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"The United Kingdom wants to become the safest place for children to grow up online" is the first line of this article. Not presented as a quote, or a claim mad

"The United Kingdom wants to become the safest place for children to grow up online" is the first line of this article. Not presented as a quote, or a claim made by a source in the article. Just a fact. From that point it just gets worse. There's basically no description of what terms like "protecting kids online" actually means. The actual description of the law is extremely vague and doesn't answer basic questions about how the law would work. Would it only involve social media (published) content, or would it cover private text messages as well? Can providers simply ban children from using their platform, or will the law hold them accountable even for unauthorized users? These are the details one might expect answers to in a reasonable article, but I'm not sure if this is a journalistic exercise or some sort of PR puff piece.

bjt2n3904 4y ago
No one should grow up online. There is no "safe" way to "grow up" online.
- danuker 4y ago
  I saw all kinds of crazy stuff on the early web as a teen. I grew [up?] both tolerant and thick-skinned.
  - bjt2n3904 4y ago
    This isn't about content! There is a real world, and a virtual one. The virtual one is a mere imitation of the real one. We weren't born to live inside a machine.
  - birdyrooster 4y ago
    Even if you are right it’s survivor bias, but to the parent commenters point being raised on the internet is sad because of the lost opportunity.
- goatlover 4y ago
  The internet has replaced growing up on tv, rock and roll and video games. Before then, the wrong books.
mancerayder 4y ago
A consequence of not having a Bill of Rights with a First Amendment, something routinely mocked on the one side of the Atlantic. The point is that intentionally overbroad restrictions on speech or content are a lot more difficult in the US.
- pksebben 4y ago
  I feel like we suffer from intentionally overbroad protections in this vein. Corporations being people and what not.
- joenot443 4y ago
  This is true. We're frequently reminded growing up in Canada that despite what we'd gather from the tv/film we consume, we don't have the same freedom of speech laws that our friends in the south do. People are sent to jail for hate speech in Canada, both online and in-person, something I'm not aware of happening in the states. Our Charter provides us with a "freedom of expression" for which the government is allowed "reasonable" grounds for censorship and speech restriction. For better or worse, there are many, many websites hosted in the US which would never fly in Canada.
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    > We're frequently reminded growing up in Canada that despite what we'd gather from the tv/film we consume, we don't have the same freedom of speech laws that our friends in the south do. Why not simply get those rights? Looking at the brain flow to and from the US, there are a lot of Canadians voting with their feet... Americans did about 250 years ago. To me, the Canadian political system has always been a source of amazement and quite an enigma. The constitution of that country simply wasn't signed by a third of the population, and this is considered normal over there. Could anyone here in America imagine that?
    - peanuty1 4y ago
      > Why not simply get those rights? Governments rarely relinquish power.
jonatron 4y ago
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 Reading through 260 pages of legislation is tl;dr for journalists.
supriyo-biswas 4y ago
I suspect the original article is about UK's "Online Safety Bill" which was discussed at length on HN[1] with some very good discussion about why it's a bad idea. (Which is something a few commenters on this thread are failing to grasp.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32055756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32055756
- timthorn 4y ago
  The politician responsible for this bill was replaced since that discussion, and the content of the bill has been changed significantly - some of the discussion of 6 months ago is still valid, but you can't rely on what was said then to form your opinion of the bill as is going through Parliament. The original minister has not held back in her criticism of the changes. https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/nadine-dorries-michelle-donelan-doesnt-understand-online-safety-bill https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/nadine-dorries-mic...
oxfordmale 4y ago
I can guarantee no tech exec will ever end up in prison under this law. At most, they will get a fine and happily file this under operational costs. Very few MPs seem to understand how the internet works, and there is virtually no opposition against some of this madness. There are only demands to make it even stricter to "protect the kiddies". Most of these "kiddies" know how to use a VPN or are at least smart enough to borrow their father's phone to watch juicy content.
- gadders 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - whythre 4y ago
    So if I write a nasty note on a paper Airplane and throw it at you, might the manufacturer of the paper and pen get in trouble? ‘No, that’s absurd.’ Fine, what about an unpleasant email? Should an email provider auto screen potentially harmful messages? None of this seems very logically consistent and just seems to stem from a desire to fix a problem (people being nasty to each other) in the most heavy handed and legally clumsy way imaginable.
    - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
      Amazingly, the above story happened in the UK, the UK's health system is failing totally, the NHS has under-invested in mental health services on a massive scale for decades (for example, all the gambling addiction clinics in the UK were funded by gambling companies until 2020), and this happens and people immediately round on...Twitter? It is genuinely very confusing that a mental health problem has turned into tech regulation. Particularly when mental health treatment is so obviously lacking (and part of the reason why no-one asks the question about the NHS is due to lobbying, the NHS has the most powerful lobbying group in British politics). Btw, just anecdotally, the people pushing for this are (imo) the worst people in British politics. Bill Cash, all the Brexit hardliners (who, btw, were regarded as too incompetent and mad by the people who can the Vote Leave campaign). These people sit in safe seats, there is no risk from deselection, and they just sit there and come up mad ideas year after year (the person above who points out that British politicians tend towards authoritarianism are correct...this is being led by the furthest right portion of the Tories).
ljm 4y ago
The UK as a whole leans fairly authoritarian and has had successive paternalistic governments for probably as long as anyone alive can remember (some people will call this the 'nanny state'). These fanciful proposals are created and supported by both Conservative (right, centre right) and Labour (left, centre left) parties alike. As cynical as it sounds, this kind of legislation is rolled out practically every year and you could probably set your watch by it. Sometimes the law is implemented, quite often it's put on the backburner and resurrected the next year when there needs to be a distraction from something else. You can ask, "how will this work in practice?" and few people will be able to claim they've actually thought as far as that.
- nimbius 4y ago
  you could make the argument that late-stage capitalism and the emergence of neufeudalism has reduced the state from an arbiter and partner in creating a thriving and successful society for its people, to a paul blart mall cop. well thought legislature is the purvey of the private sector, as is trade law and most of the sovereignty of the internet. but realistically Boris Johnson himself was notorious for using dead-cat legislature to draw attention away from serious problems in his own government and serious issues the nation faces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy chances are great we're seeing this bit of legislation to help people lose focus on the slow-rolling dumpster fire of brexit.
  - astrange 4y ago
    > you could make the argument that late-stage capitalism and the emergence of neufeudalism Just because someone made up some words doesn't mean you have to use them. There's nothing late about the capitalism (it's not going anywhere) nor neo about the feudalism (the UK's terrible land use policies are AFAIK all historical). Although the opposition have now just announced they're going to make everyone poorer, which would be a weird policy and I suppose anti-capitalist, except it's already been happening since 2005-ish. https://twitter.com/josiahmortimer/status/1615364763197837312 https://twitter.com/josiahmortimer/status/161536476319783731...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
neilv 4y ago
The bias starts before the first sentence, with the headline. I'd like to think any journalism student in their first week would know not to do this. And one with some awareness of tech would know that general-purpose surveillance and censorship are ongoing battles, and at least acknowledge that angle. This looks like a press release. Maybe Ars Technica should stick to product advertorials, and we on HN should find real reporting around which to consider important societal issues.
908B64B197 4y ago
This looks like an excuse to be able to beat into submission foreign "evil" tech companies thanks to an intentionally vague and arbitrary law. Every time I read something about the UK these days it feels like I need to fact check it because it always sounds like something conspiracy theorists here in America would say. And it's almost always real. I'm still surprised how almost 250 years of separate history shaped radically different nations. And I'm not sure which one is best; but maybe the huge number of Britons here in America should be an indicator of that.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > Every time I read something about the UK these days it feels like I need to fact check it because it always sounds like something conspiracy theorists here in America would say Quite a lot of it is indeed directly imported from conspiracy theorists in America. Via the rightwing "media" pipeline straight to government.
sobkas 4y ago
> "The United Kingdom wants to become the safest place for children to grow up online" is the first line of this article. Not presented as a quote, or a claim made by a source in the article. Just a fact. > From that point it just gets worse. There's basically no description of what terms like "protecting kids online" actually means. Based on what I seen in British media, it's keeping children from talking to or knowing that trans people exist. Otherwise children might learn that trans people are humans to or even catch(they are for reals) transness...
pjc50 4y ago
"Under a further change to the bill, video footage that shows people crossing the Channel in small boats in a “positive light” will be added to a list of illegal content that all tech platforms must proactively prevent from reaching users." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/17/donelan-confirms-stiffer-online-safety-measures-after-backbench-pressure https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/17/donelan-c... It's state censorship for anything the government finds uncomfortable.
- eecc 4y ago
  Also “terrorist material”… I bet Extinction Rebellion will quickly make its way in that list
dogleash 4y ago
I thought Ars was better that that. Srug, oh well, time to write them off too.
T3RMINATED 4y ago
[dead]

bjt2n3904 4y ago

No one should grow up online. There is no "safe" way to "grow up" online.

danuker 4y ago
I saw all kinds of crazy stuff on the early web as a teen. I grew [up?] both tolerant and thick-skinned.
- bjt2n3904 4y ago
  This isn't about content! There is a real world, and a virtual one. The virtual one is a mere imitation of the real one. We weren't born to live inside a machine.
- birdyrooster 4y ago
  Even if you are right it’s survivor bias, but to the parent commenters point being raised on the internet is sad because of the lost opportunity.
goatlover 4y ago
The internet has replaced growing up on tv, rock and roll and video games. Before then, the wrong books.

mancerayder 4y ago

A consequence of not having a Bill of Rights with a First Amendment, something routinely mocked on the one side of the Atlantic. The point is that intentionally overbroad restrictions on speech or content are a lot more difficult in the US.

pksebben 4y ago
I feel like we suffer from intentionally overbroad protections in this vein. Corporations being people and what not.
joenot443 4y ago
This is true. We're frequently reminded growing up in Canada that despite what we'd gather from the tv/film we consume, we don't have the same freedom of speech laws that our friends in the south do. People are sent to jail for hate speech in Canada, both online and in-person, something I'm not aware of happening in the states. Our Charter provides us with a "freedom of expression" for which the government is allowed "reasonable" grounds for censorship and speech restriction. For better or worse, there are many, many websites hosted in the US which would never fly in Canada.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > We're frequently reminded growing up in Canada that despite what we'd gather from the tv/film we consume, we don't have the same freedom of speech laws that our friends in the south do. Why not simply get those rights? Looking at the brain flow to and from the US, there are a lot of Canadians voting with their feet... Americans did about 250 years ago. To me, the Canadian political system has always been a source of amazement and quite an enigma. The constitution of that country simply wasn't signed by a third of the population, and this is considered normal over there. Could anyone here in America imagine that?
  - peanuty1 4y ago
    > Why not simply get those rights? Governments rarely relinquish power.

jonatron 4y ago

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137 Reading through 260 pages of legislation is tl;dr for journalists.

supriyo-biswas 4y ago

I suspect the original article is about UK's "Online Safety Bill" which was discussed at length on HN[1] with some very good discussion about why it's a bad idea. (Which is something a few commenters on this thread are failing to grasp.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32055756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32055756

timthorn 4y ago
The politician responsible for this bill was replaced since that discussion, and the content of the bill has been changed significantly - some of the discussion of 6 months ago is still valid, but you can't rely on what was said then to form your opinion of the bill as is going through Parliament. The original minister has not held back in her criticism of the changes. https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/nadine-dorries-michelle-donelan-doesnt-understand-online-safety-bill https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/nadine-dorries-mic...

oxfordmale 4y ago

I can guarantee no tech exec will ever end up in prison under this law. At most, they will get a fine and happily file this under operational costs. Very few MPs seem to understand how the internet works, and there is virtually no opposition against some of this madness. There are only demands to make it even stricter to "protect the kiddies". Most of these "kiddies" know how to use a VPN or are at least smart enough to borrow their father's phone to watch juicy content.

gadders 4y ago
[flagged]
- whythre 4y ago
  So if I write a nasty note on a paper Airplane and throw it at you, might the manufacturer of the paper and pen get in trouble? ‘No, that’s absurd.’ Fine, what about an unpleasant email? Should an email provider auto screen potentially harmful messages? None of this seems very logically consistent and just seems to stem from a desire to fix a problem (people being nasty to each other) in the most heavy handed and legally clumsy way imaginable.
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    Amazingly, the above story happened in the UK, the UK's health system is failing totally, the NHS has under-invested in mental health services on a massive scale for decades (for example, all the gambling addiction clinics in the UK were funded by gambling companies until 2020), and this happens and people immediately round on...Twitter? It is genuinely very confusing that a mental health problem has turned into tech regulation. Particularly when mental health treatment is so obviously lacking (and part of the reason why no-one asks the question about the NHS is due to lobbying, the NHS has the most powerful lobbying group in British politics). Btw, just anecdotally, the people pushing for this are (imo) the worst people in British politics. Bill Cash, all the Brexit hardliners (who, btw, were regarded as too incompetent and mad by the people who can the Vote Leave campaign). These people sit in safe seats, there is no risk from deselection, and they just sit there and come up mad ideas year after year (the person above who points out that British politicians tend towards authoritarianism are correct...this is being led by the furthest right portion of the Tories).

ljm 4y ago

The UK as a whole leans fairly authoritarian and has had successive paternalistic governments for probably as long as anyone alive can remember (some people will call this the 'nanny state'). These fanciful proposals are created and supported by both Conservative (right, centre right) and Labour (left, centre left) parties alike. As cynical as it sounds, this kind of legislation is rolled out practically every year and you could probably set your watch by it. Sometimes the law is implemented, quite often it's put on the backburner and resurrected the next year when there needs to be a distraction from something else. You can ask, "how will this work in practice?" and few people will be able to claim they've actually thought as far as that.

nimbius 4y ago
you could make the argument that late-stage capitalism and the emergence of neufeudalism has reduced the state from an arbiter and partner in creating a thriving and successful society for its people, to a paul blart mall cop. well thought legislature is the purvey of the private sector, as is trade law and most of the sovereignty of the internet. but realistically Boris Johnson himself was notorious for using dead-cat legislature to draw attention away from serious problems in his own government and serious issues the nation faces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy chances are great we're seeing this bit of legislation to help people lose focus on the slow-rolling dumpster fire of brexit.
- astrange 4y ago
  > you could make the argument that late-stage capitalism and the emergence of neufeudalism Just because someone made up some words doesn't mean you have to use them. There's nothing late about the capitalism (it's not going anywhere) nor neo about the feudalism (the UK's terrible land use policies are AFAIK all historical). Although the opposition have now just announced they're going to make everyone poorer, which would be a weird policy and I suppose anti-capitalist, except it's already been happening since 2005-ish. https://twitter.com/josiahmortimer/status/1615364763197837312 https://twitter.com/josiahmortimer/status/161536476319783731...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

neilv 4y ago

The bias starts before the first sentence, with the headline. I'd like to think any journalism student in their first week would know not to do this. And one with some awareness of tech would know that general-purpose surveillance and censorship are ongoing battles, and at least acknowledge that angle. This looks like a press release. Maybe Ars Technica should stick to product advertorials, and we on HN should find real reporting around which to consider important societal issues.

908B64B197 4y ago

This looks like an excuse to be able to beat into submission foreign "evil" tech companies thanks to an intentionally vague and arbitrary law. Every time I read something about the UK these days it feels like I need to fact check it because it always sounds like something conspiracy theorists here in America would say. And it's almost always real. I'm still surprised how almost 250 years of separate history shaped radically different nations. And I'm not sure which one is best; but maybe the huge number of Britons here in America should be an indicator of that.

pjc50 4y ago
> Every time I read something about the UK these days it feels like I need to fact check it because it always sounds like something conspiracy theorists here in America would say Quite a lot of it is indeed directly imported from conspiracy theorists in America. Via the rightwing "media" pipeline straight to government.

sobkas 4y ago

> "The United Kingdom wants to become the safest place for children to grow up online" is the first line of this article. Not presented as a quote, or a claim made by a source in the article. Just a fact. > From that point it just gets worse. There's basically no description of what terms like "protecting kids online" actually means. Based on what I seen in British media, it's keeping children from talking to or knowing that trans people exist. Otherwise children might learn that trans people are humans to or even catch(they are for reals) transness...

pjc50 4y ago

"Under a further change to the bill, video footage that shows people crossing the Channel in small boats in a “positive light” will be added to a list of illegal content that all tech platforms must proactively prevent from reaching users." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/17/donelan-confirms-stiffer-online-safety-measures-after-backbench-pressure https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/17/donelan-c... It's state censorship for anything the government finds uncomfortable.

eecc 4y ago
Also “terrorist material”… I bet Extinction Rebellion will quickly make its way in that list

dogleash 4y ago

I thought Ars was better that that. Srug, oh well, time to write them off too.

T3RMINATED 4y ago

[dead]