UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/time-for-tech-firms-to-act-uk-online-safety-regulation-comes-into-force/

by AndrewDucker • 2 years ago

212 360 2 years ago

ofcom.org.uk

JoshTriplett2• 2 years ago

Better alternative to first-party propaganda: https://www.eff.org/pages/uk-online-safety-bill-massive-thre...

oneeyedpigeon2• 2 years ago

Ofcom is an independent regulator; it's far from the "first-party" you're implying it is.

Mindwipe2• 2 years ago

Ofcom really isn't actually independent on Online Safety in any way.

It has to obey instructions on prioritisation from the secretary of state and has no real operational flexibility.

As with much of the (dire) UK legislation here, the government saying something is true until it is blue in the face does not make it true.

randomcarbloke• 2 years ago

there is no quango in the UK that is independent, they are all, without exception "independent" with an implied nudge and a wink.

nohuck13• 2 years ago

This is a press release, though. Whether or not Ofcom is independent, their press release writers are not independent, they are part of Ofcom's PR team, a team that absolutely exists.

pjc507• 2 years ago

The Q in Quango stands for Quasi.

pixxel• 2 years ago

JFC. You probably think the BBC is impartial.

krisbolton• 2 years ago

Well, that links to EFF's own "propaganda" - perpetuating privacy at all costs. Inevitably the place law and regulation should is somewhere in between, balancing risk and striving for an acceptable position all things considered within a democratic framework.

JoshTriplett2• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_ground_fallacy

It is never "inevitable" that the correct place for law and regulation is somewhere in the middle on every issue. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but it's never inevitable.

Assuming that it is makes it far too easy to move the Overton window: regulation proposes something stricter than the status quo, "compromise" moves in that direction, repeat.

A_D_E_P_T• 2 years ago

all things considered within a democratic framework

The UK has a very funny (literally ha-ha funny) notion of "democracy" -- with people just voting against the status quo most of the time and with "first past the post" resulting in leadership that doesn't have, and cannot even credibly claim, genuine popular support. It's a totally broken system.

pc869• 2 years ago

Why is it inevitable that we should continually erode one's right to privacy?

collyw• 2 years ago

The steady march towards authoritarianism continues.

Is there any way that we can overwhelm them?

turblety2• 2 years ago

We can support projects like Autonomi [1] (the rebranded MaidSafe [2]). It should create what (I feel) the internet was always ment to be. Peer to peer communications.

I think the only solution to this is to stop the centralised mess the internet has become.

1. https://autonomi.com/

2. https://maidsafe.net/

demarq• 2 years ago

I looked at all three website sites but no docs, it's a rough start with no headline app, or docs to create an app.

postepowanieadm• 2 years ago

Vote.

EpicQuest_24636• 2 years ago

People say as a pithy answer and it is very frustrating. Unfortunately it is utterly unrealistic that voting will solve this situation.

1) The majority of the UK's populace are onboard with the vast majority of these laws. Even if all the people that opposed this voted for another party, due to how the constituencies work, your vote will be effectively made moot.

2) Both major UK parties essentially agree that these laws should be implemented. The only solution to any problem that UK government can envisage is banning something. You can look into the Lotus Carlton ram raids of 40RR, they were singing the same tune back in the late 80s/early 90s.

3) There is no realistic pro-liberty / anti-censorship movement at all in the UK

This has been going for longer than I have been alive in the UK (I am now in my early 40s). I am not an anarchist, but I've heard the phrase repeated by anarchists of "You cannot vote yourself free". The only way to resist such laws is to subvert them via technology.

amoe_• 2 years ago

This legislation was created by the Conservative party, but wasn't opposed by any major political party in the UK.

iLoveOncall5• 2 years ago

What a joke. Every single political party that will ever be in power will want this sort of bills to be passed. It benefits them directly.

threeseed2• 2 years ago

The problem for you is that the majority of the public support this.

Because there is plenty of scientific evidence that social media is bad for children with many parents having first hand experiences with grooming, deep fakes, bullying etc.

And I think almost everyone can agree that companies like Meta, TikTok, X have major problems with their algorithms pushing people into ideological extremes, allowing rogue actors to manipulate at scale and not taking privacy or security seriously enough.

So finding people who want to defend them will be hard.

contracertainty• 2 years ago

You are absolutely right, and you have indavertebtly hit the nail on the head. This legilsation is supported by parents who would like their children to be able to use the internet, all of it, without any effort on their part to police their children's online habits. There are many parents who give their kids smartphones at 10 years old, or younger, and create Google and Facebook/Insta accounts with fake ages for their kids to use, and let them at it. No supervision, no discussion, no parental controls. This renders any action on the part of the tech companies moot, as parents are proving that their pre-teen kids are adults by providing false information. Kids then go online, go into Snapchat or whatever, cue torrent of DPs and grooming. Quelle surprise!

Schools in the UK spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with this, and in almost every case it turns out parents have no idea what their kids are sending/seeing online.

So the result is that bad parents demand bad legislation so that they can, in their minds, transfer responsibility for parenting their kids to the state. The state, well meaning rather than malicious, massively overreaches in its attempt to provide an answer. As a result everyone else suffers. And the 'majority of the public' think parents should parent, rather than making it the government's problem, and butt out of their internet.

iLoveOncall5• 2 years ago

Is there any way that we can overwhelm them?

Yes: leave the UK.

I and a lot of high earners are thinking about leaving the UK because it's simply a punishing country where you have high taxes like others in Europe but nothing to show for them. It's also by far the most authoritarian western country, as exemplified by measures like this one.

The way to overwhelm them is to sink the UK by having most of the people it relies on to function (high earners) leave and let the country collapse.

eru• 2 years ago

The way to overwhelm them is to sink the UK by having most of the people in relies on to function (high earners) leave and let the country collapse.

Leaving is useful, if it improves your personal well-being.

No need to be spiteful about it.

frikskit5• 2 years ago

Where do you want to go, I’m curious?! I wonder what panacea you see out there that’s less authoritarian and where you could keep your “high earner” social status.

It’s a shame that Britain gave one of its “high earner” jobs to someone who’d enjoy seeing it collapse.

jbu• 2 years ago

Bye.

alexandercannon• 2 years ago

I left the UK earlier this year and went to the USA for exactly this reason. Sick of giving half my paycheque to not receive anything in return except more boot on my neck. Mother freedom etc etc

hgomersall3• 2 years ago

The country doesn't need high earners per se, it needs people that contribute effectively. There are plenty of "high earners" that are parasites, contributing little and extracting much. It all makes much more sense once you realise that governments spend before they tax and so what really matters is real resources.

devjab• 2 years ago

I’m not sure you’re going to find a lot of sympathy for SoMe platforms in many European countries. Maybe you would have before Twitter was bought and a lot of the “media elite” used it. Today I think you’d mostly find a lot of happy parents applauding you if you were the first politician to manage to ban something like Tik-Tok, Facebook or similar. Not that I’m trying to justify it. I both think the way that it’s being done is wrong and that a lot of people will miss the open web more than they think.

Not holding big tech companies responsible for the content which is housed on their platforms was always a one way street into heavy regulation here in the EU. As with everything EU it takes decades, but I fully expect us to eventually ban many social media products. Or get left by them because it will not be possible for them to make money if they actually have to be custodians of their content.

briandear• 2 years ago

My problem with all of these sorts of things is the idea of who determines “harmful.” Because that’s a term of such ambiguity that it could literally mean anything.

“Covid came from a Chinese lab” — “harmful because it causes ‘racism’”

“Pakistani grooming gangs in Rotherham are targeting young British girls” — harmful because it could promote social unrest.

“Eating meat can improve metabolic health” — harmful because it promotes behaviors that contribute heavily to climate change.

“Young motorcycle racers should be allowed to train on big tracks before the age of 16” — harmful because it promotes a ‘dangerous’ sport to kids.

I could go on and you could replace whatever I said to whatever you want to say and depending on who is the arbiter of “harmful,” that speech could be regulated in a way that creates criminals out of simply stating facts or opinions.

If the lead up to WW2 were today, if these regulations existed, then suggesting that a Germans in the U.K. were a national security risk could get you in trouble for “promoting harmful stereotypes about German people.”

In my mind, if we are to regulate speech at all, it should have a very very strict standard as to what speech is demonstrably harmful rather than politically uncomfortable. I’m not an Alex Jones fan at all, but for example, nobody died from anything he said, people have been offended and perhaps disgusted, but the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist aren’t causing anyone actual harm. In the US, we have libel and slander laws, we also have laws against speech that cause an imminent threat of danger — but we should never have laws that protect people from being offended, or even misinformed. We have websites supporting Chinese Traditional Medicine despite some practices in that field being demonstrably harmful and contrary to modern medical science — should those be banned? I would think most people would say not.

This online “safety” regulation is really a regulation to regulate political speech under the guise of “protecting the children.”

est• 2 years ago

Such a trend can only be stopped by reciprocity: if the "harmfuls" were mis-judged, who is responsible to pay for the damage? Tax-payers?

pjc507• 2 years ago

In the US

Wrong thread, you should be posting in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427132 "US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from app stores Jan. 19"

zo1• 2 years ago

Side note. But if they're banning TikTok, they totally need to ban Youtube and Instagram as both of them have what TikTok has. I.e. The never-ending slot-machine of dopamine known as Shorts and Reels.

foldr5• 2 years ago

There's a lot not to like about this legislation, but you're way off the mark here. The legislation doesn't impose a generic ban on anything that someone or other considers 'harmful'. It's a raft of quite specific regulatory requirements relating to specific kinds of content. There are certainly arguments to be made against it, but your examples are quite irrelevant.

wesselbindt2• 2 years ago

psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress

Has shown itself to be vague enough to be a perfect stand in for "harmful" in everything the parent comment says.

richbell• 2 years ago

“Pakistani grooming gangs in Rotherham are targeting young British girls” — harmful because it could promote social unrest.

Incidentally, someone tried to edit the Wikipedia article to instead be about "moral panic".

https://archive.ph/VnXtV

throw6465776• 2 years ago

nobody died from anything he said

This is a little difficult to prove. From the Parkland libels, sure. From the rest of the culture he promotes? Are you so sure?

Whenever Americans lecture us on our culture of preferring safety we tend to just count back the number of days to your last school shooting. Be aware you're on ZERO right now. A teenage girl! At a Christian school. And consider that there are other perspectives on how bad that is. Because you collectively don't seem that bothered.

userbinator• 2 years ago

1984 was not an instruction manual.

EpicQuest_24636• 2 years ago

It may not have been but it seems that any dystopian piece of literature will be used as one.

ImHereToVote• 2 years ago

It was more like a discovery of underlying structures of anthropods. Especially the part about positive, negative, and transmutive nationalism.

Hit the nail on the head with that one.

red_admiral• 2 years ago

The UK has a thing called non-crime hate incidents (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-crime-hate-in...) where the police records alleged complaints about discrimination, even if they are not a crime (otherwise they would be hate crimes).

This could be used to direct policing resources sensibly ("lots of incidents recorded at such-and-such a place, maybe we should patrol there a bit more") or to build a dystopian database, or to waste police time. There's certainly a push by some of the media to stop the police spending time on this and focus on solving crimes instead.

Similarly, this regulation could be used to prosecute child abusers, or it could be used to suppress free speech, or it could mean that people start using properly secure messaging apps.

bratbag• 2 years ago

This is overblown.

The police are responsible for deciding how to classify a report. Their decisions need to be audited to avoid corruption.

Ergo they have to maintain a record of reports they decided were not hate crimes.

phero_cnstrcts• 2 years ago

Their decisions need to be audited to avoid corruption.

And as we all know: corruption ends abruptly at the highest levels.

pc869• 2 years ago

How long should police hold on to reports that they don't do anything with? If I make a complaint to the police about you, should an unrelated interaction you have with the police 5 years later bring up that report? Do you have a right to be forgotten if you haven't been convicted of a crime? Do I have a right to be forgotten if I've filed a report (or reports) that the police determine is/are frivolous?

I can think of plenty scenarios where these records should be destroyed permanently after some amount of time - namely, if the police decide not to refer to a prosecutor, or if the prosecutor decides not to press charges, or if the defendant is found not guilty.

zahllos• 2 years ago

This is true but, non crime hate incidents can appear on enhanced DBS checks (criminal records): https://www.slaterheelis.co.uk/articles/crime-category/non-c... and https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-do... - but bizarrely not on security clearances at least according to the London link.

I would hope that this along with any other disclosure where the police decided on no action would be treated appropriately and only disclosed/acted upon if the incident was really worrying. On the other hand, I can't help but feel if the incident is worrying enough would it not also meet the bar for a criminal incident?

I'm not really comfortable with the naming and the lack of due process to be honest.

On the other hand, being careful what you say on social media is a requisite in many careers as companies can and do perform private background checks.

protocolture4• 2 years ago

waste police time.

I dont know if you intended it but "wasting police time" is a pretty good book on the subject of administrative detections.

lmm3• 2 years ago

It's not. It's a bunch of nonconstructive old-man-yells-at-cloud complaints. While it identifies a somewhat deep problem with crime metrics (what should you do when a reported crime was a real incident, but not something that warrants actually bringing charges or otherwise following up - something where "a policeman had a word with the guy" is actually the right solution that all parties are happy with) it contributes nothing to solving that problem (and, as the follow-up more or less acknowledged if you read it carefully enough, in fact made it worse).

DrBazza2• 2 years ago

We love our regulation, especially if the government can't easily tax it.

Yet, we still have gambling adverts on UK TV and on football shirts.

At the same time we've also banned adverts for "certain types" of porridge. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgrwzx8er9o

AJRF• 2 years ago

Unlikely to change as Gambling companies are major donors to the Labour Party.

https://theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/28/tory-bet...

shreddit• 2 years ago

Well "porridge" is not a synonym for "healthy", but i see your point in gambling ads...

DrBazza2• 2 years ago

Goldilocks aside, I’ve not seen a family ruined by porridge. I have seen it first hand with gambling.

thih93• 2 years ago

About banning ads for “certain types of porridge”:

…the majority of porridge, muesli and granola products will not be affected by the advertising restrictions but some less healthy versions (with added sugar, chocolate, syrup) could be affected.
Sometimes products may be marketed as, or perceived by consumers to be, healthy but in fact contain surprisingly high levels of saturated fat, salt or sugar.

Source: https://healthmedia.blog.gov.uk/2024/12/06/here-are-the-fact...

More details; the pdf in the last link has examples on how scoring (computing NPM score) is done for particular products: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-adver... , https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-nutrient-prof...

pc869• 2 years ago

I know you think this is a gotcha but you're seriously advocating for the banning of advertisements of certain kinds of food? Based on the fact that what, some people aren't smart enough to read an ingredient label?

guilhas• 2 years ago

I was in Tesco, buying a orange juce

The standard version was 100% orange pressed

The "healthy" low cal version was 50% orange 50% water and sweetener addictives Same brand/price

The British Heart Foundation also recommends cola zero as healthier than 100% juice

jahewson2• 2 years ago

Given that such porridges are only “unhealthy” to the extent that they increase risk factors for various diseases, perhaps eating them should be considered a form of gambling. Then government could tax it too.

throwawayffffas• 2 years ago

They have already taxed sugar in soft drinks. I am guessing porridge is not too far out.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sugar-tax-revenue-helps-t...

projektfu2• 2 years ago

First, they came for the crumpets.

benfrain• 2 years ago

I’d like to see all social media sites require proper age verification, much like any gambling sites in the UK have to. No under 18 needs social media. Feel, especially for children, they are a net negative.

EpicQuest_24636• 2 years ago

Which kills any sort of online anonymity as all social media posts will be directly linked to your ID. This will make it much easier to go after anyone that is a dissident in the UK.

Many these awful laws such as one being discussed are sold to us under the guise of protecting the children. The last time I checked 7 people a day were being prosecuted for speech related crimes in the UK (and I checked a while ago).

Parents should be the ones that should be controlling their children's social media usage.

ccozan• 2 years ago

Ok but UK is not an oppresive regime, so that we talk about "dissidents" in UK. As anywhere, the freedom of speech is regulated. But even if you spout racist or other nonsense, you are not a dissident, you are just breaking the law, to which I agree, hate speech, racism should not be openly promoted.

nottorp2• 2 years ago

This will make it much easier to go after anyone that is a dissident in the UK.

No need to go there. What about commenting anonymously on your work place?

unethical_ban• 2 years ago

I think laws and regulations can be put in place that, while imperfect, would highly discourage the use of social media by minors.

I wouldn't want every user to validate their age with government ID.

But we can say schools should ban kids from using phones. We can say that large social media platforms need to whitelist content/creators that children are allowed to access. We can insist that social media companies throttle the ability for minors to scroll through videos at a dopamine addiction pace.

More generally and more applicable to the discussion, I think regulations for social media need to be applied proportional to the userbase and centralization of a platform, and target viral algorithms.

Old school message boards should be safe from government interference, broadly.

It may be time to research simpleX chat and Briar if we will maintain the ability to communicate without government filtering.

herghost3• 2 years ago

Parents should be the ones that should be controlling their children's social media usage.

I guess we should stop checking age when buying alcohol in pubs (_Parents should be the ones that should be controlling their children's alcohol purchases_)

And stop checking age when buying cigarettes (_Parents should be the ones that should be controlling their children's tobacco purchases_)

etc.

It's illuminating that your post is both "tech can't solve it" and so brazenly pro-tech with manifestations of its laziest arguments each way.

Of course tech can solve the ID problem. It could solve it in a way that doesn't need to give ground to your slippery slope argument too. It just doesn't have the incentive model to do so. Any "control" in this space would reduce the marketable headcount and so it's not in tech's interests to solve - without government intervention.

owisd• 2 years ago

It's not that hard to create privacy friendly age verification. Have a system like Sign in with Apple vouch that you're over 18. Go to Apple store to flash your ID and they just set a flag on your account. Apple doesn't give the site any personal info when you use Sign in with Apple. Apple isn't giving the government any of your details without a warrant. No Apple store nearby? It doesn't have to be Apple, licence it out to a few companies.

frikskit5• 2 years ago

Agree with you. I’m not sure why people believe that only the physical world and not the virtual one should have some amount of regulation. I think a good portion of HN has drunk the kool aid of their employers/industry and is almost religiously unwilling to consider an alternative viewpoint without resorting to shouting ‘fascist’ and ‘1984’. Maybe someone needs to write a book called 2024 about the hellscape we currently live in and folks could circle jerk around this new shibboleth.

Lanolderen• 2 years ago

Why would it be the "kool aid of their employers"? My employers would surely love to track every single click I make on the work and even personal PC. If the government tracks it that's also fine. Still less risk for them if I'm a nutter and the checks get outsourced to the government. Once the data leaks they can check what I was doing anyway.

EpicQuest_24636• 2 years ago

The online communities don't exist within the borders of a nation state. They have their own social norms and rules. You can see this on forums, message boards, online games etc. Therefore a nation state trying to enforce its will on those communities is completely asinine.

I don't like that it that American companies enforces it language policing on UK residents, I also don't like that fact that the UK wants to force it language policing world wide (the UK state acts as if it has an empire).

The reason people are unwilling to consider an alternative viewpoint, is that in the past they have been more moderate and what has happened has been a complete erosion of civil liberties under the guise of "stopping the terrorists". I was arguing the same thing I am arguing essentially over 20 years ago.

Ironically many of those groups that we went to war to stop (Al-queda/ISIS) are now being presented as moderate because foreign policy has shifted again.

Dalewyn• 2 years ago

At least in the US, legislation for age verification already exists and it actually far predates social media: COPPA[1].

It is, however, seldom actually enforced due largely to the impracticality and inconvenience of the matter. The law also doesn't regulate the presentation of content to children, rather the collection of information from children.

I think the most recent enforcement of COPPA that had actual tangible effect was when Youtube was ordered to stop collecting information (eg: comments) from videos marked as for kids.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/privacy-security/child...

Zak5• 2 years ago

COPPA does not appear to require age verification. It actually appears to have the opposite effect, only coming into effect when the service provider has actual knowledge of the user's age. Actively avoiding collecting the user's age or clues to it is safer for the service provider.

csmattryder• 2 years ago

crisis response protocols for emergency events (such as last summer’s riots).

Or maybe the proles organising mass protests at the government. No, surely not.

z3t4• 2 years ago

I tell my kids to not share any personal information online, never use their real name or birth date, and don't trust random people on the internet. And they wouln't even think about posting images of themselves.

pc869• 2 years ago

cjs_ac6• 2 years ago

As a software engineer in the UK (and former schoolteacher) I'm supportive of the Online Safety Act. People prefer to interact with people who are similar to them, so they end up with a belief that most people are like them, but as a teacher, I had to grapple with the full distribution of human intelligence. It's wider than I'm comfortable with. Most people struggle to deal with the complexity of everyday life in the twenty-first century.

My grandparents used to fall for every scam phone call or email they received. It wasn't until I showed them a compilation[0] of the George Agdgdgwngo character from Fonejacker - and the rest of my extended family sat around laughing at the ridiculous scenarios - that my grandparents realised that giving their bank details to anyone claiming to be calling from Microsoft and then expecting the bank to refund them their money wasn't an acceptable way to handle their financial affairs. In the end, they disabled their Internet banking and now have to catch a bus to their nearest bank branch to do anything.

I'm sure there will be flurry of Americans along shortly to monotonously repeat that quote about not trading freedom for security. That's their political tradition, not ours. The people of Thetford in Norfolk don't give a flying fuck about the gold statue of Thomas Paine that the Federalist Society (or some other group, I'm not terribly interested in which it was) put up in their town, but they love the fact that a sitcom about the Second World War was filmed there.

Someone else will make a joke about police officers investigating tweets. That practice - which was put to an end a couple of years ago - stemmed from a particular interpretation of a law that required police forces to investigate all threats of violence made by post, that was enacted in the 1980s during a period of increased religiously-motivated terrorism. The following decade brought the negotiations that put an end to that terrorism; negotiations that were the culmination of nearly five centuries of religious conflict. It is much harder to make glib assertions that principles are more important than physical safety when the violence happens in your city.

I shall leave it to others to make the usual accusations about who funded the aforementioned terrorism.

The Online Safety Act is vague and non-specific. Social media platforms differentiate themselves in the market on the bases of: with whom users can interact (people they know personally or the user base at large); and the ways in which they can interact (photos, videos, comments, likes, &c.). Each platform therefore poses its own unique set of risks to its user base, and so needs to have its own unique regulations. The Act acknowledges by empowering Ofcom to negotiate the specific policies that platforms will need to follow on a platform-by-platform basis. And if those policies should turn out to be too strict, and a few social media companies should find it no longer profitable to operate in the United Kingdom, that is not all that much of an issue for His Majesty's Government. They're not British companies, after all.

You can't talk about the Forbidden Meatballs[1] on Reddit or HN. In the 90s, AOL users from Scunthorpe and Penistone were banned from user forums for telling the community where they lived to help diagnose their connectivity issues. Americans have enforced - and continue to enforce - their cultural norms on the entire Anglophone web, and now the rest of the world has started to do the same. I have much greater faith in my government to protect my freedom of speech (no matter how much I may object to their policies) than some foreign company.

For those who are concerned that they will have to engage a solicitor to write reams of policies for their small Mastodon instance, need I remind you how utterly half-arsed everything in this country is? 'Maximum effect for minimum effort and cost' has been the guiding principle of all government in Britain for decades - it's how Britain ruled its Empire, it's what drove the Thirteen Colonies to rebel, it's why the East India Company was allowed to rule a subcontinent, it's why many of the former colonies were given independence despite not wanting it, it's why the roads are so consistently bad, it's why the water companies are dumping sewage into rivers, it's why there aren't enough police officers.

To anyone who thinks that regulating social media is some sort of prelude to a totalitarian state, I suggest you watch Britons at a traffic-light-controlled pedestrian crossing. This isn't the end of the world; it's not going to lead to any social changes of any sort at all. The Act requires protections for free speech, after all. When it's all finally implemented, it'll just be enforcement of social norms that no one finds controversial.

NB: I read through the Act to see whether an idea for a social media platform was still a viable business idea, and apart from sending policy documents to Ofcom, it wouldn't require the business to do anything that wasn't already in that idea. If you want to argue about what the Act requires, I will expect you to have read the Act[2].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9biM_ZfIdo

[1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/282049626

[2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/contents

EpicQuest_24636• 2 years ago

I am a software engineer in the UK. One of the reasons I want to move from the UK is because so many of our populace has attitudes such as yours. The online safety act won't solve the problems you think it will and will create a whole new host of issues.

What is amusing is that you even admit that you solved the problem of online scammers with your grandparents through education (I've seen the videos you mentioned as well). This is how people stay "safe" is to be educated on the dangers, not for overbearing regulation.

To anyone who thinks that regulating social media is some sort of prelude to a totalitarian state, I suggest you watch Britons at a traffic-light-controlled pedestrian crossing.

The last time I checked 7 people a day were being prosecuted for speech related offences (I guarantee it is more now). I've seen videos of the police arresting disabled pensioners over spicy tweets, journalists have their homes raided in the UK regularly if they criticise UK foreign policy over Israel (doesn't get reported on btw). We are already in a form of a soft totalitarianism. You just haven't noticed because you haven't been looking.

jimnotgym15• 2 years ago

(doesn't get reported on btw).

I wonder how it is that you know about it then?

Mindwipe2• 2 years ago

It is very difficult to see what your argument is here.

Initially you state that people are defrauded - indeed they are, very effectively and commonly, via phone calls. Ofcom has regulated the telephone system since their inception, and can charitably be said to have achieved zero percent operational effectiveness in that time.

The Act unquestionably causes harm - it makes it effectively impossible for open, anonymous APIs because of the age verification requirements. It requires the vast majority of operators (because the UK's definition of pornography is so impossibly wide it will catch almost anything) to collect a huge tranch of information for age verification, which will cost an astonishing amount of money and prevent many community initiatives from ever getting off the ground. It will lead to many sites simply blocking adult communities entirely for economic reasons, a part of society that is already subject to substantial discrimination from UK authorities.

The Act does not include meaningful provisions for free speech. The Ofcom guidance simply says that people should be mindful of it, with no enforcement whatsoever. It is still the case that, given the penalties for not taking down illegal speech, platforms are much safer taking down much more speech than previously. Ofcom's consultation responses on their "proportionality" show they have taken a view that the actions are proportional because Ofcom say they are proportional, and no actual work has been done to demonstrate that.

You say that the UK is not a totalitarian state because it's half assed. And it's certainly true that enforcement will be capricious and arbitrary. But that is hardly a defence of the act - it will still have a remarkable chilling effect because you never know if it's you that will be targeted. Meanwhile, it will probably have very little effect on any of the things it is supposed to prohibit.

You talk in your first paragraph about how HN posters are in a bubble, but remain remarkably unaware of your own. Many communities are already discriminated against by payment providers, banks and online services, and this legislation will make those effects significantly worse, but at the same time, achieve none of it's goals.

cjs_ac6• 2 years ago

It is very difficult to see what your argument is here.

My arguments are:

* free speech is not a cornerstone of our national identity (despite John Milton's attempts to make it one);

* social media causes genuine harm (but does not do so inherently);

* the Act imposes a legal responsibility on social media platforms to limit harm caused by those platforms; and

* while members of the HN community may have a personal capacity to use social media in such a way that minimises harm to them, the majority of people do not.

The Act unquestionably causes harm - it makes it effectively impossible for open, anonymous APIs because of the age verification requirements. It requires the vast majority of operators (because the UK's definition of pornography is so impossibly wide it will catch almost anything) to collect a huge tranch of information for age verification, which will cost an astonishing amount of money and prevent many community initiatives from ever getting off the ground. It will lead to many sites simply blocking adult communities entirely for economic reasons, a part of society that is already subject to substantial discrimination from UK authorities.

Alternatively, social media platforms can ban pornography. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok (amongst others) already do this; the problem is they don't enforce these bans. My perspective on this is that if you can't effectively moderate your social media platform in accordance with the social norms of your users' surrounding social context, then you shouldn't be operating a social media platform, and if you strongly disagree with your users' social context (e.g., users in, say, Iran), then you shouldn't offer your platform to them.

Also, commercial social media platforms are increasingly disinterested in providing open APIs, anyway.

You say that the UK is not a totalitarian state because it's half assed. And it's certainly true that enforcement will be capricious and arbitrary. But that is hardly a defence of the act - it will still have a remarkable chilling effect because you never know if it's you that will be targeted.

This is how offensive speech is policed in meatspace. On a more general note, having the right to say something doesn't mean that saying that thing doesn't make you an arsehole.

Meanwhile, it will probably have very little effect on any of the things it is supposed to prohibit.

Maybe. Let's wait and see, shall we?

Many communities are already discriminated against by payment providers, banks and online services, and this legislation will make those effects significantly worse, but at the same time, achieve none of it's goals.

I don't recall the Online Safety Act regulating the financial industry - could you point out which parts of the legislation relate to that? I do, however, agree that we do have excessive restrictions on access to certain financial services.

Zak5• 2 years ago

For those who are concerned that they will have to engage a solicitor to write reams of policies for their small Mastodon instance, need I remind you how utterly half-arsed everything in this country is?

The problem is that it's very easy to selectively enforce this sort of thing. Most people will never have an issue, but whoever manages to sufficiently annoy someone who has the ability to trigger an enforcement action could be screwed. That leads many of the people who might find themselves in that situation to stop annoying the government or stop running websites entirely.

That's called a chilling effect.

People would probably not be as concerned if the law only applied to large platforms.

cjs_ac6• 2 years ago

The Online Safety Act is about content moderation. If Ofcom taps you on the shoulder, they're asking for your moderation policies, and proof you're enforcing them. Platforms can no longer wash their hands of responsibility by saying that some random user uploaded the content and an opaque algorithm showed it to hundreds of thousands of people: the platform allowed the content to remain, and it was the platform's algorithm that showed the content to hundreds of thousands of people.

The Web isn't the information superhighway in cyberspace that it was in the '90s. The muggles are here, and they're treating social media like another part of the physical world, and we just have to live with the consequences of that. Mandatory content moderation is just one of those consequences.

You're not entitled to run any business, let alone a social media platform. Every right has attendant responsibilities. Fulfil your obligations to society.

protomolecule2• 2 years ago

To anyone who thinks that regulating social media is some sort of prelude to a totalitarian state

Ha-ha-ha. Writing from Russia.

No, seriously, it started with completely reasonable law mandating that internet providers block pages encouraging suicide or providing information on ways to do it.

And remember, Orwell was British.

int_19h• 2 years ago

I remember when Russia passed those first "anti-extremist" laws making it illegal to target "identifiable social groups" with "hate speech".

Then we found out that police is an "identifiable social group", and so are the MPs...

jimnotgym15• 2 years ago

I love your post, and not because I agree with all of it. It is the most original thing on this entire thread

jahewson2• 2 years ago

Someone else will make a joke about police officers investigating tweets. That practice - which was put to an end a couple of years ago

This claim is 100% false. We’ve seen multiple people jailed for tweets this year alone.

I have much greater faith in my government to protect my freedom of speech

You don’t have free speech. The U.K. has no such general right. That’s why people are in jail for tweets.

jimnotgym15• 2 years ago

...jailed for inciting rioting.

That would land you in jail in the UK no matter what forum you said it in. No we have no right to incite people to riot in the UK. That is something I'm rather proud of.

systemstops2• 2 years ago

You're right - they have no free speech. They can't even speak freely about the horrible crimes being committed in their nation by grooming gangs.

Many US companies won't capitulate to these regulations. The UK is going to simply be cut off from many social media services.

projektfu2• 2 years ago

[1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/282049626

As an old Irishman once told me, it'll be the fags that kill you. A few years later, I quit them.

pc869• 2 years ago

I'm trying to give this comment a gracious reading. You can find videos on YouTube from the last couple months of police talking to people about comments they left online, and tweets, and FB posts, etc. So saying that practice "was put to an end a couple of years ago" is a complete fiction.

The freedom/security quote, why should that be uniquely American? Human rights are human rights, and if something infringes on them what does it matter whether or not a particular government acknowledges it? It's still an infringement and should be fought.

It is much harder to make glib assertions that principles are more important than physical safety when the violence happens in your city.

Or maybe that's exactly the time you should make those assertions all the more loudly. Principles don't mean anything if you only hold them when it's easy, and we should all stop treating people who drop their principles at the slightest road bump as some kind of warrior for safety or whatever they'd like to frame it as, and treat them as they are - cowards and authoritarians.

This is the first I've heard about the Forbidden Meatballs, thank you for the chuckle.

For those who are concerned that they will have to engage a solicitor to write reams of policies for their small Mastodon instance, need I remind you how utterly half-arsed everything in this country is?

Oh so the hope is just that the government is too ineffectual to prosecute something they're completely within their rights to prosecute? How is that not absolute madness?

Why in the world would you trust a government to enforce this fairly? What's to say your Conservative Party doesn't use this to target prominent supporters of Labour, or vice versa?

The Act requires protections for free speech

As an American (the horror, I know, that I deign to comment on something British), I'd love to know where your freedom of speech is codified and what a government would have to do if they wanted to change what counts as speech, what doesn't, and what's protected and what isn't. I suspect that you and I have very different definitions of what qualifies as free speech.

At the end this seems like the same thing we see in the US a lot - this is something my side of the political divide supports, so I should support it, so I'm going to twist myself into a mental pretzel to support it, even if it solves no real problem, opens up a huge door for future government abuse, and further erodes the rights of everyone.

cjs_ac6• 2 years ago

The freedom/security quote, why should that be uniquely American?

It's a quote from one of the American founding fathers. I don't remember which, and I don't remember the exact quote.

Human rights are human rights, and if something infringes on them what does it matter whether or not a particular government acknowledges it?

In British law, most of what we now call 'human rights' were granted as settlements following rebellions or civil wars, the most notable example being those in the Bill of Rights 1689[0]. It was the Americans who copied that piece of legislation and wrote God's name at the top. The Parliamentarians who first wrote that bill remembered the Second English Civil War and the execution of King Charles I on charges of Tyranny - he wanted to levy taxes that Parliament opposed. (Sound familiar?)

It's still an infringement and should be fought.

We don't have absolute freedom of speech in this country and that's fine. Freedom in this country is about doing not speaking.

Or maybe that's exactly the time you should make those assertions all the more loudly. Principles don't mean anything if you only hold them when it's easy, and we should all stop treating people who drop their principles at the slightest road bump as some kind of warrior for safety or whatever they'd like to frame it as, and treat them as they are - cowards and authoritarians.

We don't do abstract principles in Britain, we're all about 100% organic realpolitik. Our system of government has been slowly evolving for nearly one thousand years, and continues to evolve. One of our kings was a tyrant, so we killed him. The republic that replaced him was worse, so we restored the monarchy. We solve the problem in front of us - there's no need to solve every problem ever right now.

Oh so the hope is just that the government is too ineffectual to prosecute something they're completely within their rights to prosecute? How is that not absolute madness?

This is how Britain has always been governed - with minimal effort. Yes, it's mad. With specific reference to prosecutions, the Crown Prosecution Service only prosecutes if it think it will get a guilty verdict.

Why in the world would you trust a government to enforce this fairly? What's to say your Conservative Party doesn't use this to target prominent supporters of Labour, or vice versa?

The government (i.e., the Cabinet and other Ministers of the Crown) have no direct control over the implementation of this legislation; that is delegated to Ofcom, a regulatory body that answers to Parliament as a whole. Any attempt to seize control of Ofcom would require legislation, which would be heavily scrutinised by the House of Lords (which is not elected, and therefore is only weakly influenced by party whips) and would also have to gain Royal Assent, which would probably be refused if the legislation were seen to weaken British democracy.

As an American (the horror, I know, that I deign to comment on something British), I'd love to know where your freedom of speech is codified and what a government would have to do if they wanted to change what counts as speech, what doesn't, and what's protected and what isn't. I suspect that you and I have very different definitions of what qualifies as free speech.

Absolute freedom of speech is only granted to parliamentarians when speaking in Parliament. The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law; Article 10 of the Convention provides for a general right to freedom of expression, but permits certain restrictions. Prior to the Human Rights Act, there was no general freedom of speech; instead everything that was not specifically prohibited was allowed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

daveoc64• 2 years ago

As an American (the horror, I know, that I deign to comment on something British), I'd love to know where your freedom of speech is codified and what a government would have to do if they wanted to change what counts as speech, what doesn't, and what's protected and what isn't. I suspect that you and I have very different definitions of what qualifies as free speech.

There is nothing easy to point to, like the first amendment to the US constitution, but it probably wouldn't matter anyway.

The key differences between the UK and US, particularly in this area are that:

1) Governments in the UK tend to have large parliamentary majorities - the current government has a majority in excess of 150 seats. So if there was some sort of written constitution guaranteeing Free Speech, and it required a supermajority to change, it's likely that many UK governments would easily be able to do that.

2) Politicians and the public at large in the UK have very different attitudes to Free Speech (or rather, they take a more pragmatic approach to things and can see the need to compromise). Polling has shown that the Online Safety Act has over 70% of the public supporting it. Parts of the act see even higher support than that. Consequently, most of the major political parties support the act or even think it should go further.

This is in deep contrast to the US, where imagining a scenario in which you could amend the constitution would be virtually impossible in the current climate.

stuaxo• 2 years ago

Seems like its not really possible to run an indie web site with a forum any more in the UK if you don't want to accept the risk of an 18 million pound fine -

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044

kiratp• 2 years ago

And if those policies should turn out to be too strict, and a few social media companies should find it no longer profitable to operate in the United Kingdom, that is not all that much of an issue for His Majesty's Government. They're not British companies, after all.

His Majesty’s government is struggling to keep its people warm and fed, let alone show any economic growth.[0][1]

The UK needs more foreign investment than ever before.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68625344 [1] https://archive.is/2024.12.15-052556/https://www.ft.com/cont...

jimnotgym15• 2 years ago

Do you think allowing Twitter and Facebook to operate in the UK brings in significant foreign investment?

If I Google poor and homeless people in the US, will I find there are none? Everyone is healthy and getting medical treatment?

highcountess• 2 years ago

Thank you, Ministry of Safety.

dang2• 2 years ago

Looks like https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/16/britains-ofcom-brings-tough-... has some background. Readers may want to look at both.

wkat42423• 2 years ago

And this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044

It shows the dark side of this coin. It's killing a lot of genuine volunteer initiatives because complying with all the red tape.

I find that a huge loss because it drives us more and more in the arms of big tech who only have dollars as a goal, not helping people or establishing a community like these initiatives do.

This law is aimed at big tech but it actually hurts the smallest players which don't need this legislation because they're already ethical. The big players will just hire more lawyers to contest any fines and find as many loopholes as they can.

An 18 million pound fine is just a massive risk for a hobbyist. It would basically ruin their entire life.

pessimizer2• 2 years ago

This law is aimed at big tech

The law is not aimed at big tech. It is aimed at any online forum that the government wants to shut down, and gives an lengthy, arbitrary, and vague list of pretenses that they can base a shutdown on. Big tech has shown itself to be eager to conform to government expectations at every turn. Big tech helps even to shape government expectations, and continually shares personnel with government itself.

kmlx2• 2 years ago

besides big tech i assume it will push more people underground (this is what i would do). and VPNs will get (yet another) big boost.

myopic governments pushed by myopic voters are apparently the new norm.

mihaaly2• 2 years ago

We elect decision makers who are lazy to do their job so they put the difficult part on everyone's head, basically making everyone proactively proving that they are not criminals (including helping criminals by intent). Also the catching of the criminals are put on citizens too (those being directors or responible persons of an organization). I can collect perhaps dozens of such if I try apart from this example. First comes to mind is when you have to prove you are not money loundering when receiving a large sum or buying an expensive but essential to life thing (house). I lived in a country where re-registering your pre-paid SIM card is a yearly feat, otherwise it will be taken away, only because the officials did not notice criminals buying that by the 100's of thousands. No mistake, 200.000 suspicious purchase occurred. So, now everyone has one more small task to do, prove him/herself towards authorities because authorities are sooo incompetent and lazy. Fucking up the life for everyone bit by bit, slowly making it not worthwile to do anything meaningful, better just sit and exists silently.

We elect these inept parasites. It is on us.

dang2• 2 years ago

Related. Others?

Hash matching proposals for the Online Safety Act's implementation are dangerous - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38217439 - Nov 2023 (17 comments)

The UK's Controversial Online Safety Act Is Now Law - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38048811 - Oct 2023 (159 comments)

King Charles III signs off on Online Safety Act with unenforceable spying clause - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38044973 - Oct 2023 (72 comments)

jimnotgym15• 2 years ago

The furore below reminds me of the GDPR apocalypse predictions...none of which came true.

weberer• 2 years ago

One of the predictions was that some websites would just geoblock people connecting from Europe. That happened with a lot of small news sites. And some retail sites. For example, I can't access www.homedepot.com right now.

archagon• 2 years ago

I wonder what happens with these sorts of regulations if an entirely decentralized social media platform becomes popular. Who do the authorities go after if there's no owner or server?

goodlinks• 2 years ago

Each server is moderated independently and if any nasty ones are allowed to fester they get shut down?

Imho the long term answer to these problems is trust networks and decentralised moderation. Howbwe get there.. dunno

cesarb• 2 years ago

Who do the authorities go after if there's no owner or server?

A "decentralized social media platform" implies the exact opposite of "there's no owner or server": there are many owners (in the extreme, each user is the owner of their own slice of the platform) and many servers (in the extreme, each user runs a separate server).

systemstops2• 2 years ago

The UK is building their own digital gulag. Most social media companies are not going to institute these authoritarian measures for one small nation that wants to regulate the world. You are going to see yourselves cut off.

simmo9000• 2 years ago

Australia is following suit with it's 'Social Media Minimum age bill' that will require ALL users to prove their age.

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...

nomilk8• 2 years ago

People in the UK will be better protected from illegal harms online

What are these 'illegal harms'? I'm online 10+ hours a day for 10 years straight and never seen one. (not assuming they don't exist, but their prevalence/impact might be inflated).

If you have to go looking for them, isn't this just 'whack a mole' (since 'online harms' will hard to 100% eradicate), but at the expense of destroying parts of the internet run by people who can't afford the time/cost of lawyers in order to comply with and refute claims of breach of this legislation?

Also 'online harms' pertaining to 'eating disorders'. What content promotes eating disorders?! Is there a single site that authors/proponents of this regulation can point to that literally 'promotes eating disorders'? How would a site admin determine what is acceptable and what is not? See: chilling effect [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

jackvalentine6• 2 years ago

What content promotes eating disorders?

There are numerous sites and social media pages on all the major platforms that literally promote anorexia. That you’ve never heard of them should perhaps encourage you to take a more curious and less combative approach to this topic.

nomilk8• 2 years ago

encourage you to take a more curious ..

But:

Is there a single site ... ?

is asking for a tiny bit of evidence (this is gentle curiousness; the antithesis of combative). Earnestly, are you able to provide one site that 'promotes eating disorders', so I can be educated?

If the answer is 'any site with charismatic too-slim people', isn't that extremely difficult to administer, and possibly become horribly discriminatory, for example if a site has a user profile of a beautiful but illegally[1] slender person, doesn't that 'promote eating disorders'? Would a site admin be legally compelled to block that user, or at least censor their profile pic?

I literally don't know what's legal vs illegal in this sphere, and suspect 99% of others are the same, and that probably includes the legislators themselves. Those claiming to know precisely what's il/legal in this context are probably overconfident.

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

There are numerous sites and social media pages on all the major platforms that literally promote anorexia.

Although probably a just cause I'd say that the western world does have an obesity problem though, not an anorexia one. So a better example would be all the sites encouraging people being lazy and fat and eating junk while labelling anything criticizing the unhealthiness of obesity as supposedly engaging in "fat shaming".

I mean: even using the term "fat shaming" is encouraging fat people to stay fat. And that's promoting eating disorders IMO.

So: fighting anorexia, sure. But we got bigger fishes (literally) to deal with if the (laudable) goal is to fight eating disorders.

xyzzy47472• 2 years ago

This forum site for example actively encourages and supports people who want to commit suicide: https://sanctioned-suicide.net/

Many of their members have died after encouraging each other to take the next step. They used to be on Reddit but got banned there a few years ago.

Would you want your children or young adults spending time there?

nomilk8• 2 years ago

I hadn't seen this site but will check it out. Thank you for providing some evidence! (really dislike the idea of boogymen! - so seeing a real site is refreshing).

Would you want your children or young adults spending time there?

Suicide is a difficult topic. I'd never want anyone (related or otherwise) to be in a position where ending their life is their best option, but then I support euthanasia (a subset of suicide), so I certainly support people obtaining information that could help their situation, even if their situation is difficult, dire and worthy of enormous compassion.

Thanks again for sharing.

tdeck• 2 years ago

I'm assuming this is the site mentioned in this video? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C3y6SsGAWks it might be best to remove the actual link so people in a bad mental state don't end up there. Cc @dang

wruza2• 2 years ago

What content promotes eating disorders?!

They’re talking about thinspo. Was pretty popular and survived search bans on many platforms. To save you a search, it’s mostly about getting thing legs that do not touch and overall ~40kg body type.

nomilk8• 2 years ago

How's thinspo different to fat-acceptance communities? (I have nothing against either, I think people ought to be free to pursue information on their body-type)

intended2• 2 years ago

he 15 different kinds of illegal harms set out in Ofcom’s draft risk assessment guidance are: Terrorism offences; Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA), including Grooming and Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM); Encouraging or assisting suicide (or attempted suicide) or serious Self Harm; Hate offences; Harassment, stalking, threats and abuse; Controlling or coercive behaviour (CCB); Drugs and psychoactive substances offences; Firearms and other weapons offences; Unlawful immigration and human trafficking; Sexual exploitation of adults; Extreme pornography offence; Intimate Image Abuse; Proceeds of crime offences; Fraud and financial services offences; and the Foreign interference offence (FIO).

——-

Online harms are always going to be impossible. Same as crime.

Parts of the internet are already being destroyed, and will continue to be destroyed.

ksec2• 2 years ago

How would a site admin determine what is acceptable and what is not?

I remember there were stories about GDPR at the time that some site simply decide to block all IPs from EUR, and some sadly because they believe they dont comply, simply shut down the site.

In a world ( well US at least ) where the trend is moving to deregulate things. UK decided to quite literally regulate everything. This is sad.

amanaplanacanal• 2 years ago

The trend is to talk about deregulating things. I have doubts about any actual deregulation.

libertine9• 2 years ago

In a world ( well US at least ) where the trend is moving to deregulate things. UK decided to quite literally regulate everything. This is sad.

This is being pushed by banks and tech billionaires, including the world's richest man.

Why is that considered a good trend for regular people?

blackhaz• 2 years ago

Facebook openly advertising porn sites is one example.

woodpanel• 2 years ago

let me guess: criticizing this law constitutes “harm” already.

better not enter this jurisdiction for the foreseeable future

libertine9• 2 years ago

Do you feel better off in a jurisdiction where, for example, anti-vaxxing is promoted?

michaelt3• 2 years ago

What are these 'illegal harms'? I'm online 10+ hours a day for 10 years straight and never seen one. (not assuming they don't exist, but their prevalence/impact might be inflated).

As I understand things, MPs who are on Twitter regularly get anonymous threats of rape, murder etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63330885 - credible threats, with two MPs murdered in the last decade.

You and I have the luxury that we can just not be on Twitter - but when you're an MP, unless you're in a very safe seat you've got to meet voters where they are, not where you'd like them to be.

So from an MP's perspective? In one hand they've got a report about revenge porn, cyber-bullying, 4chan /pol/ and pro-anorexia facebook groups. In the other hand they've got their phone where someone's just told them to kill themselves.

They believe in these "illegal harms" because they've got a front row seat, and experience them on a daily basis.

kybernetyk• 2 years ago

Poor MPs. Being power hungry must really suck in the age of social media :(

EpicQuest_24636• 2 years ago

As I understand things, MPs who are on Twitter regularly get anonymous threats of rape, murder etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63330885 - credible threats,

I am sure threats of violence are already illegal. If those people are in the UK, they should be prosecuted. If they are not in the UK they is not threat. I don't believe any if these online threats BTW are credible.

What these MPs do is frequently make outlandish statements, which then gets them a bunch of hate (Jess Phillips has done this her entire political career) and useful idiots will shout their mouth off online. These MPs then point to all the "hate" they are getting. There is even a meme demonstrating this very effect:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/960/143/d7a...

with two MPs murdered in the last decade.

The murder of David Amess had nothing to do with Social Media. The killer said it was to do with religion when asked by Police.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_David_Amess#Investig...

I believe the individual was deemed at risk of radicalisation.

You and I have the luxury that we can just not be on Twitter - but when you're an MP, unless you're in a very safe seat you've got to meet voters where they are, not where you'd like them to be.

They don't need to be on Twitter. Twitter isn't their local constituents. They have surgeries for this very reason. Very few people on Twitter are relevant to what happens on election day in their constituency.

So from an MP's perspective? In one hand they've got a report about revenge porn, cyber-bullying, 4chan /pol/ and pro-anorexia facebook groups. In the other hand they've got their phone where someone's just told them to kill themselves.

Even if that is true that doesn't mean we restrict everyone's rights because a minority are engaging in illegal/immoral acts.

They believe in these "illegal harms" because they've got a front row seat, and experience them on a daily basis.

That is what they say to sell the narrative that they need to censor social media. If you look over the last 20 years. It is as if nobody has learned anything from the early 2000s and the war on terror. They will exploit (or create) any crisis.

monooso3• 2 years ago

As I understand things, MPs who are on Twitter regularly get anonymous threats of rape, murder etc https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63330885 - credible threats, with two MPs murdered in the last decade.

1. Aren’t such threats already covered by existing laws?

2. They weren’t murdered on Twitter, so I fail to see how the Online Safety Act would have helped prevent this.

PeterStuer2• 2 years ago

"What content promotes eating disorders?"

When I watch UK streaming services (ITVx) I get bombarded with adds for junkfood takaway services. The obesity promotions are just staggering. (Outside that I mostly watch YouTube with a premium sub, so maybe I'm just unaware as to how this compares to non UK media services)

Angostura• 2 years ago

You may me familiar with Instagram

Fears over Instagram eating disorder posts https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47637377

scott_w6• 2 years ago

News over the weekend: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/dec/13/steven-bartlet...

Further in the past, we can look to the “Adpocalyse” on YouTube caused by a glut of terrorist content on social media and it being monetised by ads from major brands.

To your last question: that’s why they’re submitting their plans to Ofcom, so they can get into compliance. The link even highlights that regulation is based on risk. Have a larger platform or want to operate in a greyer area? You need to show how you’ll comply in more detail.

Spivak• 2 years ago

Is there a single site that authors/proponents of this regulation can point to that literally 'promotes eating disorders'

Yes, Tumblr has quite a bit of this content. You're looking for terms like proana, thinspo, meanspo, mia, b/p, various misspellings of anorexic to avoid filters, and ironically "not pro just using tags."

If you want to see the content just create a Tumblr account, search proana, click past the eating disorder hotline message, and scroll through. It goes on forever. Fair warning, it's depressing.

mihaaly2• 2 years ago

Those wanting to do harm will adapt in seconds.

All others with no harmful intent will have their life a bit or much difficult.

scratchyone• 2 years ago

Hash-matching tools link known images of CSAM from police databases to encrypted digital fingerprints known as “hashes” for each piece of content to help social media sites’ automated filtering systems recognize and remove them.

I know this is a little bit of a nitpick, but I really feel like it hurts the credibility of a news organization to make a mistake this obvious that also shows they completely misunderstand the entire concept they're explaining.

That's fundamentally a wrong definition and implies that that these social media sites could simply decrypt the hash to access the source material. The entire purpose of hashing as a cryptographic tool is that it isn't encryption.

jonathanstrange2• 2 years ago

I have a question about that. I'm currently developing a platform with strong end-to-end encryption. My servers only store the public keys of individual accounts, the platform doesn't allow me to see what content people post or transmit without actively eavesdropping, and there are no means for me to moderate the content. However, there will be means for paying end-consumers to moderate the content of people they have invited. It's mostly intended as a collaborative tool for small business. However, other than steering it with marketing, I see no easy way for me to control who buys a subscription.

From what I can gather, my tools will fall under the Online Safety Act and are incompatible with it. So how do I properly exclude all UK customers from purchasing subscriptions? Will it suffice to geo-block the website where you buy subscriptions?

tpxl• 2 years ago

Any decent payment provider and bank will include the country code with the payment. Have a ToS preventing them from buying, warn UK users (geoip?) and then reject any payments from the UK.

jonathanstrange2• 2 years ago

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I'm using Fastspring so that wouldn't be a problem. However, a paying subscriber will still be able to invite someone from the UK and I don't have any mechanism to prevent that.

DarkmSparks• 2 years ago

Brought to you by the people who read Orwells 1984 and thought it was a handbook rather than a warning.

I really have zero respect for this law. Watch the BBC interview with Elon Musk over twitter to see how moronic the people behind it are.

When you mix in all the war mongering they do vv Russia and the massive crack downs they have been engaging in to cover up how fast living standards have been falling, and the whole thing is a sad joke.

nvarsj4• 2 years ago

Plugging the draft guidance into chatgpt:

  Age Assurance Methods:

  Effective methods: Open banking, photo-ID matching, facial age estimation, credit card checks, and digital identity wallets.

  Ineffective methods: Self-declaration, general disclaimers, or payment methods without age restrictions.

So basically, ID verification will be required for any platform that may have adult/harmful materials.

mjburgess• 2 years ago

Can you cite the law if you're going to make claims about it

nvarsj4• 2 years ago

It's not in the law... it's the guidance Ofcom is providing, linked in TFA, which I believe will be enforceable.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/cons...

DaveMcMartin• 2 years ago

they always use a good cause to push for more authoritarian polices

pomatic• 2 years ago

The biggest issue is that legislation seems to be drafted by people who have little or no expertise in their area. We've seen other examples of poorly drafted legislation in the UK - eg Computer Misuse Act 1990, which is intended to address hacking but can be read in such a way as to outlaw firewalls, and so on. Parliament as a whole is in desperate need of reform, it's based on archaic principles that just don't work anymore, but those in a position to enact reform seem to prefer the status quo.

stephen_g• 2 years ago

I’m not sure if it’s similar in the UK, but here they don’t even seem to care. We have public consultation periods for most bills here in Australia, and it’s basically only ever a box-ticking exercise. You can have literally hundreds of experts carefully articulate all the obvious problems with a bill in a detailed submission, then some will be invited to give testimony and answer questions of Senators with concerned looks on their faces, and then those senators (of both parties) will happily vote the flawed legislation through with no amendments. The only changes that do happen are arrived at through secretly negotiated political horse-trading between the parties, with literally none of the expert, industry and public consultation taken into account.

The only way to win is to lobby hard (with a lot of political donations) so your views get put forward in the secret negotiations. Literally none of the feedback from experts or voters matters. Because it’s always going to be one or the other major party (although there is some encouraging movement towards possible minority government, which in our current political landscape is the only way I can see any positive change possibly happening - but it depends massively on the quality of those who end up with the balance of power).

mhh__• 2 years ago

Parliament is fine. Or at least the reforms people have in mind are usually insane slop that would only mean ramming more, worse, shit through the pipe.

cynicalsecurity• 2 years ago

Crazy stuff. This feels very Soviet and dystopian. This looks like something that would come from a Watchtower cult magazine. Anonymous experiences that can't be checked and conveniently and unanimously support the agenda, extended control over people's private life with severe punishment for even the slightest disagreement or god forbid an alternative opinion.

rlaksh• 2 years ago

Ok, "think of the children" again. If it were about the children, they'd simply forbid phones and unsupervised Internet for anyone under 16. Problem solved.

The issue of course is that the Internet is too valuable of a propaganda instrument. Children need propaganda, but they need our propaganda.

The offense list is in classic CoC style. Vague terms like terrorism have been abused in the U.K. for a long time and applied against journalists like the husband of Glenn Greenwald, who had been arrested in London for communicating with Laura Poitras.

Many journalists have been stopped and digitally stripped searched in the U.K. while traveling.

So what are websites to do to escape that? Perhaps put up permanent banners like "NATO must be prepared for a great patriotic land war with Russia" and "We need more immigration" in order to be safe.

NoImmatureAdHom• 2 years ago

The U.K. is jailing people for mean tweets, and has been for a while:

- "More than 30 people found themselves arrested over social media posts. From what I’ve found, at least 17 of those have been charged." -- the BBC, this is specifically for the Southport riots. They have been doing this for years, of course.[1]

- "First people jailed over social media posts during unrest 9 August

Today's live coverage has mainly come from the courts, with jail sentences handed down for those involved in the violent disorder since the fatal stabbings in Southport last Monday.

Here's a quick summary of key events today:

    In the first case of a person going to jail for posting on social media during the disorder, Jordan Parlour, 28, of Seacroft, Leeds, received a 20 month sentence for inciting others to target a Leeds building which housed asylum seekers
    At least two others also received jail sentences for social media posts that stirred up racial hatred 

    Suspended Labour councillor Ricky Jones appeared in court charged with encouraging violent disorder after he was filmed apparently telling a crowd that far-right demonstrators should have their throats cut
    6000 officers with specialist training in public order are "prepared and ready" to deal with any potential unrest over the weekend
    About 600 people have been arrested this week with hundreds more expected in the coming days and weeks, police say, with the use of facial recognition technology fast tracking the process "[2]

- This woman merely livestreamed other people doing naughty things, and called some people "tramps". "Much of the TikTok stream had been rather amateurish, Mr Rudge argued, giving a view of the cobblestones in Tamworth but showing no acts of violence." LOL. 9 months in prison. [3]

- More: [4]

- More: [5]

- "This is in relation to some comments you made on Facebook (police arrest old man in his home, good video): [6]

- "We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media to look for this material, and then follow up with arrests." - Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales. Video worth a watch. [7]

Punishment is often also extremely swift. Facebook video --> court --> prison in a matter of a week and a half. Of course, if you stand accused of e.g. raping children, it will take a year and a half.

This country has gone right off a cliff and is currently in free-fall.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr548zdmz3jo

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cpdlvz80pjzt?post=asset%3A3678...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgdkvwwwqyo

[4] https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1857720874146664670

[5] https://x.com/SamanthaTaghoy/status/1857928002014761201

[6] https://x.com/i/status/1823087302886965636

[7] https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1821178852397477984

And more

https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-...

https://news.sky.com/story/wife-of-tory-councillor-jailed-fo...

ksymph• 2 years ago

The future this (and similar legislature from other countries) points toward is extremely concerning.

I run a small site with some user interaction; though it doesn't seem the intended target of this particular legislature, it seems inevitable that there will be a law enacted somewhere that leaves the site vulnerable unless I'm constantly staying on top of the increasingly varied and specific requirements across the world. I don't see how anyone but big corporations can expect to deal with that, frankly.

I wish there was an international standard of reasonable moderation and data handling specifically for small sites. A static checklist of requirements like manual screening of user-generated content within a certain time period, gdpr-esque transparency of user data - things that any responsible webmaster should be doing anyway.

I suppose there are potential problems with that too, but either way that ship has already sailed. Instead we're all on the Titanic, ignoring alarm bells as we careen towards the iceberg of siloed corporatocracy.

webspinner• 2 years ago

This is the worst piece of legislation ever! If the US ever passes something like this in my lifetime, I'm planning on ending it.

UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

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