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Offline MrMobodiesTopic starter

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UK internet censoring
« on: July 07, 2023, 07:18:22 pm »
https://www.irishnews.com/news/uknews/2023/07/06/news/wikipedia_could_shut_down_in_uk_after_online_safety_law_passes_government_told-3416017/
Quote
Wikipedia could shut down in UK after online safety law passes, Government told
Abbie Llewelyn, PA political staff
06 July, 2023 18:07

Wikipedia could be forced to shut down in the UK due to the regulatory burdens placed on it by a new Bill cracking down on illegal and harmful content online, the Government has been warned. There are concerns that the Online Safety Bill, which imposes new legal requirements on tech companies, could prove too difficult to meet for certain public interest organisations.

There are also fears that it could lead to “age-gating” – requiring age verification and blocking children’s access – although Wikipedia has said it will not do this. Peers have suggested adding a regulatory exemption for sites which are considered low risk for harm and provide a public good.

London Cyberspace Conference
Lord Richard Allan was Facebook’s director of policy for Europe (Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA)
Lord Allan of Hallam, who was Facebook’s director of policy in Europe for 10 years, argued that sites should be exempt from the scope of the Bill if they are for the purpose of public information, present minimal risk of harm, are non-commercial and have limited user-user functions.

The Liberal Democrat peer said: “There is a material risk that, without further amendment or clarification, then Wikipedia and other similar services may feel they can no longer operate in the United Kingdom.”

Tory backbencher Lord Moylan suggested a similar exemption for public good services, as well as the ability for Ofcom to remove an exemption.

He said he found it “remarkable” that the Government has not made changes to the Bill to try and address the problem of overly burdensome regulations on public interests services.

Independent crossbench peer Baroness Kidron: “I am very concerned… I read the headline ‘The Online Safety Bill age-gates Wikipedia’.

“And I can’t see how it doesn’t by virtue of some of the material that can be found on Wikipedia.

“And I think what we’re trying to say is that there are some services that are inherently in a child’s best interests or in a child’s best interests according to their evolving capacity – if we had been allowed to put children’s rights into the Bill.” However, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, a minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, argued that regulatory burdens will be “proportionate” to the risk of harm of a given site and the capacity of the organisation.

He said: “I am, of course, sympathetic to the arguments that we must avoid imposing disproportionate burdens on regulated services and particularly that the Bill should not inhibit services from providing valuable information which is of benefit to the public.”

However, he said the Bill “has a broad scope in order to capture a range of services, but it has exemptions and categorisations built into it”.

He added: “The requirements for platforms will be proportionate to the risk of harm and as such we do not expect the requirements for Wikipedia to be unduly burdensome.”

The minister added that the Government wants to keep the Bill flexible and future-proof.

He said: “It’s impossible for me to say that a particular service will certainly be categorised in one way or another, because that would give it carte blanche and we don’t know how it may change in the future, estimable though I may think it is at present.”

If they force Wikipedia to shut down in the name of children will that have gone too far?

I do not want to have to prove my age to do anything.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2023, 07:34:15 pm »
Send an email to your MP, highlighting the key points.

I have.
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Offline Stray Electron

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2023, 07:56:53 pm »
Quote There are also fears that it could lead to “age-gating” – requiring age verification and blocking children’s access – although Wikipedia has said it will not do this. Peers have suggested adding a regulatory exemption for sites which are considered low risk for harm and provide a public good. end quote

 
    Well there's the problem isn't it?  WHO gets to decide what's harmful for the children, or who gets to decide who should be exempt from the regulations because they"quote" Provide a public good "unquote"?

     A quote from a fairly recently political movement in the US: "Ban XYZ because if it saves even one child, it's worth it."  I suppose that someone could use exactly the same argument to completely ban automobiles, the entire internet, knives and forks, and virtually everything in today's world.
 
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Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2023, 08:02:09 pm »
In my view, young children are viewing armful content online and it is causing damage. Societal damage. More worrying is that I see so clear path to a better, safer internet for younger folks. Age verification will probably be of limited benefit to the younger generation and a PITA to the rest of us. But we gotta do something. Firewalled internet (China style) for different age groups under 16? Under 10's limited to fifty websites? Fuck knows.
 

Offline Infraviolet

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2023, 08:25:48 pm »
"I do not want to have to prove my age to do anything."
VPN, increasingly many providers even free oens are now looking to create cloacked VPN protocols too, so a regime cannot tell that you're even using  VPN, your traffic under those new protocols looks like normal http/https. You're absolutely right that never should prove your age to access services, such would in all practical implemtnations mean proving your identity (whatever nonsense politicians try to spout about magic unicorns the same way they talk about crypto backdoors), which would mean centralised ID databases which would be a very attractive target for hackers and blackmailers. Wrongful and stupid laws need defying, a VPN is the best way to do that initially*.

*If the labour party are to be believed they'd try to completely block VPNs as well, but I suspect VPN providers would be several steps ahead by that time. So long as there is a defiant and moral community of geeks and open-sourcing enthusiasts somewhere in the world, a way around technical censorship of the wider internet will always exist, eternal cat and mouse. There is ofcourse trouble with so much of the internet no longer being the wider internet, but being inside the walled gardens of facebook and other megacorporations, who have mostly proven all to willing to assist crooekd regimes in censoring things within their platforms.

I'm glad to see that Signal is pledging that if that corrupt and illegitimate bill passes then it will not comply with it, and Signal has now stated they'll provide proxying and other anti-censorship tools to ensure UK users can reach their services if the government blocks it, just they way they already do for the likes of Iran, Russia and China. I wish wikipedia would show this spirit of defiance too, refusing to comply and stating they'll find ways to still make themselves accessible in the UK, we need tech people to tell governments precisely where they can stick their totalitarian impulses. I just wish Signal would make a desktop standalone linux client (I make a point of not having a smartphone) so I could actually use their service.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2023, 09:23:21 pm by Infraviolet »
 
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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2023, 11:26:55 pm »
In my view, young children are viewing armful content online and it is causing damage. Societal damage.
Sure, and some are playing in the road.

BAN AUTOMOBILES*

* except for the very necessary recreational use by parliamentarians

We have children's libraries, distinct from "adult" libraries. Plenty of commercial options for Internet filtering for those people who want it.
 
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2023, 03:33:20 am »
I just wish Signal would make a desktop standalone linux client (I make a point of not having a smartphone) so I could actually use their service.
It appears to already exist? Or does it just link to the Signal app on a smartphone?
https://www.signal.org/download/linux/
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Offline .RC.

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2023, 04:55:58 am »
I would have thought more children have suicided from bullying by people using the likes of facebook, instagram, myspace, <insert your social media website here> then wikipedia.
 
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #8 on: July 08, 2023, 05:30:31 am »
I would have thought more children have suicided from bullying by people using the likes of facebook, instagram, myspace, <insert your social media website here> then wikipedia.

Bullying, stupid challenges, etc.
 

Offline magic

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #9 on: July 08, 2023, 05:34:31 am »
LOL :popcorn:

I wonder what sort of content the government considers inappropriate for children, given what they are know to consider appropriate :-DD


But don't worry guys, no one will ever block Wikipedia, that would be too much good for children. It's that bunch of liberal SJWs over there as usual using whatever notoriety they enjoy to influence politics of a sovereign government.
 
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Offline Bryn

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2023, 06:54:58 am »
Here I am thinking that the new law would be a good thing (even by giving the likes of Facebook and Twitter a lesson) but like all laws, there's always one issue with it.

So if Wikipedia ever gets banned here in the UK, just for the sake of the kids, then I'll have no hope for humanity anymore (and it means I have to rely on Google for every little lookup I have to conduct, and I personally don't want that). Not only that, I've been a member and contributor to Wikipedia for almost twenty years so that would be an even bigger loss to me...
« Last Edit: July 08, 2023, 07:02:40 am by Bryn »
 

Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #11 on: July 08, 2023, 07:16:18 am »
In my view, young children are viewing armful content online and it is causing damage. Societal damage.
Sure, and some are playing in the road.
BAN AUTOMOBILES*

Thanks, that's great argument for more regulation. The plethora of vehicle safety regulations has no doubt saved many childrens lives or reduced the trauma they are subjected to in road accidents. Both in and out of the vehicle. In Australia in 2018, 60% of child deaths on the road network were not children playing on the road, but children riding in the vehicle, which is probably typical.
 

Offline RoGeorge

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #12 on: July 08, 2023, 08:06:36 am »
Wikipedia is not that innocent as people use to think.
Got a strong political bias in the last couple decades.

First, I've bumped into a research paper 10 years ago, or so, where the researchers made bots to automatically create Wikipedia pages for whatever they thought it didn't have enough representation on Wikipedia.  It was mostly feminism, and the pages were very brief (I think the term is a Wikipedia stab article/page, but I'm not very sure).  Whatever that is called, it was SJW vandalism.

Then, there were some complains about the references that can only be from mainstream media, which already has a strong bias, and some other internal complaints from the editors.

Not to say last year the politicization went so far that an article about "The Alley of Angels" was deleted from Wikipedia.  That page was about a shrine and in the memory of killed children in Donbass/Ukraine, allegedly by the Ukraine gov/army, but I'm not familiar with that story so I might have misunderstood the events.  My understanding was that that shrine was about events before the Russian invasion in Donbass, and was (or could have been) used as a justification by Russia.  Again, I don't know for sure, that is what I remember from when I've seen on a asocial media post (for the first time) about the deletion of Wikipedia pages.

What I know for sure (because I've personally checked the page back then), is that the page was nowhere to be found in the online (latest) version of Wikipedia, while the deleted page was still present in the archived versions of Wikipedia.

(By the way, Wikipedia can be legally downloaded and accessed offline, if you have the space and the will to store a local copy.  There are many versions at different timestamps, some only a few hundreds of MB, some up to many TB if you want the newest with included editing history).

For science/engineering articles, the political bias might not be that obvious.  For science articles I'm bothered mostly by the fact that Wikipedia became too detailed.  Wikipedia pages these days look more like a reference book, with included graduate math, than like an encyclopedia.

I would prefer Wikipedia to emphasize on the bird eye view and on the understanding of the principles and ideas in science and technology.  Some pages looks like a formula cheat-sheet.  I've even seen pages with math proofs, or with code examples in specific languages (for algorithms).

About age restrictions, either online or AFK, I think they are necessary.
About individual digital ID's and online surveillance, I'm totally against.

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #13 on: July 08, 2023, 08:17:01 am »
In my view, young children are viewing armful content online and it is causing damage. Societal damage.
Sure, and some are playing in the road.
BAN AUTOMOBILES*
Thanks, that's great argument for more regulation. The plethora of vehicle safety regulations has no doubt saved many childrens lives or reduced the trauma they are subjected to in road accidents. Both in and out of the vehicle. In Australia in 2018, 60% of child deaths on the road network were not children playing on the road, but children riding in the vehicle, which is probably typical.
The road is still not a place for children to play unattended, there are other places for that. Uncontrolled access to the internet is something which should be continued, but at the same time specific places for children are made available.
Road vs Park
Or perhaps we should further restrict motor vehicle velocities and the danger they pose to the point they are benign threats to all? Plainly ridiculous. As would be filtering the internet down to a lowest common denominator acceptable to "all" fairyland.
 

Offline AVGresponding

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #14 on: July 08, 2023, 12:24:49 pm »
They could do more social good by banning gambling apps for smartphones.
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Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #15 on: July 08, 2023, 12:45:55 pm »
The road is still not a place for children to play unattended, there are other places for that. Uncontrolled access to the internet is something which should be continued, but at the same time specific places for children are made available.
Well, we agree there needs to be seperate internet areas for children, but you prefer choice while I prefer enforcement. As I see it, enforcement would have a much greater chance of protecting more children. Perhaps some sort of legal framework that required parents to route childrens internet access through commercial internet filters that you mentioned previously. There would need to be software tools (mobile, desktop apps), pricing options and funding (via government child support payments) to give this a chance of working. Many parents are concerned about kids internet access but the technically illerate parents don't understand the options currently available, or baulk at the costs. Regulation forces them (at least a good percentage of them) to take action.
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #16 on: July 08, 2023, 10:12:36 pm »
Wikipedia is not that innocent as people use to think.
Got a strong political bias in the last couple decades.

Yes.
Conundrum here being, how can we ever trust politicians to handle political bias?
They will not. They will just possibly twist the bias in their favor.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #17 on: July 08, 2023, 10:37:24 pm »
"Who guards the guardians?" is an age old question, for good reason.

As an engineer I'm predisposed to look for cause and effect - which leads me towards conspiracy theories.

However, over a long lifetime, I've been ever mindful that the "cockup theory of history" is usually correct, and the "conspiracy theory of history" should only be considered where there is strong evidence.

In this case you have a very difficult problem plus a bunch of untrained people that neither understand the technology nor understand how things fail - and they are making the laws. That means the cockup theory of history is sufficient to explain half-baked proposed laws like this.
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Offline AndyBeez

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #18 on: July 08, 2023, 11:28:27 pm »
And the political class wonder why they have to live behind bullet proof glass?
 

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #19 on: July 08, 2023, 11:32:33 pm »
The road is still not a place for children to play unattended, there are other places for that. Uncontrolled access to the internet is something which should be continued, but at the same time specific places for children are made available.
Well, we agree there needs to be seperate internet areas for children, but you prefer choice while I prefer enforcement.
But you keep arguing for the lowest common denominator approach which is not applied to (any?) other situation other than perhaps smoking in enclosed spaces.

As I see it, enforcement would have a much greater chance of protecting more children. Perhaps some sort of legal framework that required parents to route childrens internet access through commercial internet filters that you mentioned previously. There would need to be software tools (mobile, desktop apps), pricing options and funding (via government child support payments) to give this a chance of working. Many parents are concerned about kids internet access but the technically illerate parents don't understand the options currently available, or baulk at the costs. Regulation forces them (at least a good percentage of them) to take action.
Right, so say that instead of the provocative/sensational extreme of must be applied to everyone at all times because some vulnerable group might be at risk.

Oh wait, the UK is already moving on that for schools:
https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/teachers-and-school-staff/appropriate-filtering-and-monitoring/appropriate-filtering
and has been providing guidance for parents on that for a long time. If a parent chooses to let their kids loose unsupervised and unattended on the internet, they need to accept thats basically the same as letting them freely roam the city (including roads, and "adult" encounters). The reaction is not OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN*

*because I'm a lazy parent and cant be bothered to care for my child
 
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #20 on: July 09, 2023, 12:44:45 am »
"Who guards the guardians?" is an age old question, for good reason.

As an engineer I'm predisposed to look for cause and effect - which leads me towards conspiracy theories.

However, over a long lifetime, I've been ever mindful that the "cockup theory of history" is usually correct, and the "conspiracy theory of history" should only be considered where there is strong evidence.

In this case you have a very difficult problem plus a bunch of untrained people that neither understand the technology nor understand how things fail - and they are making the laws. That means the cockup theory of history is sufficient to explain half-baked proposed laws like this.

Conspiracy theories only have to go a few steps past the original notion to become ridiculously complex concoctions relying upon the impossible collusion of every-increasing numbers of conspirators to try to cover their own inconsistencies.

The cockup theory covers the inconsistencies well, by comparison.
 

Offline vk6zgo

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #21 on: July 09, 2023, 01:00:48 am »
And the political class wonder why they have to live behind bullet proof glass?

Anthony Albanese, Peter Dutton, & Scott Morrison wander around in public in shirtsleeves without anyone ever taking a shot at them.
Even such people as Don Trump, Joe Biden, & Boris Johnson appear in public with no "Bullet proof glass".

One thing I've always regarded as weird, in fact, is how prominent Politicians & other public figures, such as the Pope & King Charles, when they fly somewhere, exit the aircraft using old fashioned stairs, so they are out "in the breeze", whereas the rest of us enter & exit via tubes, not seeing the light of day till we emerge from "processing".

Surely, the "waving to the adoring crowd" thing is obsolete these days, (as there are none "airside") & the security aspect of being out of sight of possible snipers should be a "biggie" for using the tubes.
 

Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #22 on: July 09, 2023, 09:22:55 am »
The road is still not a place for children to play unattended, there are other places for that. Uncontrolled access to the internet is something which should be continued, but at the same time specific places for children are made available.
Well, we agree there needs to be seperate internet areas for children, but you prefer choice while I prefer enforcement.
But you keep arguing for the lowest common denominator approach which is not applied to (any?) other situation other than perhaps smoking in enclosed spaces.

You mean an approach which impacts everyone to protect or benefit a particular group. But that is what we do in society, and in the end it benefits us all. We all contribute taxes, in part to fund the upbringing and education of children, amoungst other things. So, thanks for your contribution, even if it's resented.

Quote

As I see it, enforcement would have a much greater chance of protecting more children. Perhaps some sort of legal framework that required parents to route childrens internet access through commercial internet filters that you mentioned previously. There would need to be software tools (mobile, desktop apps), pricing options and funding (via government child support payments) to give this a chance of working. Many parents are concerned about kids internet access but the technically illerate parents don't understand the options currently available, or baulk at the costs. Regulation forces them (at least a good percentage of them) to take action.
Right, so say that instead of the provocative/sensational extreme of must be applied to everyone at all times because some vulnerable group might be at risk.

Oh wait, the UK is already moving on that for schools:
https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/teachers-and-school-staff/appropriate-filtering-and-monitoring/appropriate-filtering
and has been providing guidance for parents on that for a long time. If a parent chooses to let their kids loose unsupervised and unattended on the internet, they need to accept thats basically the same as letting them freely roam the city (including roads, and "adult" encounters). The reaction is not OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN*

*because I'm a lazy parent and cant be bothered to care for my child

There is always a balance to be made between over-reguation and under-regulation, which the political system rarely gets just right. The 'saferinternet' site you mentioned is clearly not having enough impact and more needs to be done, for the benefit of children now, and society in the long term. The voluntary approach you and I prefer has failed (perhaps due to poor parenting), and your upset because the next level of protection may impact you in some way. You could be more sanguine about it, and accept that if such regulation comes to Australia it might benefit your kids or grandchildren. Or if you don't have kids, then your society.

 

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #23 on: July 09, 2023, 09:57:29 am »
The road is still not a place for children to play unattended, there are other places for that. Uncontrolled access to the internet is something which should be continued, but at the same time specific places for children are made available.
Well, we agree there needs to be seperate internet areas for children, but you prefer choice while I prefer enforcement.
But you keep arguing for the lowest common denominator approach which is not applied to (any?) other situation other than perhaps smoking in enclosed spaces.
You mean an approach which impacts everyone to protect or benefit a particular group. But that is what we do in society, and in the end it benefits us all. We all contribute taxes, in part to fund the upbringing and education of children, amoungst other things. So, thanks for your contribution, even if it's resented.
Funding services for those who choose to use them is radically different from introducing restrictions on all.

As I see it, enforcement would have a much greater chance of protecting more children. Perhaps some sort of legal framework that required parents to route childrens internet access through commercial internet filters that you mentioned previously. There would need to be software tools (mobile, desktop apps), pricing options and funding (via government child support payments) to give this a chance of working. Many parents are concerned about kids internet access but the technically illerate parents don't understand the options currently available, or baulk at the costs. Regulation forces them (at least a good percentage of them) to take action.
Right, so say that instead of the provocative/sensational extreme of must be applied to everyone at all times because some vulnerable group might be at risk.

Oh wait, the UK is already moving on that for schools:
https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/teachers-and-school-staff/appropriate-filtering-and-monitoring/appropriate-filtering
and has been providing guidance for parents on that for a long time. If a parent chooses to let their kids loose unsupervised and unattended on the internet, they need to accept thats basically the same as letting them freely roam the city (including roads, and "adult" encounters). The reaction is not OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN*

*because I'm a lazy parent and cant be bothered to care for my child
There is always a balance to be made between over-reguation and under-regulation, which the political system rarely gets just right. The 'saferinternet' site you mentioned is clearly not having enough impact and more needs to be done, for the benefit of children now, and society in the long term. The voluntary approach you and I prefer has failed (perhaps due to poor parenting), and you're upset because the next level of protection may impact you in some way. You could be more sanguine about it, and accept that if such regulation comes to Australia it might benefit your kids or grandchildren. Or if you don't have kids, then your society.
But there is the rub, you equate universal moderation/control with a net win for society based on... nothing? Emotive nonsense. The people supporting such draconian oversight/moderation are either: a) bad parents (as they are letting their children into an unmoderated space without supervision) or b) trying to hide their true motivations by using the THINK OF THE CHILDREN rubbish.

Most laws make economic sense and safety laws are usually backed by risk assessment and $$$ values, funny how all that is missing here.

There is no problem for adults, with many resources and solutions already existing for those who want their children to access the internet within a safe boundary why are they pushing that onto everyone else? Might as well start banning books that might cause damage if they end up in the hands of children.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: UK internet censoring
« Reply #24 on: July 09, 2023, 10:10:25 am »
Might as well start banning books that might cause damage if they end up in the hands of children.

Books have to be actively chosen by the reader (or teacher). With (un)social media the platform chooses what the reader sees based on opaque criteria designed to hook the reader into passively consuming more of the platform's product.

That's a significant difference.

Having said that, this whole argument is very similar to the old debates about pornography, and how to define a distinction between that and "art".
« Last Edit: July 09, 2023, 10:12:34 am by tggzzz »
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