UK Removes Most Censorial Aspect Of Online Safety Bill, But It’s Still Terrible For Speech & Privacy
from the not-how-anything-works dept
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
Comments on “UK Removes Most Censorial Aspect Of Online Safety Bill, But It’s Still Terrible For Speech & Privacy”
To quote a certain, obscure YouTuber loosely, “…This started with zero, so the multiplication result is still zero.”
“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!
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.
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?
Re:
And I’m sure PornHub will get right on that.
Re:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Free speech is meaningless when no one listens anyway.