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I think you’re being overly charitable in thinking this happens because they don’t understand these things. The main thing is that they don’t care. The purpose

I think you’re being overly charitable in thinking this happens because they don’t understand these things. The main thing is that they don’t care. The purpose of passing legislation to protect the children isn’t to protect the children, it’s to get reelected. If we can get the voters to understand the things you mention, then maybe we’d have a chance.

mortarion 2y ago
Lawmakers also make and pass laws because it's their job, not because a new law is needed. They feel it's literally their job to come up with new bills to pass, for no reason other than "it's my job". Imagine a society so stable it doesn't need new laws or rules. All the elected representatives would just sit around all day and twiddle their thumbs. A bad look in their eyes. This is how it should be of course.
- pasc1878 2y ago
  However we are not in a stable society like that. Things change - e.g. 50 years ago no online chats, no drones, very little terrorism, travel was more costly and slower, medical drugs were less efficient, live span was shorter.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    I agree with your broader point - but this article is about the UK and I can assure you, 50 years ago the UK did not have "very little terrorism"
    - wat10000 2y ago
      Same in the US. It was not a good time. The FBI recorded five bombings a day in 1971-72. Airliners were being hijacked once a week at the peak around then.
    - pasc1878 2y ago
      OK I should have said 60 years
the_other 2y ago
> it’s to get reelected. I doubt this. Legislation is written by committee and passed by democracy. Most of the voting public don't look up the voting records which are available to them. Most of the voting public can't name a third of the members of parliament. If there is a conspiratorial take, the one about regulatory capture is more believable.
HL33tibCe7 2y ago
It’s more than just politicians not caring: Big Tech firms hite people on millions of dollars per year to lobby and co-operate with governments, in order to ensure that processes like this result in favourable outcomes to them. See e.g. Nick Clegg.
ebiester 2y ago
I think you're being underly charitable. The vast majority of congress critters are pretty smart people, and by Jeff Jackson's account, even the ones who yell the loudest are generally reasonable behind closed doors due to incentives. The problem is that the real problems are very hard, and their job is to simplify it to their constituents well enough to keep their jobs, which may or may not line up with doing the right thing. This is a truly hard problem. CSAM is a real problem, and those who engage in its distribution are experts in subverting the system. So is freedom of expression. So is the onerous imposition of regulations. And any such issue (whether it be transnational migration, or infrastructure, or EPA regulations in America, or whatever issue you want to bring up) is going to have some very complex tradeoffs and even if you have a set of Ph.Ds in the room with no political pressure, you are going to have uncomfortable tradeoffs. What if the regulations are bad because the problem is so hard we can't make good ones, even with the best and brightest?
- bsder 2y ago
  > This is a truly hard problem. CSAM is NOT a hard problem. You solve it with police work. That's how it always gets solved. You don't solve CSAM with scanners. You don't solve CSAM with legislation. You don't solve CSAM by banning encryption. You solve CSAM by giving money to law enforcement to go after CSAM. But, see, the entities pushing these laws don't actually care about CSAM.
  - blackqueeriroh 2y ago
    > You solve it with police work. That's how it always gets solved. My dude, I’m sorry to tell you, but the problem usually is law enforcement. For so many things. You try barely training people who already like beating people up and then give them a monopoly on legal violence. Btw, the reason the cops were invented in Britain was to put down riots by the populace bc they were so poor[1], and in America it was to divide poor whites and poor blacks and turn the poor whites into slave catchers.[2] [1] https://novaramedia.com/2020/06/20/why-does-the-police-exist/ https://novaramedia.com/2020/06/20/why-does-the-police-exist... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/13/876628302/the-history-of-policing-and-race-in-the-u-s-are-deeply-intertwined https://www.npr.org/2020/06/13/876628302/the-history-of-poli...
threeseed 2y ago
> protect the children isn’t to protect the children, it’s to get reelected The next UK general election is ~5 years away so this makes no sense. The more likely reason is that it's simply good policy. We have enough research now that shows that (a) social media use is harmful for children and (b) social media companies like Meta, TikTok etc have done a wilfully poor job at protecting them. It is bizarre to me how many people here seem willing to defend them.
- wat10000 2y ago
  Does British campaigning not look very far into the past? In the US, an opposing candidate would absolutely say “the incumbent voted against the protect-children-from-online-predators act five years ago, don’t reelect them, vote for me” and it would be effective.
  - gbuk2013 2y ago
    LOL what campaigning? A couple of weeks before the election I get a few leaflets through my door with a few paragraphs about some person I never heard of and maybe some bullet points. People just pick political party and then vote for whoever has their logo next to the name.
narrator 2y ago
They want to protect their political control, so they break any way for the opposition to effectively organize. Things like unlimited immigration, Net Zero 2050, and dekulakization of the agricultural sector are widely unpopular, so they just have to get everyone who has anything to say against these programs to be politically powerless.
- sethherr 2y ago
  Net zero is widely popular. Everything else you listed are right wing conspiracy theories.
  - narrator 2y ago
    Net Zero 2050 involves so much economic depravation that is neither good for business interests, or good for the public's economic well being, such that the only way it could ever happen would be in some sort of authoritarianism. The adherents are nevertheless undeterred, thus I think Ecological Totalitarianism has a good chance of becoming the Bolshevism of the 21st century.
    - wat10000 2y ago
      Let’s just require polluters to secure permission from each person whose air they’re going to pollute. That seems fair enough.
  - burningChrome 2y ago
    >> Everything else you listed are right wing conspiracy theories. Apparently this isn't: "Just seven electric-vehicle charging stations have begun operating with funding from a $5-billion US government program created in 2021, marking “pathetic” progress, a Democratic senator said on Wednesday." https://nypost.com/2024/06/05/business/democratic-senator-blasts-5b-program-as-failure-after-only-7-ev-charging-stations-open-in-3-years/ https://nypost.com/2024/06/05/business/democratic-senator-bl...
    - wat10000 2y ago

mortarion 2y ago

Lawmakers also make and pass laws because it's their job, not because a new law is needed. They feel it's literally their job to come up with new bills to pass, for no reason other than "it's my job". Imagine a society so stable it doesn't need new laws or rules. All the elected representatives would just sit around all day and twiddle their thumbs. A bad look in their eyes. This is how it should be of course.

pasc1878 2y ago
However we are not in a stable society like that. Things change - e.g. 50 years ago no online chats, no drones, very little terrorism, travel was more costly and slower, medical drugs were less efficient, live span was shorter.
- michaelt 2y ago
  I agree with your broader point - but this article is about the UK and I can assure you, 50 years ago the UK did not have "very little terrorism"
  - wat10000 2y ago
    Same in the US. It was not a good time. The FBI recorded five bombings a day in 1971-72. Airliners were being hijacked once a week at the peak around then.
  - pasc1878 2y ago
    OK I should have said 60 years

the_other 2y ago

> it’s to get reelected. I doubt this. Legislation is written by committee and passed by democracy. Most of the voting public don't look up the voting records which are available to them. Most of the voting public can't name a third of the members of parliament. If there is a conspiratorial take, the one about regulatory capture is more believable.

HL33tibCe7 2y ago

It’s more than just politicians not caring: Big Tech firms hite people on millions of dollars per year to lobby and co-operate with governments, in order to ensure that processes like this result in favourable outcomes to them. See e.g. Nick Clegg.

ebiester 2y ago

I think you're being underly charitable. The vast majority of congress critters are pretty smart people, and by Jeff Jackson's account, even the ones who yell the loudest are generally reasonable behind closed doors due to incentives. The problem is that the real problems are very hard, and their job is to simplify it to their constituents well enough to keep their jobs, which may or may not line up with doing the right thing. This is a truly hard problem. CSAM is a real problem, and those who engage in its distribution are experts in subverting the system. So is freedom of expression. So is the onerous imposition of regulations. And any such issue (whether it be transnational migration, or infrastructure, or EPA regulations in America, or whatever issue you want to bring up) is going to have some very complex tradeoffs and even if you have a set of Ph.Ds in the room with no political pressure, you are going to have uncomfortable tradeoffs. What if the regulations are bad because the problem is so hard we can't make good ones, even with the best and brightest?

bsder 2y ago
> This is a truly hard problem. CSAM is NOT a hard problem. You solve it with police work. That's how it always gets solved. You don't solve CSAM with scanners. You don't solve CSAM with legislation. You don't solve CSAM by banning encryption. You solve CSAM by giving money to law enforcement to go after CSAM. But, see, the entities pushing these laws don't actually care about CSAM.
- blackqueeriroh 2y ago
  > You solve it with police work. That's how it always gets solved. My dude, I’m sorry to tell you, but the problem usually is law enforcement. For so many things. You try barely training people who already like beating people up and then give them a monopoly on legal violence. Btw, the reason the cops were invented in Britain was to put down riots by the populace bc they were so poor[1], and in America it was to divide poor whites and poor blacks and turn the poor whites into slave catchers.[2] [1] https://novaramedia.com/2020/06/20/why-does-the-police-exist/ https://novaramedia.com/2020/06/20/why-does-the-police-exist... [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/13/876628302/the-history-of-policing-and-race-in-the-u-s-are-deeply-intertwined https://www.npr.org/2020/06/13/876628302/the-history-of-poli...

threeseed 2y ago

> protect the children isn’t to protect the children, it’s to get reelected The next UK general election is ~5 years away so this makes no sense. The more likely reason is that it's simply good policy. We have enough research now that shows that (a) social media use is harmful for children and (b) social media companies like Meta, TikTok etc have done a wilfully poor job at protecting them. It is bizarre to me how many people here seem willing to defend them.

wat10000 2y ago
Does British campaigning not look very far into the past? In the US, an opposing candidate would absolutely say “the incumbent voted against the protect-children-from-online-predators act five years ago, don’t reelect them, vote for me” and it would be effective.
- gbuk2013 2y ago
  LOL what campaigning? A couple of weeks before the election I get a few leaflets through my door with a few paragraphs about some person I never heard of and maybe some bullet points. People just pick political party and then vote for whoever has their logo next to the name.

narrator 2y ago

They want to protect their political control, so they break any way for the opposition to effectively organize. Things like unlimited immigration, Net Zero 2050, and dekulakization of the agricultural sector are widely unpopular, so they just have to get everyone who has anything to say against these programs to be politically powerless.

sethherr 2y ago
Net zero is widely popular. Everything else you listed are right wing conspiracy theories.
- narrator 2y ago
  Net Zero 2050 involves so much economic depravation that is neither good for business interests, or good for the public's economic well being, such that the only way it could ever happen would be in some sort of authoritarianism. The adherents are nevertheless undeterred, thus I think Ecological Totalitarianism has a good chance of becoming the Bolshevism of the 21st century.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    Let’s just require polluters to secure permission from each person whose air they’re going to pollute. That seems fair enough.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  >> Everything else you listed are right wing conspiracy theories. Apparently this isn't: "Just seven electric-vehicle charging stations have begun operating with funding from a $5-billion US government program created in 2021, marking “pathetic” progress, a Democratic senator said on Wednesday." https://nypost.com/2024/06/05/business/democratic-senator-blasts-5b-program-as-failure-after-only-7-ev-charging-stations-open-in-3-years/ https://nypost.com/2024/06/05/business/democratic-senator-bl...
  - wat10000 2y ago