5 ms·

I've long held a belief that if countries want to mandate compliance, they should be required to provide the mechanism for compliance. Want to deem whether con

by jjcm 11mo ago

I've long held a belief that if countries want to mandate compliance, they should be required to provide the mechanism for compliance. Want to deem whether content is allowed or not? Fine, provide an API that allows content to be scanned and return a bool. Want to age-gate content? Fine, provide an identity service. While both of these will reduce privacy, they'll achieve one of two objectives: Either those making these policies will realize the law they wrote is impossible to achieve, or it will at least provide an even playing field for startups vs incumbents if they succeed.

snapplebobapple 11mo ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 11mo ago
  Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're aiming for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
o11c 11mo ago
[flagged]
- bpodgursky 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 11mo ago
    Please don't comment like this on HN. It's fair enough to express disagreement with the parent comment, and I've replied to them asking them to avoid fulminating and making shallow dismissals. But this kind of reply is also in breach of the guidelines. Replying to a bad comment with an even worse one is how death-spirals happen, and that's exactly what we're trying to avoid on HN. We've had to ask you several times before to follow the guidelines. We have to ban accounts that keep ignoring our requests. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tomhow 11mo ago
  Please don't fulminate or post shallow dismissals on HN. It's valid to argue that laws should be legible and reasonably straightforward to comply with, and to point out that society as a whole doesn't benefit if only already-dominant global megacorps can afford to comply with laws (or bear the cost of non-compliance). Let's make the effort to discuss the topic in a curious, conversational way, rather than with this belligerent tone. The guidelines make it clear we're looking for a higher standard of discourse than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - o11c 11mo ago
    ... really? Many words came to mind when I saw this warning, but nothing really adds to the incredulity of this one word.
    - tomhow 11mo ago
      Yes really, we’re here for curious conversation, not sneers, swipes and shallow dismissals. The guidelines couldn’t be clearer about this, and most others in this subthread were able to discuss the topic curiously.
jeroenhd 11mo ago
Many countries fail to provide their citizens with digital identification while enforcing age limits and such, but at least most of Europe will have solutions for both of these soon. Plus, "complying with the law threatens my bottom line" has never been a reason to ignore the law anyway. If restaurants were run like internet companies, people would die of food poisoning every day because "it'd be too much of a burden to check if _every_ ingredient is in date before cooking". This proves that the laws they write are actually quite possible to achieve. It'll happen at the cost of some freedom and many of the nice things about the internet in general, but if you're a businessman looking at business potential and don't care too much about artistic creativity, the impact is actually quite minimal. I'm glad UK and US companies are hiring the most incompetent and useless "verification" companies out there to punish the government through a weird form of malicious compliance, but that won't last. > Want to deem whether content is allowed or not? Fine, provide an API that allows content to be scanned and return a bool. https://www.iwf.org.uk/our-technology/image-intercept/ https://www.iwf.org.uk/our-technology/image-intercept/ exists for the UK, https://www.web-iq.com/solutions/atlas https://www.web-iq.com/solutions/atlas exists within the EU, https://projectarachnid.ca/en/#shield https://projectarachnid.ca/en/#shield exists in Canada, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna exists worldwide, as well as https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scanning/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scann... and https://get.safer.io/csam-detection-tool-for-child-safety https://get.safer.io/csam-detection-tool-for-child-safety. Someone even made an open source, CLIP-based tool that doesn't require hashes and can be tweaked in all kinds of ways: https://github.com/Haidra-Org/horde-safety/blob/main/horde_safety/csam_checker.py https://github.com/Haidra-Org/horde-safety/blob/main/horde_s... These mechanisms not only exist, governments try their best to convince people to use them. I don't think you'll get away in court arguing that there is no accessible service for you to use. What happens when you fail after applying one of these services is up for debate, but so far, laws just want you to try your best to prevent abuse, and existing services are enough for that. > Want to age-gate content? Fine, provide an identity service. This is a problem now, but privacy-safe age verification is rolling out across the EU in the coming years. This is actually a super easy problem to solve when the government puts in the bare minimum amount of work. A decent argument against the UK/US/etc. but not so much so for an EU member state like in this court case.
croes 11mo ago
Why should online businesses have less obligations than offline businesses? Do offline businesses have an API? There are laws and they have to follow them and can’t just wait until someone complains.
- greatgib 11mo ago
  Tell me in which case a place like a restaurant or a movie theater was found to be liable because a consumer suddenly decided to speak harmful speech or violating someone else privacy?...
  - croes 11mo ago
    Not the same. Show me one place like a restaurant or a movie theater where I can put a poster in their shop window without them asking questions about the content of the poster.
- soco 11mo ago
  There are simply no offline business models of user generated content, so this comparison doesn't hold at all. Whenever somebody comes up with such a offline business, we will see about it at that point.
  - Someone 11mo ago
    > There are simply no offline business models of user generated content Many newspapers still run classified ads (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_advertising). Many supermarkets still have boards where people can announce that they have something to sell, are looking for a house cleaner, etc.
    - dredmorbius 11mo ago
      And both are subject to acceptance requirements.
  - croes 11mo ago

by jjcm 11mo ago

snapplebobapple 11mo ago

[flagged]

tomhow 11mo ago
Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're aiming for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

o11c 11mo ago

[flagged]

bpodgursky 11mo ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 11mo ago
  Please don't comment like this on HN. It's fair enough to express disagreement with the parent comment, and I've replied to them asking them to avoid fulminating and making shallow dismissals. But this kind of reply is also in breach of the guidelines. Replying to a bad comment with an even worse one is how death-spirals happen, and that's exactly what we're trying to avoid on HN. We've had to ask you several times before to follow the guidelines. We have to ban accounts that keep ignoring our requests. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
tomhow 11mo ago
Please don't fulminate or post shallow dismissals on HN. It's valid to argue that laws should be legible and reasonably straightforward to comply with, and to point out that society as a whole doesn't benefit if only already-dominant global megacorps can afford to comply with laws (or bear the cost of non-compliance). Let's make the effort to discuss the topic in a curious, conversational way, rather than with this belligerent tone. The guidelines make it clear we're looking for a higher standard of discourse than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- o11c 11mo ago
  ... really? Many words came to mind when I saw this warning, but nothing really adds to the incredulity of this one word.
  - tomhow 11mo ago
    Yes really, we’re here for curious conversation, not sneers, swipes and shallow dismissals. The guidelines couldn’t be clearer about this, and most others in this subthread were able to discuss the topic curiously.

jeroenhd 11mo ago

Many countries fail to provide their citizens with digital identification while enforcing age limits and such, but at least most of Europe will have solutions for both of these soon. Plus, "complying with the law threatens my bottom line" has never been a reason to ignore the law anyway. If restaurants were run like internet companies, people would die of food poisoning every day because "it'd be too much of a burden to check if _every_ ingredient is in date before cooking". This proves that the laws they write are actually quite possible to achieve. It'll happen at the cost of some freedom and many of the nice things about the internet in general, but if you're a businessman looking at business potential and don't care too much about artistic creativity, the impact is actually quite minimal. I'm glad UK and US companies are hiring the most incompetent and useless "verification" companies out there to punish the government through a weird form of malicious compliance, but that won't last. > Want to deem whether content is allowed or not? Fine, provide an API that allows content to be scanned and return a bool. https://www.iwf.org.uk/our-technology/image-intercept/ https://www.iwf.org.uk/our-technology/image-intercept/ exists for the UK, https://www.web-iq.com/solutions/atlas https://www.web-iq.com/solutions/atlas exists within the EU, https://projectarachnid.ca/en/#shield https://projectarachnid.ca/en/#shield exists in Canada, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna exists worldwide, as well as https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scanning/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scann... and https://get.safer.io/csam-detection-tool-for-child-safety https://get.safer.io/csam-detection-tool-for-child-safety. Someone even made an open source, CLIP-based tool that doesn't require hashes and can be tweaked in all kinds of ways: https://github.com/Haidra-Org/horde-safety/blob/main/horde_safety/csam_checker.py https://github.com/Haidra-Org/horde-safety/blob/main/horde_s... These mechanisms not only exist, governments try their best to convince people to use them. I don't think you'll get away in court arguing that there is no accessible service for you to use. What happens when you fail after applying one of these services is up for debate, but so far, laws just want you to try your best to prevent abuse, and existing services are enough for that. > Want to age-gate content? Fine, provide an identity service. This is a problem now, but privacy-safe age verification is rolling out across the EU in the coming years. This is actually a super easy problem to solve when the government puts in the bare minimum amount of work. A decent argument against the UK/US/etc. but not so much so for an EU member state like in this court case.

croes 11mo ago

Why should online businesses have less obligations than offline businesses? Do offline businesses have an API? There are laws and they have to follow them and can’t just wait until someone complains.

greatgib 11mo ago
Tell me in which case a place like a restaurant or a movie theater was found to be liable because a consumer suddenly decided to speak harmful speech or violating someone else privacy?...
- croes 11mo ago
  Not the same. Show me one place like a restaurant or a movie theater where I can put a poster in their shop window without them asking questions about the content of the poster.
soco 11mo ago
There are simply no offline business models of user generated content, so this comparison doesn't hold at all. Whenever somebody comes up with such a offline business, we will see about it at that point.
- Someone 11mo ago
  > There are simply no offline business models of user generated content Many newspapers still run classified ads (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_advertising). Many supermarkets still have boards where people can announce that they have something to sell, are looking for a house cleaner, etc.
  - dredmorbius 11mo ago
    And both are subject to acceptance requirements.
- croes 11mo ago