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UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content
- Jensson 4y agoLuckily UK made such content illegal, so no need for those extra steps.
- shapefrog 4y agoHonestly, if you want something to be a crime and you write legislation (and it isnt already a crime) there are options!
- isaacfrond 4y agoWell, thank god for Brexit or we'd miss out on such a brave new world.
- spzb 4y agoThe whole bill is a clusterF**. Some potentially useful bits of regulation of Big Tech thrown together with some dangerously authoritarian attempts at criminalising encryption. Bits of the bill keep getting taken out, put back in and then taken out, sent in, sent out before being recycled as firelighters, depending on which way the political wind is blowing on any given day.
- kneebonian 4y agoYou put your authoritarian measure in, you take your regulation clause out, you put special intrests and you shake your constituents about. You do the government pokey and you spin the media around. That's what it's all about. You put your pay raise in, you take your public good will out, you put your pork in and you shake the public about. You do the government pokey and you spin the lies around. That's what it's all about.
- escapologybb 4y agoThank you, that is now going round in my head on a continuous loop! I pretty much completely agree with the content of what you said as well.
- EarlKing 4y agoIt could be worse. You could be imagining Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari singing this in a continuous loop.
- gekokujo 4y agoThis image made my day!
- slowmovintarget 4y agoAs the Minbari teacher said; I rather enjoyed that.
- fotbr 4y agoThat's not worse, that's an outstanding mental image.
- rhdunn 4y agoIt doesn't make sense! I'd rather be nibbled to death by cats!
- scifibestfi 4y ago
- causality0 4y agoThe new iteration goes further to protect free speech by stopping companies, such as Facebook-owner Meta and Twitter, removing content or suspending or banning users where there is no breach of their terms of service or the law. If true this is the bigger story here. Illegal speech in the UK already encompassed a goodly chunk of anything "harmful" or likely to cause hurt feewings. Forcing platforms to actually follow their terms of service, however, is revolutionary. Even forcing platforms to disclose to each banned user what part of the ToS they violated and how would rock the digital landscape.
- 9864250 4y agoThat would not protect free speech, it would infringe on it. Forcing someone to host someone else's speech is both an infringement on their right to free speech and on the free speech rights of users who want a well-moderated community, which you cannot have if the government is overriding moderator discretion. It's also quite dangerous, as the government will likely use that power to promote speech it likes and drown out speech it doesn't like. I wonder if I will have to use a VPN to access Hacker News from the UK in the future, as this site will surely not let the UK government prevent it from moderating itself.
- sennight 4y ago> Forcing someone to host someone else's speech... The solution is easy: stop lying about being a "platform" if you want editorial control. > ...the free speech rights of users who want a well-moderated community... Wut? How does free speech infringe on free speech, exactly?
- sirsinsalot 4y agoThey're conflating "free speech" with "freedom to not read or see things I don't like". They forgot you can close your browser tab if you don't like something, or stop using a service if the content isn't something you like. ie, making their problem everyone else's.
- cauch 4y ago
- altacc 4y agoCynically, I doubt this decision is driven by the principles of free speech. Like a lot of people & organisations, the Conservative Party is only interested in protecting the freedom of speech that they approve of. I think it is more likely that this new minister had it explained to them how impossible this was to enforce or take action against, given the difficulty of proving mental harm. Either way, it's the correct decision. Content policies should be based on clear cut laws in addition to a platform's self authored content moderation policy.
- 0xy 4y agoCan you point to the part of the bill that doesn't protect speech they don't approve of? I'm aware the UK Labour Party is in favor of censorship of disapproved topics [1], but I couldn't see any in this bill. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/11/labour-to-vote-against-tory-hate-speech-bill https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/11/labour-to-vote...
- 9864250 4y agoThey will hopefully ditch the entire bill eventually, but I don't have much hope. The 'legal but harmful' part was just one of many horrible parts of the bill. It's depressing that the main opposition party is criticizing the government, not for proposing censorship, but for proposing too little censorship. I hope we be able to move to decentralized censorship-resistant alternatives before the government destroys what remains of free speech on the internet.
- kmlx 4y agoeven the so-called Liberal party is completely for this bill, and wants it strengthened :)
- raxxorraxor 4y agoSo called liberal parties (in the US sense here) have all shown their more authorian colors over all over Europe. Formerlly is was conservatives that were the scare mongers and gifted laws to increase subjective security. Now their supposed opposition does the same exact shit. The whole continent is old and fearful.
- macrolime 4y ago>"Companies can't just say 'yes we only allow children over 13 to join our >platform', then they allow 10-year-olds and actively promote it to them," she >told BBC radio. "We're stopping that from happening." >She said companies could face fines of up to 10% of their turnover if they did >not have systems in place to restrict underage access. So what does this mean? All social media websites have to check the passport of every UK user that registers? It will be illegal to post anything in a forum, without first uploading your passport?
- dorwi 4y agothat is one way of looking at it, and it's a perfectionist view. I'm sure that everybody knows that one simply can't filter out 100% of underage access, but there are things that CAN be done to reduce it.
- Ajedi32 4y agoMaybe it should just be an HTTP header. Shift the responsibility for enforcing age restrictions to the client side; anything else is likely to be highly authoritarian and/or a massive privacy violation.
- waboremo 4y agoSurely we can come up with solutions to help ease the burden for parents/guardians instead of just leaving them out in the cold because we're offended by the mere idea of taking some collective action to prevent abuse.
- generj 4y agoI believe the poster above was suggesting the client browser, not the user of the client, could assist. So Safari knows that a user is under 13 (due to information entered at sign up by guardians) and will block the user from creating an account if a page has the appropriate HTTP header. Or iOS could do the same for app signups.
- Lapsa 4y ago```We all agree that stuff should be illegal, let's make it illegal," she told BBC News``` - I disagree. I think we should avoid any kind of censorship, whatever the content is, as long as possible, wherever possible. YOU are an idiot, if you buy into racism or whatever else hot topic mentioned on the article. but I also think that at the end of the day - it's mostly just greed trying to amplify control. such agenda will never triumph.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoOkay, let's suppose then that an idiot does something horrible, is the idiot to blame 100% for the horrible thing? What about the people that should know better? What about the people who repeatedly encouraged a rabid base to attack people? What about the people who exploit the morons to do their bidding? What if people start getting branded as "undesirable" by certain individuals, and others make sure to cleanse them? So let me make it more clear, how many innocents are you willing to sacrifice for free speech?
- scarmig 4y agoIs it better when the governing class decides certain individuals or thoughts are evil and makes sure to cleanse them from the world? Could that cause harm to people, or is the government always right? How many innocents are you willing to see die and suffer for the sake of purging bad thoughts from society?
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoStawman. Who said the government should decide? > Is it better when the governing class decides certain individuals or thoughts are evil and makes sure to cleanse them from the world? Leave it to the people, let the people vote with their wallet. People clearly don't want that kind of speech available, exhibit all absolute free speech sites. The government dictating what is allowed to go on platforms and forcing companies to host vitriol and calls to violence to "cleanse" society is not any different to what you describe. It just adds a middle man so the government keeps their hands clean. Cut the strawmans. I didn't advocate for government control, you took it there, and the fact that I am even entertaining this response is well beyond what it deserves.
- SilverBirch 4y agoI think we really need to take a step back and appreciate that to some extent the UK governmental system is kind of working here. The UK government has an 80 seat majority, and it has advanced some really shonky legislation (this was an example, but the UK Bill of Rights was just as absurd), it's been quite impressive to see how successfully parliament has delayed, derailed and modified these attempts to blunder through legislation. The UK cabinet at this point has descended into a total farce, but the parts of our parliament outside of government - the committee stages, the Lords, amendments have all had great stabilizing effects and slowly forced the government into a fairly reasonable position. >The opposition Labour Party said replacing the "prevention of harm" with an emphasis on free speech undermined the bill's purpose. I mean... they're not wrong. The original intention behind this bill was insane, and it no longer does what it wnated. The fundamental problem that the government is facing is that there's behavior they want to discourage but can't functionally ban. Legally you have a choice, you either get ambiguous and open it up to abuse, or you go narrow and fail to really address the issue. I think this approach is fine, but we may have to revisit it.
- enkid 4y agoThe thing about democracies is they are resilient but appear resilient. Autocracies are fragile but appear resilient. This is because democracies have open debate about policy, and criticism is an integral part of the system. This disagreement appears chaotic but actually helps the end product of things like legislation work better. Autocracies, on the other hand, discourage open discussion of policy, which creates a veneer of unity, but makes the end product worse.
- wesleywt 4y agoPlatforms should have the right to ban your hate speech. But governments should not. I prefer that social media companies handle this because it directly affects their bottom line. Nazism, racism and Andrew Tate are banned because they are bad for business.
- ColinHayhurst 4y agoThe latest changes, of which there have been many iterations, are generally well-intentioned but biased to those who have the ear of Government. Child safety advocates, celebrities, age-verification providers, newspaper publishers and Big Tech are the ones the many Ministers have listened to. The turnover of Ministers has been high but not those lobbying. Privacy and human rights advocates and innovators have not had a fair hearing. Child safety folks are happy for now, but naive. Celebrities are fountains of wisdom so that's all good. The age-verification and trust-washing industry are waiting for their payback. "Recognised" journalism gets protected. And Big Tech is all for it; compliance falls much hard on challengers. To be fair the dropping yesterday of the "legal but harmful" provisions for adults is finally showing there is some hope for sanity. Although paradoxically this will likely speed and increase the prevalence of a gated UK splinternet; as it will be become required to age-gate children across all (user-to-user and search) services.
- pfdietz 4y agoI don't care about offense. What I care about is lying. If someone distributes provable untruths, that should be legally actionable -- if not by government, then in civil court by the people harmed by the lies.
- nicky0 4y agoThat's an interesting position. Is there currently any country on earth which has a general law against telling lies?
- rsynnott 4y agoMost countries have some form of civil defamation law, but generally you have have to be lying about a _specific person or entity_. Some countries (not as many as you may think; a lot of things described as hate speech laws are really incitement to hatred laws, which is a little different) also have hate speech laws which in principle may prevent maliciously lying about specified groups of people, but in practice, the bar for actually prosecuting someone under these is usually extremely high. I'm not sure anywhere has a ban on _all_ lies, though. You can generally say that the sky is green, or even usually tell lies about non-protected groups ("all lawyers are criminals" is clearly a lie, say, but unless the context makes it clear that you're using it about a particular lawyer, you're probably fine).
- bheadmaster 4y agoAnd who exactly should be the authority of what "truth" and "proof" is? The government?
- pfdietz 4y agoThe courts. Settling such questions is what they're for.
- bheadmaster 4y ago> Settling such questions is what they're for. No, they're there to deliver justice. Truth in courts can and does change often when new evidence is brought into view. The idea that a single entity could somehow have a priori knowledge of truth, good enough to decide what is/isn't true in general, is a juvenile God fantasy. Truth is a tricky concept.
- incomingpain 4y agoWhen you have censorship, content moderation, you inevitably will accidentally hit legitimate things. https://twitter.com/alyankovic/status/1596999067279581184 https://twitter.com/alyankovic/status/1596999067279581184 What ends up happening is the political bias of the censors leaks into the decisions. You end up creating echo chambers; which are tremendously unhealthy for society.
- IgorPartola 4y agoIsn’t the UK also known for repeatedly trying to ban porn online? Seems like free speech means something more specific to them in this context.
- chrisbaker98 4y ago> Isn’t the UK also known for repeatedly trying to ban porn online? No. Ten years and four prime ministers ago the government was briefly talking about making it harder to access online porn if you're under 18, but nothing ever came of it. It's currently trivially easy for people of any age to access online porn in the UK. (So I've heard.)
- int_19h 4y agoIt depends on the kind of porn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Justice_and_Immigration_Act_2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Jus...
- lakomen 4y agoWhen they left the EU they left a steaming pile of dung in form of the new copyright "guidelines", essentially making copyright a mess for anyone trying to run free services, since now they liability is on the hoster's side for content the user uploads to the hoster's platform. At the same time they retain liberal laws in that regard.
- gadders 4y agoI still think it is crazy that people in the UK get prosecuted for (appalling) things they say in private WhatsApp groups.
- pacifika 4y agoUk ditches nothing, this is still going through parliament. Reuters didn't bother to name the bill by it's a name but here's a link to where it's at. https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137
- egithinji 4y agoThis is a good move in my opinion. Content moderation for small groups can and should be handled by a few members of the community. Once a community becomes a public platform, content moderation should be governed by a country's constitution.
- muteor 4y agoI was checking out one of the UK firms providing “age assurance”, turns out the directors also had a PPE firm now disbanded of course. That’s all you need to know about this bill…
- llimos 4y agoHere's a more balanced take: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-online-safety-bill-is-still-a-censors-charter/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-online-safety-bill-i... It seems it's still fairly problematic
- sunkenvicar 4y ago
- flipbrad 4y agoSociety still doesn't seem to be asking itself why this law covers Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, etc, and what it would do to them.
- HPsquared 4y ago"Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb." -Dark Helmet
- robswc 4y agoSay what you will about the US, but the UK and Australia seem to be trying to competing in a speed run to see who can reach ridiculous authoritarianism faster. I thought it would the the UK with the way they have literally arrested people for tweets... but then I saw the insane and petty corruption taking place in Aus and a journalist getting their house firebombed.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
- tonmoy 4y agoI have no idea what you are talking about, can you elaborate please?
- trident5000 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mort96 4y agoYou say "... the way they have literally arrested people for tweets", as if "tweets" is a special "thing" , but it's just communication. If something is illegal to say, it stands to reason that it would be illegal to say through the medium of a tweet. Is it less ridiculous to arrest people from what they write in a blog post or what they say on the street than what they say in a tweet? It seems like one should either take free speech absolutist approach and say speech should never be illegal, or accept that some speech is illegal which would obviously mean that it's illegal even on Twitter. But you're not the first person I've seen who seemingly find it extra ridiculous to react to something someone tweeted, as if publishing a tweet or a series of tweets is not an act of speech, and I don't understand it.
- 4y ago
- pessimizer 4y ago"Legal but harmful" is the logical expansion to "non-crime hate incident," which is when the police detain and interview you in order to create permanent records of hate non-crimes based solely on someone else's offense without any indication or claim the offense constituted a crime. It eventually devolved even farther into a somewhat milder form of SWATing utilized by twitter trolls. Imagine if SWATing didn't have much of a chance of getting you hurt, but had a 100% chance of putting you on what is essentially a domestic terrorist watchlist.
- idontpost 4y ago
- stainablesteel 4y agoits worse when you take into consideration lists like these are what preceded all the mass murders of the 1900s the nazis soviets and chinese all had lists of undesirables, the lists only functioned to define the targets
- peterweyand 4y agoGood.
- diebeforei485 4y agoIf something should be banned, perhaps it should be made illegal.
- int_19h 4y agoThis is UK, the country that came up with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order.
- superjan 4y agoI agree it sounds almost paradoxical: if a law is passed to ban it, then it must be illegal. But then it is no longer “lawful but harmful”, so… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox
- alickz 4y agoThey say as much in the article >"We all agree that stuff should be illegal, let's make it illegal," she told BBC News, adding that the government had already pledged to make the promotion of self harm unlawful. How they intend to make the promotion of self harm illegal I'm not sure.
- RocketOne 4y agoCanada is going through the same type of censorship, but under the guise of promoting "Canadian content" As if our culture is in danger of disappearing if we cant watch "Canadian" movies and "Canadian" news. The dangerous side is that the gov wants content providers to manipulate their algorithms to promote some deemed "Canadian" content and demote others. Dangerously close to state controlled media with a prettier veneer so it doesnt look like authoritarian play it is. So far there's enough pushback to keep the bill from passing but that doesnt stop the gov from continuing to push.
- analog31 4y agoIf "legal but harmful" is illegal, then it's not "legal but harmful."
- epgui 4y agoYou can’t (logically) legally ban legal content. If you ban it, then it becomes illegal. If you don’t ban it, then it stays legal. It’s pretty much that simple.