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UK MPs give ministers powers to restrict Internet for under 18s
- christkv 7mo agoSo the UK is now China it seems. What a shining light for democracy and justice. There is no way this will be abused by petty little tyrant minister right?
- apopapo 7mo agoSadly it's not only the UK. There is a global push to restrict communication world-wide. The future is very bleak for fundamental freedoms.
- nexus6 7mo agoI’m not convinced anymore that we can handle freedom. Many children grow up glued to a phone or tablet watching AI videos and are targets of dis-information from foreign and/or hostile actors.
- Refreeze5224 7mo agoWe can't handle unchecked pursuit of profit, freedom isn't the issue.
- pixl97 7mo agoThe people who want unchecked pursuit of profit simply beat you to the punch by manipulating the social zeitgeist to accept that the unchecked pursuit of profit is the very definition of freedom.
- pixl97 7mo agoIt is a cynical view of humanity, but one that seems most correct. If for example there is a deadly virus going around people will quickly restrict freedoms to prevent its spread. And even in the case they don't people that believe in freedom over precautions are evolutionary culled. So what happens when the issue is actually infohazards? One of the common assumptions the freedom group makes is with all the information they have, anyone else would come to the same set of decisions they have. Of course I see two problems with this. 1. The freedom group is quite often hypocritical. That is, freedom is defined however they think, and anything outside of how they thing is "Not true freedom™". Elon Musk is a common source of this kind of freedom. 2. The individuals personal definition of freedom is anecdotal (We'll call this set A). Set A individual thinks by telling another individual with set B ideas on freedom that set A will win somehow? (A + B = A). That when you put ideas out there, by some magic process the best ideas win and take over and everything is happily ever after. Of course where number 2 commonly fails is if an infohazard is more addictive than actual knowledge, and where the inoculation to said addiction takes a long time to reach herd immunity. And example would be that it's faster to destroy a nation due to ragebait faster than open democracy can adjust, hence democracy always fails in these conditions. Nice catch-22 situation.
- apopapo 7mo agoIf "dis-information" is the core of the issue, then perhaps we ought to start banning religions? Despite doing that, China is a champion of spreading "dis-information" within their own walls. Hostile actors are not foreign, most often they are domestic. The biggest offenders are governments. Only freedom opposes their power, which is why they want to restrict it.
- dyauspitr 7mo agoMeh it’s accessing and posting stuff on the internet, not that big of a deal. I’d like to see a much bigger humdrum around the ubiquitous surveillance cameras that will eventually be fed to some sort of LLM to create an omniscient eye that follows everyone everywhere.
- noosphr 7mo agoThat's deeply unfair. China's economy is growing.
- nekusar 7mo agoYeah ive been watching whats happening with the URKL (United Robot Knockout League). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62dK3Av334 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62dK3Av334 Musk's jokes basically disassemble when doing a backflip. Fucking joke. Whereas the Chinese bots are doing Mui Thai, karate, and loads more. But... China is copying us <LAUGH>
- 10xDev 7mo agoThey are going to be missing out on top content https://www.instagram.com/popular/ai-generated-video-shorts/ https://www.instagram.com/popular/ai-generated-video-shorts/
- webdevver 7mo ago[dead]
- sickofparadox 7mo agoThe UK already arrests more than 1,000 a month people for online "hate speech". Higher than the official numbers for China, whatever those are worth. They'll probably reach the unofficial, real number soon enough. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages-zbv886tqf https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
- normie3000 7mo agoSounds interesting..Paywalled.
- direwolf20 7mo agoCan you give some examples of the speech the UK arrests people for?
- christkv 7mo agohttps://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/wales-england-germany-freedom-house-ministry-of-public-security-b2900316.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/wales-engl... You can get arrested for grossly offensive (completely subjective). Also they have a category called non-crime hate incidents (Hello Kafka) where they come to "intimidate" you without any charges being filed.
- RansomStark 7mo agoThat non crime hate incident goes on your criminal record and if you need an enhanced criminal records check, it will show up, and can be used to deny you employment. Its not just intimidation.
- direwolf20 7mo agoYou mean police acting is a non authoritative capacity to maintain public order?
- RansomStark 7mo agothere's many to choose from, you can google for more. But here's what got Lucy Connolly a 31 month sentence: "Mass deportations, now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, if that makes me a racist, so be it". Racist maybe, although she doesn't seem to care about race. Offensive, yeah, seems that it could be interpreted as offensive, but thats not technically illegal (the high court has repeatedly affirmed to right to be offensive). Inciting violence (the offense she was convicted of) no, not at all, she was stating her political opinion and her belief that the lives of immigrants is worth less than british children. Although people will point out she admitted guilt, but the threat of significant pre-trail imprisonment was used a lot at this time to force guilty pleas.
- fidotron 7mo ago> So the UK is now China it seems Western governments have been looking enviously at China's authoritarianism (notoriously Trudeau blurted out he admired their "basic dictatorship" back in 2013) while completely ignoring any elements that might actually improve the lives of the citizens. Our politicians are determined to implement the worst of our respective systems.
- direwolf20 7mo agoThe UK has been China forever, they have the most surveillance cameras and police home visits per capita of any developed country and their people like it this way.
- Steve16384 7mo agoDo you have a source on that? All I could find was this that said America has the most, behind China: https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/the-worlds-most-surveilled-countries/ https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/the-worlds-most-surveille...
- YCpedohaven 7mo agoIdk I’ve been watching the occasional BBC archives or some other old archive source, and the UK has seemed relatively authoritarian compared to Europe or the US for a while.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- indiangenz 7mo ago[flagged]
- dyauspitr 7mo agoGood
- 3842056935870 7mo agoToo bad your internet access is not restricted.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 7mo agoIn effect, this is the power to restrict internet to anyone.
- Refreeze5224 7mo agoIt is, and I have no doubt that is the entire point, despite them "thinking of the children."
- fidotron 7mo agoThe Canadian version of this is especially cynical: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c309y25prnlo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c309y25prnlo
- Eddy_Viscosity2 7mo agoThat article was about people suing openAI.
- _verandaguy 7mo agoTo be clear: this is civil action by a family, not the position of the Government of Canada.
- fidotron 7mo agoThere is no meaningful distinction, which is why a civil case in a foreign country is picked up by the BBC. Furthermore, the Gov are trying to deflect on to OpenAI (and the internet) because a huge part of the failings in that case involve them seizing the weapons from the perpetrator, and then giving them back.
- colesantiago 7mo agoThis is fine. The internet is going to be filled with bots anyway so might as well restrict it to this age group. They should be outdoors with no access to the internet. Why not extend this to under 25s or the elderly? I'm sure the online safety act also needs to extend this to chatbots and anything that can heavily manipulate and distort this age group.
- chaostheory 7mo agoYou forgot the /s for the sarcasm challenged
- thomastjeffery 7mo agoThey won't be restricting the age group from the internet. They will be restricting the internet. That's not fine. There is no feasible way to restrict the internet for an exclusive group, it's the internet!
- core-utility 7mo agoBut just a month ago everyone in the discussion about freedom.gov was saying that Europe doesn't restrict internet! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270
- chii 7mo agobut now the definition of europe becomes europe but not UK, since it's convenient to maintain the argument rather than discuss the real underlying issue!
- cucumber3732842 7mo agoShrodinger's continent. You don't know what it contains until you know what policy position you need to argue for/against.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- mhitza 7mo agoBig exaggeration. Opened the link and with the dozen comments or so that I've seen there is no rhetoric of the kind your asserting. We know from France, UK, Spain, Italy that censorship is ramping up rather than down. Still not a good enough excuse for freedom.gov when the current US agenda is to support the right wing organizations in Europe.
- tw-20260303-001 7mo agoWell, UK is just one small part of Europe. You probably also confuse Europe and the EU.
- akersten 7mo agoOh, no, not that Europe. You were of course talking about the Europe with Spain (oh wait, La Liga has a cloudflare kill switch). You were of course talking about the Europe with Italy (oh wait, the Piracy Shield). You were of course talking about the Europe with Turkyie (oh wait, ...
- direwolf20 7mo agoWhat's the text of the amendment and why doesn't this page link to it?
- Lio 7mo agoSo now consider that the same government want to extend voting rights to 16 year olds. So you can vote but you can't control the media you use to learn about who you're potentially voting for. There is something not quite right about that.
- 21asdffdsa12 7mo ago[flagged]
- doublerabbit 7mo agoCatch-22. They want to censor and not let you learn about the opposite opposition restricting your vote to the current opposition at the same time pissing you off from voting for the current opposition for restricting your rights to learn about the opposite opposition.
- dyauspitr 7mo agoThere’s plenty of that everywhere. You can sign up to die in a war at 18 but can’t drink alcohol until 21. That’s why laws exist, to codify and resolve edge cases.
- theflyinghorse 7mo agoUK absolutely needs to be thought of in the same way we think about Russia or Belorussia, or China.
- globular-toast 7mo agoIf they cared about children they'd just ban phones for children. Would be dead easy to enforce and wouldn't have any effect on the rights of adults. Unfortunately I think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though.
- jjgreen 7mo agoI think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though. By design.
- dekken_ 7mo agoWe're not smart enough to make our own decisions but we're smart enough to vote for the best people to make decisions for us? Make it make sense.
- Hizonner 7mo agoYep, just throw them kids under the bus.
- antonyh 7mo agoI fail to see how this is technically possible. Virgin Media already censors chunks of the internet, but not in a way that currently would allow age verification. Beyond my ISP I'm virtually anonymous unless I log in. If it's blocked at the network level I cannot login. If it's not blocked by the network, then it doesn't know exactly which individual is using my network connection. Theoretically they could put an interstitial page to check credentials but we'd just end up sharing the login rather than sharing all our personal details in separate accounts, or more likely I'd just not bother and accept the 'child' experience. If I lose access to social media so be it. All that will do is change the landscape as the diaspora find a new uncensored social media. This all falls apart when it affects genuine work, then it's already too late. The only real option at this point is VPN.
- Steve16384 7mo agoReading some of the comments here, HN seems to have been invaded by Twitter users spouting their opinion as if it's fact.