UK Ditches Ban On 'Legal But Harmful' Online Content In Favor of Free Speech 80
Britain will not force tech giants to remove content that is "legal but harmful" from their platforms after campaigners and lawmakers raised concerns that the move could curtail free speech, the government said on Monday. Reuters reports: Online safety laws would instead focus on the protection of children and on ensuring companies removed content that was illegal or prohibited in their terms of service, it said, adding that it would not specify what legal content should be censored. Platform owners, such as Facebook-owner Meta and Twitter, would be banned from removing or restricting user-generated content, or suspending or banning users, where there is no breach of their terms of service or the law, it said.
The government had previously said social media companies could be fined up to 10% of turnover or 18 million pounds ($22 million) if they failed to stamp out harmful content such as abuse even if it fell below the criminal threshold, while senior managers could also face criminal action. The proposed legislation, which had already been beset by delays and rows before the latest version, would remove state influence on how private companies managed legal speech, the government said. It would also avoid the risk of platforms taking down legitimate posts to avoid sanctions. [...]
The revised Online Safety Bill, which returns to parliament next month, puts the onus on tech companies to take down material in breach of their own terms of service and to enforce their user age limits to stop children circumventing authentication methods, the government said. If users were likely to encounter controversial content such as the glorification of eating disorders, racism, anti-Semitism or misogyny not meeting the criminal threshold, the platform would have to offer tools to help adult users avoid it, it said. Only if platforms failed to uphold their own rules or remove criminal content could a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover apply. Britain said late on Saturday that a new criminal offense of assisting or encouraging self-harm online would be included in the bill.
The government had previously said social media companies could be fined up to 10% of turnover or 18 million pounds ($22 million) if they failed to stamp out harmful content such as abuse even if it fell below the criminal threshold, while senior managers could also face criminal action. The proposed legislation, which had already been beset by delays and rows before the latest version, would remove state influence on how private companies managed legal speech, the government said. It would also avoid the risk of platforms taking down legitimate posts to avoid sanctions. [...]
The revised Online Safety Bill, which returns to parliament next month, puts the onus on tech companies to take down material in breach of their own terms of service and to enforce their user age limits to stop children circumventing authentication methods, the government said. If users were likely to encounter controversial content such as the glorification of eating disorders, racism, anti-Semitism or misogyny not meeting the criminal threshold, the platform would have to offer tools to help adult users avoid it, it said. Only if platforms failed to uphold their own rules or remove criminal content could a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover apply. Britain said late on Saturday that a new criminal offense of assisting or encouraging self-harm online would be included in the bill.
Oxymoron (Score:5, Funny)
"So it's no longer legal?"
"No, it's still legal."
"... so it's OK to have it, then?"
"No, having it is banned."
"So it's illegal?"
"No, it's perfectly legal. Just banned."
Next up on the agenda: seven red lines and a ball that must be fetched...
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Tory MPs and Peers appear to be engaging in naked corruption and you are worried about what people call each other in meetings?
Here is a clue for you, since you are clearly lacking: The Labor party hasn't been much of a left wing party since the days of Tony Blair.
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OK, we can both agree that Luckyo is a moron. Also clearly a true blue conservative since he's blaming future Labour or all the things conservatives are fucking up which seems to be their number one excuse. But:
The Labor party hasn't been much of a left wing party since the days of Tony Blair.
Starmer's so centrist he almost forgot to have any opinions, but did you forget the Corbyn interlude?
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but did you forget the Corbyn interlude?
No, because Corbyn was a no-op. He didn't stand for any principles.
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what?
He certainly principles. Incredibly left wing ones, and ones I strongly disagreed with abut half the time but he certainly didn't lack them.
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Corruption even if true to the extent you say is lesser harm than banning speech which the left has been calling for more and more, because without free speech you can't solve problems in the society and you end up having it much worse than mere corruption.
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Corruption even if true to the extent you say is lesser harm than banning speech which the left has been calling for more and more,
Did you not notice that it's the Tory party that has been advancing the anti-free-speech "Online Safety Bill" that this very article discusses?
The left doesn't have a good record on the topic of free speech, but to suggest that the right does is laughable.
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Same as the US: They have a strongly right-wing party and an extremist right-wing party.
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That comes from naive assumption that the only thing that is punished by government is that which is illegal.
This comes from naivete of having never lived in countries that aren't liberal. UK hasn't been liberal in a long time. It's a nation where one of the two major parties that hold leadership roles is openly calling its delegates "comrade" in its own meetings, and complaining that people are allowed to said things that they find ideologically abhorrent.
Left wing authoritarians have a long and much celebrated history of punishing people for things that are legal but against their ideology.
Brilliant! You think Labour are left-wing!
Comedy gold, man, comedy gold.
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Brilliant! You think Labour are left-wing!
Comedy gold, man, comedy gold.
This is bullshit "No True Scotsman" moving of the goal posts. Of course labour is left-wing, and have been throughout their entire history with the exception of the Tony Blair "New Labour" era (which was pretty successful). Virtually every other Labour leader has been dogmatically left, including Keir Starmer's tenure. All party leaders make moderate noises from time to time... you still have to capture the middle to win elections... but to claim that the party of Clement Atlee, Michael Foot, and Jeremy Cor
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You can't make commies happy. Anyone to the right of Lenin is a sellout to them.
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You can't make commies happy. Anyone to the right of Lenin is a sellout to them.
Sure, and anyone left of Hitler is Lenin to the Americans.
In summary: everyone is Lenin.
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Well, grandparent poster probably assumes he is a centrist instead of liberal (or centrist but liberal leaning.) So in his mind, anyone that doesn't have more extreme or at least simialr views as him must be a radical conservative.
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Well, grandparent poster probably assumes he is a centrist instead of liberal (or centrist but liberal leaning.) So in his mind, anyone that doesn't have more extreme or at least simialr views as him must be a radical conservative.
It is the classic sign of a demagogue that they exclude the possibility of a moderate or centrist position - everyone is either a loyal follower of the One True Way or they are the embodiment of evil. Religions are generally founded on this principle - the character of Jesus states that anyone not with him is against him and that never came back to cause any trouble, did it?
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Brilliant! You think Labour are left-wing!
Comedy gold, man, comedy gold.
This is bullshit "No True Scotsman" moving of the goal posts. Of course labour is left-wing, and have been throughout their entire history with the exception of the Tony Blair "New Labour" era (which was pretty successful). Virtually every other Labour leader has been dogmatically left, including Keir Starmer's tenure.
OK. I guess you're thinking of a different Keir Starmer then. The one I'm thinking of is openly Thatcherite.
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More left wing than the Tories ... but that's not saying much
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The site concerned are all privately owned. It is their choice what they accept. "Free speech" is not an issue. ...
The UK government is within its rights to insist they remove illegal content.
It is also possible for the UK government to "request" them to remove what they consider dangerous content. The sites might refuse, but then
It is further possible for the UK government to make whatever rules it pleases - it makes the laws, after all.
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The site concerned are all privately owned. It is their choice what they accept. "Free speech" is not an issue.
Like many things, the phrase "free speech" has multiple definitions. One is the government centered definition you refer to, another is the societal definition where the populace (society) has a certain expectation of behavior by individuals, groups, private corporations, etc. In short, the meaning of words can be subject to context.
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Not that I want to defend this law, but both you and the GP have misunderstood the proposal. They don't want to ban specific stuff, they want to make it so that if say a social media platform notices a pattern of posts that could do harm, they will have to remove them.
As an example it's not illegal to post pictures of yourself cutting your wrists, or the empty bottle of pills you just downed, or photos of your dangerously thin body. Communities exist where all that stuff is posted, and in at least one case
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And those of us who aren't leftist lunatics understand that when the methods are in place to deal with whatever scenario you just made up they'll start using those methods to curtail speech they simply don't like. You know, speech that's "harmful" to their re-election chances.
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What part of "Not that I want to defend this law" made you think I supported it?
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Re:Oxymoron (Score:5, Funny)
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If it is “legal” then you are allowed to do it without threat of government punishment. But some people in power actually proposed giving themselves the power to take money from other people for content that is legal? That’s not how non-tyrannical governments work. That’s how tyrannies work. Either make something illegal and punish the transgressors, or don’t make it illegal and butt out. Classic example of wanting it both ways. “Oh no, we’re not prohibiting
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They just want private companies to do the dirty work.
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Yep. And that is already down the slippery slope to full censorship quite a way. Good to see not everybody in the UK is cheering for establishing fascism there.
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Many countries don't have those, but kinda rule by implying they're there. UK is definitively not one of those.
they like to take their 1984 roleplay quite seriously
As convenient ... (Score:2)
Many countries don't have those [referring among other things to 1st amendment of US constitution], but kinda rule by implying they're there.
Only as convenient for the government
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Indeed. but normally it's just easier and cheaper to leave people alone rather than creating a massive network of hell
Re: Film At Eleven (Score:2)
Add all you need to do is take them away and next thing you know women will lose the right to vote
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Shocking news: a country with nothing like the 2nd Amendment also has nothing like the 1st.
Perhaps there are UN Rights that apply in this case.
But oh wait...UN Rights cannot possibly apply to a country known for it's former slave trading & colonial empire, and for maintaining a King/Queen (even if they are more or less a figurehead), right?
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Shocking news: a country with nothing like the 2nd Amendment also has nothing like the 1st.
The two are not linked, and never were.
More broadly, there is no advantage to being ruled by the dead hand of some 18th century politicians because they happened to get their ideas down on paper before anyone else did and thereby magically became as infallable as the Pope is supposed to be.
Re: Film At Eleven (Score:3)
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The US founding fathers were not particularly brilliant - Plato wrote The Republic around 200 BC and Machiavelli wrote The Prince in the 16th century.
Interesting choices. The Republic is not what it says on the tin - it's a plan for a fascist super-state along the lines of modern China. The Prince is harder to pin down but it's certainly not a plan for anywhere anyone would want to live, not even the rich.
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Freedom of expression is protected in the UK by article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Stop spreading misinformation.
The second amendment puts teeth in the first (Score:1, Interesting)
And the Brits, who still swear fealty to a king, have neither.
Re:The second amendment puts teeth in the first (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet, a subject of the sovereign, you formally remain.
Better a theoretical monarch than a practical robber baron. The US replaced monarchy with plutocracy, showing your billionaires the deference the monarch once received. You even have your own aristocracy, with trust fund families passing their wealth down the generations, giving their kids small loans of a few million dollars and legacy admission to college. Best bit is you have your poor convinced that maybe just maybe one day they might be rich, so they even back laws to give the rich a lower tax rate than the poor. So yeah you have your Kings and Lords, you're just blinded to them.
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No it hasn't, they are being eroded just as fast as rights are being eroded in the UK, if not faster.
The opposite is true. In the US free speech rights have only expanded over the years. Exceptions for things like "fighting words" and "incitement" have been repeatedly narrowed by the courts over many decades. In the US "hate speech" is legal.
Throughout Europe roman salutes and drunken shit talking about how much you love Hitler will land your ass in you in Jail while "platforms" are being legally compelled to determine what is and is not true.
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Re: The second amendment puts teeth in the first (Score:1)
Meanwhile, in the UK they don't have to worry about their kids being shot while at school, so there's that.
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Otherwise why would conservatives keep complaining about "Cancel Culture" and how they're being silenced for their political views?
Do you want a list of reasons, or what?
Re: While the EU is tearing down free speech (Score:2)
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I bet that goes down over the next 2 winters.
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Like sea ice, forest extent matters, but it is very far from the whole story.
It's good to shade the ground, though.
It isn't free speech (Score:2, Insightful)
This is content that is submitted to and published by private business. It is not a public space where a citizen's words come directly out of their mouths.
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This is content that is submitted to and published by private business. It is not a public space where a citizen's words come directly out of their mouths.
Excellent, then twitter, Facebook, google, etc are not newspapers and the government is free to regulate their content. Biblical style literalism saves us all.
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There is more to free speech than some US legal definition.
And yet few countries have freer speech than the US. If only we had more education to go with it. Heck, in general the first amendment is even held to apply to everyone– except Assange, anyway. Or a bunch of whistleblowers, for that matter...
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Bullshit. As soon as they have access for everybody and the service is primarily about publishing statements from private citizens, that is not true anymore. Remember that this is not the US with its perverted laws where company rights are concerned.
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Remember that this is not the US with its perverted laws where company rights are concerned.
Are you talking about the law that says you can't hold one party liable for something an unrelated party wrote? Or something else?
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Well, it seems in the US an online-platform can remove arbitrary content from its site. At least that seems to be the claim that is made here time and again. At least in Europe they cannot. They have to do that based on the TOU only. For example they cannot target specific people, unless they have violated the TOU.
Of course it is possible this claim is bullshit for the US as well. Would not surprise me one bit, there are a lot of clueless people here now and quite a few that are not above lying directly to
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Yes, in the US the government cannot force a platform to leave anything up.
Given Twitter did the same..... (Score:1)
Free speech (Score:2)
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a soap box with the entire audience gagged
I see you've read the 21st century interpretation of the bill of rights . . . we scrapped everything but 1 and 2, and 1 is less valuable against someone with 2 of 1.
Of course, there's a supporting table where wealth modifies free speech and parts of the actual constitution for individuals or groups of individuals.
It's kind of a THAC0-inspired setup. Only a few people understand it, but enough people have switched to it that you're kinda stuck.
Suicide (Score:2)
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1. The law on assisting or encouraging suicide is not changing, since that is already illegal. This is about extending that existing law to cover non-lethal self harm.
2. There would seem to be no realistic probability that Putin can be cyberbullied into committing suicide (if it were that easy, Ukraine would have likely already done it), so it's doubtful that any case would get far in the courts. And that's assuming anyone brought such a case, which is again improbable.
3. Would it actually be any great
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