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UK REMOVES MOST CENSORIAL ASPECT OF ONLINE SAFETY BILL, BUT IT’S STILL TERRIBLE
FOR SPEECH & PRIVACY

Policy

FROM THE NOT-HOW-ANYTHING-WORKS DEPT

Fri, Dec 2nd 2022 09:29am - Mike Masnick

We’ve talked about the mess that is the UK’s Online Safety Bill a few times now,
focusing mostly on the extremely serious concerns over requiring websites to
take down “legal but harmful” speech, which is a ridiculous and impossible to
meet standard that would lead to massive over-blocking of perfectly reasonable
content. Many people, including activists pushing for this bill, seem to think
that there’s some magic wand that can be waved to determine what content is
“harmful” and then magically remove it.

That’s not how any of this works. There are a ton of different judgment calls
that need to be made, often lacking the relevant context. Rules against
“harmful” speech often run into all sorts of problems, including the removals of
friends joking around with each other, or people calling out abuses by others.

So it’s good to see that the current UK government has responded to the concerns
raised by many that the bill would lead to censorship. The part about “legal but
harmful” speech has been removed from the bill. While, as you can see in that
article, this is leading to some angry complaints from censorial activists, it’s
the correct move.

That said, none of this magically makes the bill acceptable. It still has
tremendous problems, including with overly broad censorship via some of its
rules around “protecting children.” Like California’s similar Age Appropriate
Design Code (which supporters claim was modeled on the already existing UK AADC,
but was really more modeled on the Online Safety Bill), it creates some
impossible standards to try to force websites to magically figure out what harms
might occur, and magically stop them.

That means that sites will still need to make use of dangerous and intrusive
(and privacy violating) age verification tools, which will do real damage to
people.

Indeed, you could argue that the bill appears to both require and prohibit age
verification technology. It requires it by demanding that websites understand if
children (including teenagers) are using their site. It prohibits it by telling
websites to carefully analyze any new feature that might cause harm and seek to
prevent the harm. The only way to do that with age verification is… to not use
it.

I don’t see how any site can comply with this law since the law itself is
self-contradictory.

It sure would be nice if parents, politicians, and the media stopped blaming
websites for anything bad that happens, including parental failings. Sometimes
bad stuff happens. Blaming tech companies for that is not just a cop out, it’s
actively avoiding looking inward at where the real problems came from.

Filed Under: age verification, free speech, lawful but awful, legal but harmful,
online safety bill, uk

10 CommentsLeave a Comment

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10 Comments Collapse all replies

This comment is new since your last visit.

Cat_Daddy (profile) says:
December 2, 2022 at 10:14 am

To quote a certain, obscure YouTuber loosely, “…This started with zero, so the
multiplication result is still zero.”

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Anonymous Coward says:
December 2, 2022 at 10:38 am

“Indeed, you could argue that the bill appears to both require and prohibit age
verification technology.”

You could also say the same for client-side scanning and trying to break
end-to-end encryption.

You must make sure only the good guys can do that but if we find out the bad
guys are using the whole we made we will fined you!

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Anonymous Coward says:
December 2, 2022 at 12:18 pm

The thing is, it is up to websites to make sure children are safe online.

Some of the responsibility falls on the parents, but parents can only do so
much.

It’s like leaving your child at daycare. At that point, it becomes their
responsibility to make sure the children are safe, not the parents.

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Threaded [2]
Anonymous Coward says:
December 2, 2022 at 1:29 pm

RE:

Websites (and TV, or anything else) aren’t daycare. They don’t pretend to be
daycare, and aren’t licensed for it.

Websites are more like the local woods, or park, and the people there are like
people in your town, and whoever you kid hangs out with.

Is the city responsible for your neighbors’ bad-influence kids?

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Threaded [2]
Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:
December 2, 2022 at 3:53 pm

RE:

> The thing is, it is up to websites to make sure children are safe online.

And I’m sure PornHub will get right on that.

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Threaded [2]
Anonymous Coward says:
December 2, 2022 at 4:10 pm

RE:

> The thing is, it is up to websites to make sure children are safe online.

How do you do that while still allowing social media and comments on sites to
exist, and provide content that appeals to adults, which is far more than just
porn. Keep pushing the protect the children, and most of the Internet will
disappear behind paywalls, and require areal ID and proof of age.

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Threaded [2]
PaulT (profile) says:
December 3, 2022 at 2:57 pm

RE:

“Some of the responsibility falls on the parents, but parents can only do so
much.”

They can do more than websites can.

“It’s like leaving your child at daycare.”

The internet is not a daycare.

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ECA (profile) says:
December 2, 2022 at 1:40 pm

TO MANY THINKS

censorship has allot of faults.
Censorship based on reality or expression is idiotic, and is part of a problem
we already have.
TRYING to hide what people dont want to see, is like a bear loose in a zoo, and
no one wants to tell the CONSUMER. OR even if it isnt, and someone pranks it
over the loud speaker, who is liable, SHOULD not be a concern. Apologize and
fire the idiot.
A doctor, not willing to break the news a persons CHILD Died, is reality NOT
happening.

How much of this is a step Backwards into the old Edited Christian religious
fervor? I/WE are right and you are wrong, SHUT UP or die. You dont have to be
Catholic to like the pope.
If you Think you have all the answers and are always correct, and there is no
other alternative, you are a figment of your Own imagination.

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DNY says:
December 3, 2022 at 5:25 am

NO MAGIC NEEDED

No, activists don’t assume there’s some magic that can determine when content is
“harmful”. They assume that people of who agree with them, or are cowed by a
baying social media mob who agree with them, will be making the decision so that
content, whether true or false, that would discomfit their point of view will be
deemed “harmful” and removed.

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Anonymous Coward says:
December 4, 2022 at 6:47 am

Free speech is meaningless when no one listens anyway.

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sometimes
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https://www.techdirt.com/2030/01/01/red-cross-continues-to-want-to-pretend-that-video-game-wars-are-irl-wars/
I actually think the Red Cross is onto something: Maybe there should be a
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instead of having a typical FPS free-for-all!
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* Candescence: Oh welp Elon straight up deleted all "state-affiliated" and
"government-funded" labels, probably throwing a tantrum:
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1...
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171236695/twitter-strips-state-affiliated-government-funded-labels-from-npr-rt-china
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purchasing these other $1k+ video cards?"
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https://twitter.com/CooperCodes/status/1649559104627834880
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* https://twitter.com/axios/status...
https://twitter.com/axios/status/1650524593923260416
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do.
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https://twitter.com/srl/status/1650527565671542784
* Something happened _all of a sudden_ that caused Fox to yeet him
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accountability
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differences are that Google was pulling out due to impossibility of doing
business, and Microsoft would (theoretically) pull out for prevention of
getting bigger, so technically, different principles.
* Candescence: I'm noticing conversations about Bluesky are being tainted by
the fact that Jack Dorsey is the face of it as people think it'll just be
another libertarian techbro pipedream because of that
* BentFranklin: One bright side to this Wizards of the Coast / Hazbro debacles
is millions of young adults are getting a history lesson about the brutality
of the capitalists resisting unionization and waking to the reality that it's
not over.
* Mike Masnick: yeah, it's a bit frustrating, especially since jack has
basically written off bluesky, has made it clear he disagrees with the
direction they're going in, and the bluesky team has publicly described how
they're moving in a different direction than jack wanted. People freaking out
about it because of Jack don't realize that it's not a jack project
* The bluesky team is incredibly thoughtful in how they're going about things.
they'll make mistakes, but it's not going to be a "libertarian techbro
pipedream"
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ruffled in this instance?
* Or is it just a case of vague disagreement with no publicly known reasons
* Mike Masnick: No, he's been pretty clear that he (1) doesn't think bluesky
should be so much like Twitter and that it should be more different and (2)
he disagreed with the idea that they should build out content moderation
tools before launching
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* I suppose that's not surprising
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hinted at a pivot towards cryptocurrency features?
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platform decided to move into that only after getting a captive userbase and
i guess i'm looking for foreshadowing
* mildconcern: that could also be part of what turned Dorsey off
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things to exist that aren't for me
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there would be pretty unethical though, IMHO
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(from before she was hired, actually) that even though she's worked in
crypto, it makes no sense to build a social network on crypto.
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some other folks, including a group that is trying to build a crypto-based
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they thought it brought, and just kept pushing them when they tried to
handwave around things. so she's not anti-cryptocurrency by any stretch, but
she's one of the most practical and thoughtful people i know on this stuff.
she's very focused on building a good service, not based on ideology, but on
what's actually good
* pyrex: that's pretty reassuring! i briefly used uh, i think steemit? like, in
at least one case i saw jack dorsey float the idea of using crypto-based cash
tipping instead of likes. i understand why this is appealing to people and at
the same time i don't like the kind of content this incentivizes people to
make
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exist, maybe i will like it in four years" territory to me
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frequently a dogwhistle
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cryptographic protocol problems like "if you lose your key, heaven help you"
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launch?
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could have volitionally decided to be a minority shareholder in a platform
Musk was about to take over, so I have already been perplexed by his
judgment.
* John Roddy: Especially right after so many other ones launched and
immediately slammed into exactly the same problem of bad moderation policies
* mildconcern: It would save them not at all if the network were not explicitly
aimed at crazy right wingers like so many of those were, too. Maybe that
would delay the pain by a day.
* Candescence: I think the only other main competitors that are worth watching
so far are Mastodon, Post and Hive
* Mike Masnick: Yeah, I'm perplexed a bit by that as well, but...
* there's also T2 and spoutible. spoutible seems... very questionable to me. T2
is... fine. But, it just looks like a twitter clone. I think if they were
smart, they'd quickly adopt the AT Protocol once bluesky releases federation
details
* BentFranklin: Is there a way to get techdirt in dark mode?
* Mike Masnick: not currently, no
* Candescence: So the Writer's Guild of America has started striking, and this
was one of their demands that the studios rejected:
https://twitter.com/pmiscove/sta...
https://twitter.com/pmiscove/status/1653249330239909888
* According to the guild, the counteroffer was "annual meetings to discuss
advancements in technology".
* Even though it's quite obvious to everyone what the end goal the studios have
with AI is, aka eventually reduce as much involvement of writers in the
actual writing process as possible
* MSR4: [link]
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/02/pornhub-says-no-more-porn-for-folks-in-utah-unless-they-know-how-to-use-a-vpn/
This is so stupid. You can not legislate morality. Just like attempts to ban
Usenet in the 90s because some teen could take a few text messages, mush them
together, and get a nude photo. Or heading over to a friends house to view
his dads playboy, there is nothing going to stop people from seeking out this
material. What is the end game, ban all porn in the US. Great, everyone will
move their opeations overseas. Then what, block internet connections to those
countries? Even North Korea and Iran is accessable from the Internet, not to
mention Tor. It is stupid virtual signaling to get around parents not wanting
to monitor what their kids are doing online and take responsibility for their
actions.
* Mike Masnick: yup.
* Samuel Abram: I would say this is as copyrightable as Naruto's selfie:
https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki...
https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki/status/1653093584042614792
* Actually, I wouldn't mind this monkey script replacing Lorem Ipsum...
* BentFranklin: “material harmful to minors” Today it means porn. Tomorrow it
means information on guns and climate change.
* Maybe Nintendo should hire the Pinkertons.
* Samuel Abram: I chuckled. https://twitter.com/amatsujanait...
https://twitter.com/amatsujanaito/status/1653518113697144832
* Happy Bandcamp Friday! Today, I have released a single I had long finished
but didn't have the cover art done until now: Lo, a track by the band Genesis
on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive outside of North America), Mama (with the
vocaloid MEIKO)! [link]
https://ironcurtain.bandcamp.com/album/mama-feat-meiko
* Mike Masnick: i want to delete this spam, but the response is so good that i
feel like i have to leave it.
* Samuel Abram: [video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7GdDLbm55U
* mildconcern: I'm going to be hiking in the Canadian rockies this summer for a
couple weeks. This video was a good chance to practice my Canadian language
skills.
* "Abooot.....aboooooooot....."
* Samuel Abram: @mildconcern I swear, I've been to Canada many, many times, and
J. J. is the only one I know who does that.
* mildconcern: I've met a couple others who do, but yeah for the most part
these days we're all raised by the same TV

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