisingly). The problem with the phone number system is that quite honestly, it’s only not anonymous in cities/states/countries that make it closely linked to identity.
  - FourthProtocol 5y ago
    And even then there are levels of gray - I registered on Facebook in 2007 with my real phone number. I changed providers soon after, and no longer have that number. But it's still the number Facebook have for me. I now (and many of my friends) have a pay-as-you-go SIM for anything (including parcel delivery) that want a number.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  > if it's outlawed? It will be licensed. Banks will have a license. Companies will be able to apply for VPN to carry on (and required to monitor employees traffic)
new_guy 5y ago
Well good luck with that. They can only target places like Facebook/Twitter, there's hundreds of smaller social sites that will just completely ignore this shit. Not to mention the internet is global, so really they can't enforce anything. > Priti Patel considering removing right to anonymity on social media to stop ‘relentless’ abuse of MPs If they weren't so corrupt and inept they wouldn't be subject to 'abuse', it comes with the job. Edit: also to add, abusing people online is an easy form of 'slactivism', people let off steam, it keeps them lazy and complacent, stops them taking action in the real world. If that venue is removed, i.e arresting people for name calling on Facebook (which is already happening) then actual actions in the real world will escalate and dealing with name calling will be the least of these peoples problems.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > there's hundreds of smaller social sites that will just completely ignore this shit Shifting potentially dangerous content from Twitter and Facebook to small, specialised sounds like a win win.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Yes, if there's anything people formulating dark plans hate, it's secrecy and privacy. It's important to force them into more robust and secure venues, their current opsec is terrible. It'll be another guaranteed win, like FOSTA and SESTA in the US. Thank Congress that child prostitution has moved to places that law enforcement have no access to, and that sex workers require middlemen again in order to work.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "If they weren't so corrupt and inept they wouldn't be subject to 'abuse', it comes with the job." It indeed comes with the job, but I think you are trying to shift the blame too much. Politicians cannot possibly do their job in a way that appeals to everyone and step on no one's toes. And some people out there are not entirely sane and the Internet has given them wings. Every public figure, not just politicians, is a target of stupid hate. Actors, singers, journalists: if your face surfaces on people's screen too often, you will collect a team of disgusting haters.
SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
Disallowing anonymity clearly creates wonderful environments where no radicalization happens, and everyone is polite. It certainly helps to prevent social divisiveness. Just look at Facebook! /s, hopefully obviously.
- klyrs 5y ago
  It's currently possible to "verify" your facebook account with a fake ID. Don't be so flippant, ID cards in many jurisdictions already have barcodes, and if governments want social media to require legal ID, it will be easy to set up a system to do exactly that.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Roughly 20 years ago, there was a documentary on British TV about fake ID. They found that the technique used in the 1971 book The Day of the Jackal (find someone dead, get a copy of their birth certificate, bootstrap other ID from that) still worked. They then demonstrated how you didn’t even need the person you were doing this to to be dead, as they got a provisional driving license in the name of David Blunkett. Who was the Home Secretary at the time. And is blind. Apparently the UK police still use the Jackal method as of last year, though obviously no system can possibly prevent actions by its own enforcement body: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/07/met-police-legal-action-spies-use-dead-childrens-identities https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/07/met-police-l...
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Sure, but that's tons of work and probably a felony. It took me about 10 minutes to come up with shitty low-res picture of a fake ID that facebook accepted. And for now, that doesn't seem like a significant legal risk.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        I wouldn’t want to rely on your idea not also being treated as a serious offence, even absent any new laws in the UK specifically about this. I mean, using a fake ID to get something you would otherwise not be entitled to does sound like “fraud” to me… but I’m not even close to being legally trained.
kzrdude 5y ago
Instead of attacking specific content or specific people/personal info, what if we go at the structure and system instead? - Don't care about the content of the tweet (no fact checking boards) - Don't care to register who sent it (no privacy leak to government) "Attack" the structure: - Heavily tune down features that can enable posts on social media to go viral. Basically ban virality. Boosting high-emotion posts above all else is the largest systemic issue. Yes, it's heavy-handed, but it's not censorship. It's not registering who has which political opinions. It's just changing the rules equally for all, to create a better forum.
- pjc50 5y ago
  I mean .. maybe, but how do you phrase this as a law, and how do you make the billionaires dependent on virality obey it?
  - intricatedetail 5y ago
    Ban feeds that are other than chronological of people you follow.
    - hellojesus 5y ago
      The government has no business banning the way private companies operate. There is no quantifiable harm. Instead, just stop using those platforms if you don't like them. It's just that simple.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > The government has no business banning the way private companies operate. That's, like, exactly what the business of government is. > There is no quantifiable harm. If this is in reference to the particular mode of operation suggested to be regulated upthread (where it might, arguably, be true) rather than the generality in the previous sentence (where it clearly is false), then its an argument against the particular regulation, not against government regulation of private business patterns generally.
mmarq 5y ago
British Home secretaries have been proposing insane ideas for a decade. Patel alone proposed to: - build a wave machine to stop (drown?) immigrants coming from France - build a floating wall in the Channel to stop immigrants from France - send asylum seekers to concentration camps in some remote islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - send asylum seekers to concentration camps on abandoned oil rigs in the North Sea - reintroduce capital punishment (but she wasn't Home Secretary at the time) Before then somebody wanted to force people to buy a special ID card to watch porn (I'm not sure if the innovator in question was May, Rudd or Javid).
- oliv__ 5y ago
  It's scary to think that these people are even remotely close to any position of power over ordinary citizens.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Different league, but in the early days of Nuclear Red Button, UK Home Office was tasked with developing failsafe communication with Westminster when the PM is around the country. This was just after the US developed some kind of terrestrial radio system. The UK equivalent was entrusting all drivers with a box of coins so they can use the phone boxes. Should have hear run out, the PM could call the operator and request reverse charge connection (with UK strategic command or sth presumably). This was also deemed failsafe, as there are many phone boxes around the country. It was once described in length on QI...
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > Should have hear run out, the PM could call the operator and request reverse charge connection (with UK strategic command or sth presumably). "Will you accept this collect call from: LAUNCH-THE-MISSILES-DO-IT-NOW?"
  - andyjohnson0 5y ago
    > The UK equivalent was entrusting all drivers with a box of coins This was in the 1950s and is described in Peter Hennessey's excellent book The Human Button. It's been a while since I read the book, but from memory the cabinet office also purchased an AA membership so that the prime minister's driver would have a key giving them access to the private AA phone boxes that were fairly common back then. They had an arrangement with the AA call handlers to allow the PM to be connected to the appropriate part of government in an emergency. Meanwhile the US and Russian government probably had satellite...
gorgoiler 5y ago
Implementation of sanctions is the end game, and that end game is a national firewall. The UK should propose the outlaw of all bunny killing videos. Relatively benign you’d think, but as a sideshow it would require some kind of way of blocking the bad guy bunny killers and the way to do that is with a Great Wall of China^WTunbridge Wells^W^W^W^W^Wnational firewall. Actually, it’s even more meta. The UK establishment has no intention of doing anything as base as constitutionally accountable lawmaking. Far better to allow these US corporations to dodge tax on their UK income, then threaten to crack down on the tax dodging unless FB/GOOG/ELLO bend to the government’s privately (and extra-parliamentary) will.
noarchy 5y ago
To those who want social media regulated, this is the kind of thing you'll actually get. So be careful what you wish for.
KaiserPro 5y ago
I mean yeah she is, but it'll be forgotten when another avoidable crisis comes to a head (possibly involving immigrants in one form or another)
rich_sasha 5y ago
What irks me personally about it is the reporting that it was done by a “British citizen of Somali origin”. He was probably born in the UK, went through schools there, maybe his parents did too. But let’s just make it clear, he’s not British in the same way that someone white is. Or, you know, Pakistani, but from an upper-middle-class family of doctors. No one reports that Wayne Rooney is British, of English origin.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Your quote is quite likely the most important part of the whole story, as it helps with fact-based policy decisions on immigration. Disagreeing with this is akin to putting your head in the sand and wishing for a reality that simply is not there.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    But he wasn’t foreign, is my whole point. He was born in Britain. Or if not, passed the whole naturalisation process. Apparently he’s indistinguishable from other British people. Oh except for the “Somali heritage”. I feel like the focus on “Somali” is meant to deflect any responsibility on domestic matters. This guy apparently was born, bred, schooled in the UK. Maybe he was radicalised by hardcore Somali-heritage islamists (if that’s a thing), but then it’s a failure of UK domestic policy for creating an environment, or cause, for them to organise, and UK domestic security for preventing this. I’m not saying this is easy, rather that this is where the onus lies. But when we say “ah he’s Somali”, suddenly it’s someone else’s fault. When a white British guy, with a name like Gary or Shaun stabs a teacher, say, you get stories from people who went to school with Gary or Shaun. He was an alright guy but a bit extreme when angry, maybe. Or no one would see it coming, he was a quiet guy. Why did no one see it coming? Ah well you can’t prevent everything. But this guy is Somali, it’s their fault. I mean, ok he’s British but you know what I mean. Different British.
    - jahewson 5y ago
      You can’t simultaneously assert that the fact that he’s not foreign is the most important component while advocating for excluding this information from the news. Was he British? <censored>. Was he foreign? <censored>. What in his upbringing could have had ties to extremism? <censored>. Hmm. Great newspaper.
jimnotgym 5y ago
Perhaps Conservative MPs could review their own post histories and be 100% sure they have not sowed division and hate, especially around Brexit. Or maybe just review Boris Johnson's own newspaper column where he has said some things that many find offensive. Boris runs a Trumpist government that gained power by sowing discontent and division. Or it is anonymous tweeters of course. I noticed one Conservative MP followed by thousands of bots presumably there to make him seem like an influencer to the algo. Then these weird networks of retweeters pile in to amplify what he said. But it is everyone else who is at fault....
rektide 5y ago
i'm not going to treat anything from idiot Patel with even the faintest hint that there's anything actionable or real, that this is anything other than trying to chuck the overton window towards some extremist end. but again, i just want to look at this less from the UK perspective, and to note once again this is some part of the world imagining it's going to create a strong guidelines for how the rest of the world has to operate.
guilhas 5y ago
To defeat China we must become China

91 points by ArchieMaclean 5y ago

UK is becoming more Orwellian by the day. Not sure if I really want to spend the rest of my life here when we're ran by nutjobs.

pmlnr 5y ago
It's not just the UK, is the whole world: "Privacy activists oppose EU plans for a GDPR-compliant Whois v2" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28892013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28892013
- rektide 5y ago
  And the Orwellian aspects aren't just trying to change their fucked up little places, they're trying to redefine how the whole internet has to operate, demanding the world's information system caters to them. Even with projects like GDPR, we're trying to build some pro-citizen rules. But we've still done nothing to defend or enable individuals, to grant them powers & rights to operate independently & freely online. There's no bill of hosting rights, that I'm aware of, anywhere on the planet. I want to see a nation step up & try to enhance & promote speech & data of it's citizen's in an supernational context. Our citizens have a right to have their words online! We are actively building & encouraging hosting solutions to enable that!
  - userbinator 5y ago
    The US would've been the only nation to have the resources and attitude to want to do something like that, but currently it seems to be taking an Orwellian path of its own too.
    - rektide 5y ago
      Any random country could declare a slew of user rights. The country doesnt have to use big-stick behavior to insist upon rights: they can just tacitly support every unlocking, jailbreaking, right to repair, pro consumer move that comes along. Dont litigate for change, just provide a bastion of defence for the segment of the population working to spring free from the top down consumerization the world has fallen into passivity into.
all2 5y ago
We'd be glad to have you in the US. I'll continue to offer that so long as the 2nd Amendment stands (I presume the possession of lethal protective measures are a bulwark against infringements of other rights... we'll know if I'm correct in the next 10 or so years).
rich_sasha 5y ago
Plenty of places going totally bonkers. I wonder if the world always seems like this in real time. When I first learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was described as a bit of a mild thriller with a happy end, much ado about nothing. But it must have seemed like apocalypse about to happen.
tweedledee 5y ago
I presumed Orwell was inspired by the UK and not the other way around
- dTal 5y ago
  Orwell was inspired by - directly referencing, really - the Soviet Union. It's set in the UK for ironic contrast.
  - tweedledee 5y ago
    In 1984 I’d say he was more inspired by his time working for the UK government in Burma. Particularly the use of propaganda to control the population.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

One of the interesting documented effects of removing anonymity is that is lowers the input of moderate voices. People with extreme views don’t care if their voice is public.

floatingatoll 5y ago
I would not describe today’s internet as promoting the sharing and reasoned consideration of moderate viewpoints. It turns out that anonymous sock puppets prevent communities from moderating extremism. We’ve invested two decades or more by now into the theory that anonymity will prevent the suppression of moderate voices, and we’ve failed. Time to try something else.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  > we’ve failed Extremism seems lower than ever to me.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    Not sure if you are being satirical or not. Political extremism is at an all-time high in Western democracies: The US has seen a president that doesn't respect elections, an attack on the capitol, an ever widening gap between the left/right 'tribes', and poor and rich. Far-right extremism has overtaken Islamist fundamentalism. A decline of newspapers, 'the media' and journalism in general and the rise of Fox News and the like. That's not a US exclusive: UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland paint a similar, slightly less pronounced, picture. We live in a period of unprecedented peace in Western democracies and all signs are pointing towards increased nationalism and instability.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      I am not sure where you see a rise of nationalism. Particularism for distrust of a broader subjection, for example, is more of a regionalism.

pacifika 5y ago

Does this require a Great British Firewall to enforce this?

selfhoster11 5y ago
Please, no. That's not an idea that we should be giving to them.
- pmlnr 5y ago
  There's already the madness of https://www.iwf.org.uk/ https://www.iwf.org.uk/ which many ISP willingly follow, whereas https://www.virginmedia.com/help/list-of-court-orders https://www.virginmedia.com/help/list-of-court-orders is mandatory.
  - noiwillnot 5y ago
    I have bookmarked the second link long time ago. Incredible resource, thank you gov.uk

iso1210 5y ago

Context - a UK MP has just been killed by a constituent at a regular 'meet the MP' incident. This type of attack happened in 2016 when another MP was killed, in 2010 when it was an attempted murder (the MP survived), in 2000 (MP severely injured, his assistant was killed). Before that there was the attack on the entire government at the party conference in 1984 by the IRA which killed 5 (including one MP), and assassination of the Northern Ireland secretary in 1979.

jodrellblank 5y ago
If only their response to 72 poor people dying in the Grenfell Tower fire was as swift and wide-reaching as their response to a millionaire Conservative MP being stabbed.
- dash2 5y ago
  There’s been a very serious public enquiry about that. (There’s also now been a policy response.) Do you think the issues of Grenfell could have been solved by immediate action? I think an enquiry to figure out what went wrong was necessary. You also seem to think there’s been a swift, wide reaching response to the MP’s murder. I’m not sure what that is, since this policy proposal has merely been mooted.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    For example, nothing was done to replace similar cladding found in hundreds of other high-rise buildings. Or with similar, deadly fire hazard risks found in older council buildings. Or rather, not nothing. Live human watchmen are patrolling hundreds of buildings and will wake everyone up in case there’s a fire; because there are no fire alarms and if a fire does break out, you have no time to spare at all. Oh and the residents have to pay for this. But the people who built these, designed them, accepted as safe, or indeed set the regulation, that’s all fine. https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/waking-watches-the-scale-of-englands-building-safety-crisis-unveiled-65882 https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/waking-watch...

LatteLazy 5y ago

Don't worry, no one in the UK government actually had any idea how to do an internet. This will be the same as the last 3 porn bans.

sysadm1n 5y ago

It's actually tricky enough to setup an anonymous account on Facebook or Twitter. They essentially extort and harass you asking for a phone number, and if you don't provide it: no account for you. And for those crying 'Burner phone!'. Where I live you have to register your legal name and have it attached to the SIM card. And then there's the cellphone masts that record your phone's interactions and proximity, so it's a hard problem. Anonymity is hard. As for encryption, does this mean we can't do online banking if it's outlawed?

nootropicat 5y ago
There are specialized sites where you can buy those codes sent to temporary phone numbers. Telegram is the hardest to get anonymously now because they require app installation on a smartphone. I suppose it could be hacked with an android emulator + normal sms code, but it's much harder in practice.
Shank 5y ago
> Where I live you have to register your legal name and have it attached to the SIM card. This isn’t true everywhere, and phone numbers work internationally. I’ve got a Weibo account with a +1 US phone number and it works (surprisingly). The problem with the phone number system is that quite honestly, it’s only not anonymous in cities/states/countries that make it closely linked to identity.
- FourthProtocol 5y ago
  And even then there are levels of gray - I registered on Facebook in 2007 with my real phone number. I changed providers soon after, and no longer have that number. But it's still the number Facebook have for me. I now (and many of my friends) have a pay-as-you-go SIM for anything (including parcel delivery) that want a number.
intricatedetail 5y ago
> if it's outlawed? It will be licensed. Banks will have a license. Companies will be able to apply for VPN to carry on (and required to monitor employees traffic)

new_guy 5y ago

Well good luck with that. They can only target places like Facebook/Twitter, there's hundreds of smaller social sites that will just completely ignore this shit. Not to mention the internet is global, so really they can't enforce anything. > Priti Patel considering removing right to anonymity on social media to stop ‘relentless’ abuse of MPs If they weren't so corrupt and inept they wouldn't be subject to 'abuse', it comes with the job. Edit: also to add, abusing people online is an easy form of 'slactivism', people let off steam, it keeps them lazy and complacent, stops them taking action in the real world. If that venue is removed, i.e arresting people for name calling on Facebook (which is already happening) then actual actions in the real world will escalate and dealing with name calling will be the least of these peoples problems.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> there's hundreds of smaller social sites that will just completely ignore this shit Shifting potentially dangerous content from Twitter and Facebook to small, specialised sounds like a win win.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Yes, if there's anything people formulating dark plans hate, it's secrecy and privacy. It's important to force them into more robust and secure venues, their current opsec is terrible. It'll be another guaranteed win, like FOSTA and SESTA in the US. Thank Congress that child prostitution has moved to places that law enforcement have no access to, and that sex workers require middlemen again in order to work.
inglor_cz 5y ago
"If they weren't so corrupt and inept they wouldn't be subject to 'abuse', it comes with the job." It indeed comes with the job, but I think you are trying to shift the blame too much. Politicians cannot possibly do their job in a way that appeals to everyone and step on no one's toes. And some people out there are not entirely sane and the Internet has given them wings. Every public figure, not just politicians, is a target of stupid hate. Actors, singers, journalists: if your face surfaces on people's screen too often, you will collect a team of disgusting haters.

SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago

Disallowing anonymity clearly creates wonderful environments where no radicalization happens, and everyone is polite. It certainly helps to prevent social divisiveness. Just look at Facebook! /s, hopefully obviously.

klyrs 5y ago
It's currently possible to "verify" your facebook account with a fake ID. Don't be so flippant, ID cards in many jurisdictions already have barcodes, and if governments want social media to require legal ID, it will be easy to set up a system to do exactly that.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Roughly 20 years ago, there was a documentary on British TV about fake ID. They found that the technique used in the 1971 book The Day of the Jackal (find someone dead, get a copy of their birth certificate, bootstrap other ID from that) still worked. They then demonstrated how you didn’t even need the person you were doing this to to be dead, as they got a provisional driving license in the name of David Blunkett. Who was the Home Secretary at the time. And is blind. Apparently the UK police still use the Jackal method as of last year, though obviously no system can possibly prevent actions by its own enforcement body: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/07/met-police-legal-action-spies-use-dead-childrens-identities https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/07/met-police-l...
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Sure, but that's tons of work and probably a felony. It took me about 10 minutes to come up with shitty low-res picture of a fake ID that facebook accepted. And for now, that doesn't seem like a significant legal risk.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      I wouldn’t want to rely on your idea not also being treated as a serious offence, even absent any new laws in the UK specifically about this. I mean, using a fake ID to get something you would otherwise not be entitled to does sound like “fraud” to me… but I’m not even close to being legally trained.

kzrdude 5y ago

Instead of attacking specific content or specific people/personal info, what if we go at the structure and system instead? - Don't care about the content of the tweet (no fact checking boards) - Don't care to register who sent it (no privacy leak to government) "Attack" the structure: - Heavily tune down features that can enable posts on social media to go viral. Basically ban virality. Boosting high-emotion posts above all else is the largest systemic issue. Yes, it's heavy-handed, but it's not censorship. It's not registering who has which political opinions. It's just changing the rules equally for all, to create a better forum.

pjc50 5y ago
I mean .. maybe, but how do you phrase this as a law, and how do you make the billionaires dependent on virality obey it?
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  Ban feeds that are other than chronological of people you follow.
  - hellojesus 5y ago
    The government has no business banning the way private companies operate. There is no quantifiable harm. Instead, just stop using those platforms if you don't like them. It's just that simple.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > The government has no business banning the way private companies operate. That's, like, exactly what the business of government is. > There is no quantifiable harm. If this is in reference to the particular mode of operation suggested to be regulated upthread (where it might, arguably, be true) rather than the generality in the previous sentence (where it clearly is false), then its an argument against the particular regulation, not against government regulation of private business patterns generally.

mmarq 5y ago

British Home secretaries have been proposing insane ideas for a decade. Patel alone proposed to: - build a wave machine to stop (drown?) immigrants coming from France - build a floating wall in the Channel to stop immigrants from France - send asylum seekers to concentration camps in some remote islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - send asylum seekers to concentration camps on abandoned oil rigs in the North Sea - reintroduce capital punishment (but she wasn't Home Secretary at the time) Before then somebody wanted to force people to buy a special ID card to watch porn (I'm not sure if the innovator in question was May, Rudd or Javid).

oliv__ 5y ago
It's scary to think that these people are even remotely close to any position of power over ordinary citizens.
rich_sasha 5y ago
Different league, but in the early days of Nuclear Red Button, UK Home Office was tasked with developing failsafe communication with Westminster when the PM is around the country. This was just after the US developed some kind of terrestrial radio system. The UK equivalent was entrusting all drivers with a box of coins so they can use the phone boxes. Should have hear run out, the PM could call the operator and request reverse charge connection (with UK strategic command or sth presumably). This was also deemed failsafe, as there are many phone boxes around the country. It was once described in length on QI...
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Should have hear run out, the PM could call the operator and request reverse charge connection (with UK strategic command or sth presumably). "Will you accept this collect call from: LAUNCH-THE-MISSILES-DO-IT-NOW?"
- andyjohnson0 5y ago
  > The UK equivalent was entrusting all drivers with a box of coins This was in the 1950s and is described in Peter Hennessey's excellent book The Human Button. It's been a while since I read the book, but from memory the cabinet office also purchased an AA membership so that the prime minister's driver would have a key giving them access to the private AA phone boxes that were fairly common back then. They had an arrangement with the AA call handlers to allow the PM to be connected to the appropriate part of government in an emergency. Meanwhile the US and Russian government probably had satellite...

gorgoiler 5y ago

Implementation of sanctions is the end game, and that end game is a national firewall. The UK should propose the outlaw of all bunny killing videos. Relatively benign you’d think, but as a sideshow it would require some kind of way of blocking the bad guy bunny killers and the way to do that is with a Great Wall of China^WTunbridge Wells^W^W^W^W^Wnational firewall. Actually, it’s even more meta. The UK establishment has no intention of doing anything as base as constitutionally accountable lawmaking. Far better to allow these US corporations to dodge tax on their UK income, then threaten to crack down on the tax dodging unless FB/GOOG/ELLO bend to the government’s privately (and extra-parliamentary) will.

noarchy 5y ago

To those who want social media regulated, this is the kind of thing you'll actually get. So be careful what you wish for.

KaiserPro 5y ago

I mean yeah she is, but it'll be forgotten when another avoidable crisis comes to a head (possibly involving immigrants in one form or another)

rich_sasha 5y ago

What irks me personally about it is the reporting that it was done by a “British citizen of Somali origin”. He was probably born in the UK, went through schools there, maybe his parents did too. But let’s just make it clear, he’s not British in the same way that someone white is. Or, you know, Pakistani, but from an upper-middle-class family of doctors. No one reports that Wayne Rooney is British, of English origin.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
Your quote is quite likely the most important part of the whole story, as it helps with fact-based policy decisions on immigration. Disagreeing with this is akin to putting your head in the sand and wishing for a reality that simply is not there.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  But he wasn’t foreign, is my whole point. He was born in Britain. Or if not, passed the whole naturalisation process. Apparently he’s indistinguishable from other British people. Oh except for the “Somali heritage”. I feel like the focus on “Somali” is meant to deflect any responsibility on domestic matters. This guy apparently was born, bred, schooled in the UK. Maybe he was radicalised by hardcore Somali-heritage islamists (if that’s a thing), but then it’s a failure of UK domestic policy for creating an environment, or cause, for them to organise, and UK domestic security for preventing this. I’m not saying this is easy, rather that this is where the onus lies. But when we say “ah he’s Somali”, suddenly it’s someone else’s fault. When a white British guy, with a name like Gary or Shaun stabs a teacher, say, you get stories from people who went to school with Gary or Shaun. He was an alright guy but a bit extreme when angry, maybe. Or no one would see it coming, he was a quiet guy. Why did no one see it coming? Ah well you can’t prevent everything. But this guy is Somali, it’s their fault. I mean, ok he’s British but you know what I mean. Different British.
  - jahewson 5y ago
    You can’t simultaneously assert that the fact that he’s not foreign is the most important component while advocating for excluding this information from the news. Was he British? <censored>. Was he foreign? <censored>. What in his upbringing could have had ties to extremism? <censored>. Hmm. Great newspaper.

jimnotgym 5y ago

Perhaps Conservative MPs could review their own post histories and be 100% sure they have not sowed division and hate, especially around Brexit. Or maybe just review Boris Johnson's own newspaper column where he has said some things that many find offensive. Boris runs a Trumpist government that gained power by sowing discontent and division. Or it is anonymous tweeters of course. I noticed one Conservative MP followed by thousands of bots presumably there to make him seem like an influencer to the algo. Then these weird networks of retweeters pile in to amplify what he said. But it is everyone else who is at fault....

rektide 5y ago

i'm not going to treat anything from idiot Patel with even the faintest hint that there's anything actionable or real, that this is anything other than trying to chuck the overton window towards some extremist end. but again, i just want to look at this less from the UK perspective, and to note once again this is some part of the world imagining it's going to create a strong guidelines for how the rest of the world has to operate.

guilhas 5y ago

To defeat China we must become China