17 ms·
U.K.'s online censorship bill causes more harm than it attempts to prevent
- Cryptonic 4y agoWhat they really should ban and make a crime is intentional and proven disinformation.
- ChrisRR 4y agoIs anyone surprised? The UK so desperately wants to spy on everyone's internet usage. We're just lucky that Theresa May was too busy to bring in as much spying as she wanted while she was PM Remember, this is the government that banned peeing in porn. That's how far they want to go to block "offensive" content
- owow123 4y agoThey tried to ban peeing in porn, they didn't get it through! Side note: a bunch of kinksters turned up outside parliament and starting peeing on each other in protest - gotta love the UK
- 4ggr0 4y ago> Remember, this is the government that banned peeing in porn Is squirting allowed?
- xdennis 4y agoNo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_ejaculation#Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_ejaculation#Censorship
- sebow 4y agoNo sh*t... UK, Canada & Australia really disappoint when it comes to civil liberties, rights & online privacy. Especially since the start of Covid(not to say the unlawful imprisonment of Assange or even sooner). But then again, it's the place that solves everything with "banning"(see knives).
- AlanYx 4y agoIt was Germany that really got the ball rolling on this, with its Network Enforcement Act (commonly called "NetzDG"). NetzDG is being used as a model for policymakers in the UK, Canada and Australia. This is pretty astonishing to me, given that there are serious, systemic problems with how NetzDG operates, some which are clearly evident from its mandatory annual reporting.
- sebow 4y agoOf course, also Germany. I was gonna ask if NetzDG was the means through which you could have been arrested for speech(i.e opinions for example, not "spreading fake news") on social media. After a quick search I've seen that it passed after 2017, which is chronologically after the cases I remember that happened in UK&DE. In any case, not exactly an ideal law for western values.
- 62951413 4y agoThey are slowly catching up with Putin's Russia. He started jailing dissidents years ago on this exact pretext. His government pioneered the corresponding legalese (known as rule 282) as early as 2002. And of course initially it was applied to literal Nazis only. It boggle my mind to think that former democracies so want to become second-rate authoritarian regimes. The country that started it all with Magna Carta 800 years ago just abandons hard-won freedoms without a major war or famine powerful enough to distract the populace.
- AlanYx 4y agoI strongly agree. It's also worth mentioning that rule 282 is only a small part of the Russian media control regime at this point; it's expanded dramatically in recent years, particularly post-2017. One could write a whole book about the current constellation of Russian media control legislation.
- andyjohnson0 4y agoHere in the UK the problem is substantially a structural one. First-past-the-post elections and the lack of a legislative revising chamber with a democratic mandate result in governments having very little restraint on their powers. This tends to result in bad laws, which often pander to the worst instincts of the governing party's membership (see: "something must be done"). Because we have no written constitution, and because it has recently become apparent that the precedent-based system that we have instead is much more bendable than was previously thought (see: brexit), governments can pretty much do what they want. And they do. And this kind of "strong government" is actually quite popular with some people, particularly on the right at present. I don't know about Canada or Australia, but at the national level I believe their systems are at least partly patterned on the one they inherited from the UK.
- causi 4y agoThe issue with banning speech for being "offensive" or "hateful" is that the definitions of those things and especially who can break the law without being prosecuted for it are largely determined by what is politically convenient. One government might decide that calling for a boycott of Israel is hate speech, while another might decide that calling for an end to refugee acceptance is hate speech. I prefer that myself and my ideological opponents are allowed to speak freely without concern for who's in power at the moment or what group is the current societal scapegoat. If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people you despise you don't believe in it at all.
- lbriner 4y agoThat is true, however, certain people when surrounded by "hateful" speech for long periods of time can easily become the actual law breakers who attack foreigners or trans or whatever other things some people hate. Although this Bill is garbage for variou reasons, I do understand that people want to try and fix things before they get out of hand, not just after somebody has stabbed somebody else when it is objectively a crime.
- logicalmonster 4y ago> people when surrounded by "hateful" speech for long periods of time can easily become the actual law breakers So, are we doing the whole Department of Pre-crime thing now? Minority Report, here we come.
- causi 4y agoThat's the price you pay for freedom. If our ancestors were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of lives a year for liberty eighty years ago, how cowardly of us to declare that our principles must crack under the weight of a tiny fraction of that.
- bluescrn 4y agoThere's a whole lot of very vicious 'hate' directed at politicians, presidents, and prime ministers (on both sides of the political spectrum) by online activists or just normal people with strong opinions. Should this be cracked down upon too? Or should you be able to freely say nasty/profane/hyperbolic things about members of the ruling class, and maybe even tweet it directly at them, particularly when they enact very controversial policies?
- google234123 4y agoThe UK's police haven't solved a single robbery in 8 out of 10 neighborhoods in the past 3 years but they have been more than happy to spend time monitoring social media and charging people for thought crimes.
- logicalmonster 4y agoFinding wrong-thinkers online is relatively easy and about the least dangerous activity possible. Finding actual criminals who violate the life, liberty, and property of others involves taking some personal risk and effort.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoBeautifully succinct summary of a sad, sad truth. Well said.
- ben_w 4y agoMay be part of it, but from what I've been reading it is also the case that the UK criminal justice system has been severely underfunded at every level — police, lawyers, courts, prisons, and parole — for a while now.
- logicalmonster 4y agoMaybe, maybe not, but I'd take many of these claims with a grain of salt. I'm pretty sure that in the entire history of bureaucracy, you're not going to find too many organizations that claim that they're overfunded.
- gerdesj 4y agoWhat's your source? Given how you spell neighbourhood, it isn't from local experience.
- gadders 4y agoPolice fail to solve a single theft in more than eight out of 10 neighbourhoods Victims’ watchdogs say the ‘shocking’ data showed that theft from the person had been ‘effectively decriminalised’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/07/police-fail-solve-single-theft-eight-10-neighbourhoods/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/07/police-fail-solv...
- jgworks 4y agoBlackstone's[0] ratio comes to mind when thinking about laws like this: > It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio
- commandlinefan 4y agoIn the UK, they'd prefer ten innocents suffer than one innocent escape.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y agoCorrection: the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers' editorial directors would prefer ten innocents suffer than one bogneyman[1] enjoy free roam of the nation. [1] Substitute "paedophile", "Islamic terrorist", "asylum seeker" as per this weeks' dim-right-wing national outrage.
- jonatron 4y agoI'm not sure about the accuracy of the article, the problem with the Online Censorship Bill is that it allows the Secretary of State and OFCOM to define what is "harmful", it doesn't specifically mention "offensive" speech.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoWhat if I find poorly thought out legislation offensive? After all, it arguably affects more people more directly than the various things the politicians are dog whistling about.
- tmjwid 4y agoI keep seeing these Censorship laws all the time but something always gets in the way of it being put into law or practice. Is there anything different this time or is it another terrible attempt by our government to look like they're doing something instead of eating Michelin Star quality food for under £15 a meal subsidised by good people of this country?
- dmix 4y agoThe UK police was already doing middle-of-the-night raids on people's houses over stuff they tweet ~9yrs ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/in-britain-police-arrest-twitter-and-facebook-users-if-they-make-anti-muslim-statements-2013-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/in-britain-police-arrest-twi... They also proudly announced arresting a 12yr old for being racist on the internet: https://i.redd.it/24ivki7pmna51.jpg https://i.redd.it/24ivki7pmna51.jpg
- bergenty 4y ago
- protonbob 4y agoWhy are you for that? Especially children?
- bergenty 4y agoIt’s like not letting kids smoke cigarettes. It’s actually pretty sensible.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoHow about offline? And can you define hate?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nerdawson 4y agoYes, they should be rounded up and taught the right way to think. /s
- bergenty 4y agoNo, just prevent proselytization of hate. Take it easy with the hyperbole, we’ll make it work.
- LatteLazy 4y agoIt's not meant to prevent harm. It's meant to: * Appeal to morons, a key voting block of the current government * Appease all sorts of crazies from the religious to the billionaire tabloid owners. * Allow selective prosecution of people the government wants to make an example of * Distract from the total failure of government policy in basically every area (defence, energy, foreign affairs, trade, treasury, education, health, transport, justice and others).
- agent008t 4y agoIt is amazing how rapidly the quality of the discussion on HN goes down the more political the topic is.
- LatteLazy 4y agoI'm just saying, people need to stop acting like every bill is an honest noble attempt to protect the children etc.
- 4ggr0 4y agoI wish more people would know this wiki-page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
- LatteLazy 4y agoI read an article a while back that said adults don't learn or change their opinions, old people just die and new people who learned as kids gradually come to be the majority. I don't know true that is, but I think it's very true for anything internet tech related. We just have to wait 50 years (Ill be dead by then) and it will be common knowledge all these claims are BS. At least that's my source of hope.
- coffeeblack 4y agoDo people really think that governments censor opposing viewpoints to “prevent harm”?
- thisiscorrect 4y agoMaybe to prevent harm to their agendas and continued grip on power.
- antonymy 4y agoOnly if they're extremely naïve. A common theme I see in pro-censorship people is they assume the ability to censor will never fall into the hands of horrible people, that somehow the government will always remain in the hands of people they find reasonable and agreeable. Ultimately, the government is an apparatus of power with a tendency toward tyranny. It is neither inherently good nor bad. In democracies we try to limit this tendency toward tyranny through checks and balances within the governments' various branches and departments, as well as making politicians answerable to the people through election and referenda, and holding everyone equally accountable before the law (in theory). In this context, the freedom of expression is important for keeping the government answerable to the people. If publicly available information is restricted to only what the government allows to be published then the people are incapable of making informed political decisions, and democratic process ceases to provide any meaningful franchise to the people, completely undermining the entire point of a democracy.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoIt seems possible that government attempts to censor that which they think may radicalise the listener, may radicalise some of the constituency.
- denton-scratch 4y ago> part of a wave of legislation around the world that seeks to control the internet This wave of legislation was always inevitable; the internet has no intrinsic controls for content, it doesn't really even know that content exists. So it quickly became a place where anything goes ("became" might be wrong; I guess it was always like that). Authoritarian people have opinions about what can and can't be said. It's not surprising that those people have all kinds of problems with the internet. Unfortunately for them, there's not much they can do about it; apart from supressing internet access, people are going to use the internet. Oh, sure, you can shut down websites by authoritarian diktat (e.g DNS changes, hosting takeover etc.) But the internet is bigger than the WWW, and I don't think the authoritarians have the means to control this animal; it can't be decapitated because it has no head (it's sort of a Hydra). Bad stuff happens on the internet. Bad stuff happens in schoolgrounds, too. I got punched and knocked down once, just stepping out of my own front-door. You can't stop all of the bad things.
- commandlinefan 4y agoIt's awfully charitable of you to assume the harm was unintentional.
- smashah 4y agoEvery day the UK gets worse and worse.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- trention 4y agoOne thing I've noticed in all the debates around freedom of speech in the last decade is that literally nobody favors actual free speech. When freedom of speech touches some of the things you consider "sacred" or when it can make a noticeable dent in your wallet, people usually scream for restrictions. It will be better to stop pretending that debates about free speech and hate speech are about principles and not just group signalling and power demonstrations. This will take the moral non-arguments (that are currently mostly advanced by those that call for direct government censorship, although historically that hasn't been the case) out of the equation.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spzb 4y agoGiven the caravan of clowns we currently have in government who’d rather debate the meaning of nouns than deal with a cost of living crisis unprecedented since the 1970s, this is not at all surprising.
- xor99 4y agoThe crackpot village sandwich committee are in charge in the U.K. rn. This typify's it. These people are fully ENGERBRAINED and dangerous (Ameribrainer's more stuffy and polite transatlantic cousins).
- california2077 4y agoHere is the thing. Most online speech is garbage and very little is going to be lost if it's regulated. The hypothetical argument that after banning tons of racist scumbags some government agency will accidentally ban the wrong website is just that - a hypothetical. I've been hearing about this hypothetical for as long as the web exists. If you want "free speech" so much, then why aren't you on 4chan and instead post on a highly moderated website like this one? It's the pinnacle of hypocricy.
- Drakim 4y agoI agree with you, but let me offer an opposing viewpoint. If HN's moderation and censorship becomes unbearable in some manner, I might indeed set out to find myself a different community to engage with. But if it's the governmental censorship that makes my online interactions unbearable (say, by requiring that I provide every online platform with my RL identity in the name of keeping children safe), what am I gonna do?
- california2077 4y ago>But if it's the governmental censorship that makes my online interactions unbearable[...], what am I gonna do? If the majority of people agree with you, you can petition and possibly elect a different government. UK is a democracy. At its core, the augment for "free speech" is anti-democratic. Someone will control the content online. The real question is who will it be? Democratically elected government or some nutjob like Alex Jones?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arise 4y agoI want free speech. And I want social norms. They're not incompatible. Recognizing your innate right to voice your ideas, no matter how offensive (or cough blithely disingenuous), doesn't mean that private organizations can't sanction you or refuse to publish what say. That's moderation. And "hypothetical"? Really?
- BiteCode_dev 4y agoEverytime I read those kind of news from the UK, I think about the "finger" from V. It seems we are more and more urging to build the society half of the books we read told us to avoid at all cost.
- KingOfCoders 4y agoIf your country is free, say "Fuck" on TV (and don't get beeped).
- fragmede 4y agoOr play a Disney movie for free.
- alexb_ 4y agoOne part of the bill which is being overlooked is Part 4, Section 1: the requirement for all user to user services to provide the option for User Identity verification. It's easy to write it off as an "option" now, but this is 100% trying to normalize mandatory online identification. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0121/220121.pdf https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-03/0121...
- bearmode 4y agoThe problem here is that it isn't attempting to prevent harm. The whole purpose for it is that it gives the government more power over people online. Harm prevention is just a front.