There are a lot of extra steps the UK government can take beyond the fines:
> In the most extreme cases, with the agreement of the courts, Ofcom will be able to require payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers to stop working with a site, preventing it from generating money or being accessed from the UK.
They’ve done this before (various piracy websites are blocked by ISPs).
The criminal liability of senior managers could cause travel headaches too.
I look forward to the current us admin forcing the uk to very publicly walk this back. Their motivation will have nothing to do with defending free speech, but an enemy of my enemy IS my friend.
More made up problems for a fundamentally inept government to solve because fixing real problems like a broken healthcare system is hard and not a guaranteed political win.
Thanks Starmer, you're a worthless turd and no different than your predecessor.
The free internet might be gone in the next decade. Probably time to buy a few hard drives and do some archiving. I don't just mean piracy. Articles, blogs, anything you find precious.
The free internet is mostly gone already. Most people already only browse the same 5-10 sites belonging to big tech, thus already part of the surveillance apparatus.
I doubt it. As a Brit they "blocked" Pirate Bay and torrent sites about a decade ago and I've hardly had any problems accessing them and torrenting stuff. It's all very half arsed.
The most insane thing about this headline is that implies parents are giving their children devices with unfiltered access to the Internet and then the government needs to play wack-a-mole with every single website they come across to prevent children from accessing it.
That's just par for the course in UK culture.
During American criminal trials, the jury is told not to watch the news.
During British criminal trials, the entire British press is legally forbidden from reporting on the trial.
Worse, Governments seem to have gotten the idea that it's their place to tell the population what to do and want when it should be the other way around.
I'm largely in line with where a lot of the comments under these political posts are coming from, but there's no discussion in them. It's rhetoric, outrage, and oversimplifying things.
The comments on HN are worth reading precisely because of the discussions, so I'm not sure what the point of political posts are if that fails.
The new ban is easily bypassed even without a VPN. The government is trying to block cracks in a dam with their fingers. Assuming they even care about results rather than performative posturing.
>a stand-off has been engineered between UK censorship measures nobody asked for, and the constitutional rights of all Americans.
This is probably my favorite line in the entire piece. Some heads up in the UK Bureaucracy created this regulation out of the desire to protect children, and now they are being pitted against the constitutional rights of United States citizens.
Truly incredible work from the UK government. I imagine the United States will not be happy..
Even worse than blocking certain sites, would be if they burden everybody in a mountain of paperwork, making a lot of internet endaveours no longer feasible. I'm not sure how they do it in China, I know there is an internet registration number, not sure if they have paperwork, e.g. to demonstrate that your site is compliant. Let's hope they come to their senses!
I'm all about liberal freedom, but blocking 4chan would actually help society given how abused it is by counter-intelligence. There is bullshit spewed there constantly and no one should be subject to that trash in a functioning society.
The game Alpha Centauri had the most hard hitting quote that I think applies now.
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal, 'U.N. Declaration of Rights' "
Not specifically related to this “child protection” thing, but you can’t deny that the free flow of information also leads to some pretty terrible things, driven by actors such as states, magnified x1000 by social media, and now also AI.
Every platform these days is full to the brim with misinformation and propaganda (which ends up in mainstream media as well), deliberately making many of us hateful and sometimes violent. The free flow of information is undoubtedly being used for harm.
I’m 100% for personal liberty and accountability, and admittedly I don’t have a solution for this.
I do think the Elon Musk approach (“just let people decide for themselves”) is very naive at best.
Again just to be clear this has nothing to do with the UK thing which I strongly disagree with.
Do you think absolutely all content should be allowed to be accessible?
If you wouldn't allow child porn (which 4chan deletes/doesn't allow), where exactly do you draw the line between blocking sites with cp, and allowing sites like 4chan which host porn without consent (voyeur/spy/revenge)?
Well-paced article. The exposition sounds bleak, but then Betteridge's law creeps up slowly over the middle of the article, and the piece crescendos toward a final showdown.
56 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 77.3 ms ] thread> In the most extreme cases, with the agreement of the courts, Ofcom will be able to require payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers to stop working with a site, preventing it from generating money or being accessed from the UK.
They’ve done this before (various piracy websites are blocked by ISPs).
The criminal liability of senior managers could cause travel headaches too.
What can be done if those who represent you, don’t?
Thanks Starmer, you're a worthless turd and no different than your predecessor.
4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44982681
"Police drag away a man for saying he likes bacon near a sprawling mosque construction site" (https://www.wndnewscenter.org/we-like-bacon-man-arrested-for...)
The comments on HN are worth reading precisely because of the discussions, so I'm not sure what the point of political posts are if that fails.
529,454 signatures and counting
This is probably my favorite line in the entire piece. Some heads up in the UK Bureaucracy created this regulation out of the desire to protect children, and now they are being pitted against the constitutional rights of United States citizens.
Truly incredible work from the UK government. I imagine the United States will not be happy..
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal, 'U.N. Declaration of Rights' "
Not specifically related to this “child protection” thing, but you can’t deny that the free flow of information also leads to some pretty terrible things, driven by actors such as states, magnified x1000 by social media, and now also AI.
Every platform these days is full to the brim with misinformation and propaganda (which ends up in mainstream media as well), deliberately making many of us hateful and sometimes violent. The free flow of information is undoubtedly being used for harm.
I’m 100% for personal liberty and accountability, and admittedly I don’t have a solution for this.
I do think the Elon Musk approach (“just let people decide for themselves”) is very naive at best.
Again just to be clear this has nothing to do with the UK thing which I strongly disagree with.
I can and I will.
The free flow of information doesn't get people to do bad things, teaching people to blindly trust information from authorities does.
If you wouldn't allow child porn (which 4chan deletes/doesn't allow), where exactly do you draw the line between blocking sites with cp, and allowing sites like 4chan which host porn without consent (voyeur/spy/revenge)?
This had until recently been only tested for top-down information. Nowadays, everyone can be a broadcaster and we're seeing quite different results.