UK Tightens Online Safety Bill Again as It Nears Final Approval (bloomberg.com) 31
The UK made last-minute amendments toughening up its sweeping, long-awaited Online Safety Bill following scrutiny in Parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords. From a report: Internet companies carrying pornographic content will be explicitly required to use age verification or estimation measures, and ensure these methods are effective, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said in an emailed statement Friday. Executives will be held personally responsible for child safety on their platforms, the statement said.
DSIT didn't respond to follow-up questions about the detail of this policy. Regulator Ofcom will be empowered to retrieve data on the online activity of deceased children to understand if and how their online activity may have played any role in their death, if requested by a coroner, the government said. It also announced Ofcom will research the role that app stores play in children's access to harmful content. The watchdog will also publish guidance on how platforms can reduce risks to women and have to improve public literacy of disinformation.
DSIT didn't respond to follow-up questions about the detail of this policy. Regulator Ofcom will be empowered to retrieve data on the online activity of deceased children to understand if and how their online activity may have played any role in their death, if requested by a coroner, the government said. It also announced Ofcom will research the role that app stores play in children's access to harmful content. The watchdog will also publish guidance on how platforms can reduce risks to women and have to improve public literacy of disinformation.
Give it some time (Score:4, Insightful)
The gross privacy violations will soon be extended from dead children to living adults. Because... Safety online.
This slope has been thoroughly slathered with soap...
Re:Give it some time (Score:5, Interesting)
Slippery slope is a logical fallacy. Well, normally anyway. Given that the current parliament is debating whether to give the PM the right to overrule any court (including the supreme court) on any decision he/she feels like, without reason and without recourse, I'm afraid it's difficult for me to believe that there isn't malintent involved.
Re:Give it some time (Score:4, Funny)
"reduce risks to women" (Score:2)
Stop sexism, stop the feminazis.
Re: (Score:2)
Is this an objection? Can't tell. You may have oversimplified it, but when it comes to victimhood in pornography, child or otherwise, and to the propagation of materials resulting from it, "men" are certainly overrepresented in the list of conspirators.
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But the feminazis want to "reduce risks to women". AND ONLY WOMEN.
That is SEXIST.
Because feminazis hate men.
Fuck feminazis.
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That's a bullshit extension though. It's the same kind of passive aggressive crap that people use by saying "ALL LIVES MATTER". The purpose is not to push the point that all lives matter, it's to destroy the argument that black lives matter. It's intellectual dishonesty. A thin veil to hide behind to mask shitty intent.
If I thought for one second that you were concerned for men, and not just pissed of at women, I'd concede the point. But I don't.
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Thanks.
Women, women, women (Score:1)
In a discussion about who is responsible for all the online pornography, all one has to do is watch!
Re: (Score:2)
Those women aren't victims, so I wasn't addressing them. Also, the paying public is almost exclusively male. That says more about men than it does women.
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And what they are doing here is SEXIST.
So they are not feminists, who claim to support equality, but manhating feminazis, happy for men to die because they are only willing to address, quote, "risks to women".
Fuck them, and fuck you, you hateful woke cunt.
Translation (Score:2)
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Kicking Nazis in the goolies isn't about eliminating sociopolitical dissent. Nazis don't dissent, they haven't the brain for it. Besides which, the current government is loaded with Nazi sympathisers.
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On the one hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
...detailed understanding by a coroner isn't a bad thing. It's always good to have clear, objective, information rather than wild speculation and rumours. Unless you like Fleetwood Mac, in which case Rumours is just fine.
On the other hand, the current government is prone to abusing power - the courts are working overtime to stop this, but the government plans to pass a bill that will allow them to overrule the courts whenever they feel like it. (A perfect example of abusing power, if ever I saw one.)
I have no personal objection to working age verification - I just don't believe that any such scheme exists. However, if someone can come up with such a scheme, then by all means place the method and the source in the public domain or under a BSD/GNU dual license and require providers to use it. If you can actually do what seems impossible, then who am I to stand in the way of progress? (VPNs will do that just fine...)
Nor do I have any objection to coroners being given full and truthful information.
My problem with the legislation is that the current government will abuse the hell out of the law and that there will be not so much mission-creep as mission-wildly-exceeded. And I'm not sure I trust Starmer to pass legislation to protect privacy against such excesses. Indeed, he strikes me as someone who would have no issue with some excesses himself. I doubt he'll be as evil as the Tories, but that's only because it would be almost impossible for any actual human being to be as evil as that lot. But it's not really comforting to know the choice will be between the embodiment of pure evil versus just the guts, spleen, and left kidney of pure evil.
I simply don't trust that the legislation will be used as advertised on the box, by any in parliament, and I detest having to be so cynical. Cynicism isn't my style, it fits badly, it's totally alien to me, but it's the most optimistic I'm capable of being given the current spate of legislation going through.
Yeah, this'll work (Score:4, Insightful)
The perverts will easily find dozens of ways to dance around this legislation. The only people who will suffer are the ones who wind up targeted by the government and its semi-autonomous minions for engaging in various forms of public dissent.
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The perverts will easily find dozens of ways to dance around this legislation.
A 16 year old kid trying to find porn on the internet is hardly a pervert. He is just human.
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I totally agree. But this is being sold more as kiddie porn control than keeping horny teenagers from being horny teenagers.
A person with a nasty, cynical mind might undermine that kind of nonsense by pointing out that taking away their access to "solo activities", you'd be driving them toward more...collaborative methods of gratification.
age verification or estimation (Score:2)
Age estimation? I swear she looked 18 your honor!
More government problems. (Score:4, Insightful)
Currently a 255 page bill, so nothing clean and easy.
It is completely vague to how it is to be accomplished. In each section the quote is the same. First, that it must not be possible for children to access it, followed by "a provider is only entitled to conclude that it is not possible for children to access a service, or a part of it, if there are systems or processes in place (for example, age verification, or another means of age assurance) that achieve the result that children are not normally able to access the service or that part of it."
They require record keeping, which is disturbing. Many variations of what they need to keep, including "A provider must make and keep a written record, in an easily understandable form, of every children's access assessment." Since each "assessment" determines if they're adult or child, and it needs to have enough detail to prove they're an adult or a child in case the government comes looking. That's basically creation of a masturbation log for every adult.
Naturally it doesn't state certain things. There are no data retention guides, so no guidance of when it can be deleted. They reference investigations at 12 month limits so records must be kept for at least a year. There is nothing mentioned about data security, safety of the record keeping, nor consequences for distributing or safeguarding the data ... so we must conclude the masturbation log is free to be sold, given to marketers, and passed along to government as business records that can be subpoenaed.
Executive Personal Responsibility (Score:2)
Executives will be held personally responsible for child safety on their platforms, the statement said.
If you take a look at the bill itself, it doesn't make executives personally responsible for content minors may view on their platform or content of minors on their platform. It makes them liable for failing to comply with an information notice, providing false information in response to the notice, providing encrypted information in response to the notice without means to decrypt it, or destroys information relevant to the notice.
Executives are not personally responsible for child safety on their platforms
Is there a definition of Pornography? (Score:2)
Is there a definition of pornographic content?
Effective age verification or estimation; the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is amazing!
Respect privacy *and* do Age Verification ? (Score:2)
And when they inevitably fail, it will be a good demonstration to people in other countries planning this sort of thing that they are mutually incompatible.
Still no proof that porn is actually harmful (Score:2)
To children, that is. In fact, current Science says it is not really. All you need to do as a parent is to explain to your children that anatomy and acts displayed are an athletic performance and not realistic. And that is basically it. This whole repulsive act is bases on a Big Lie.
Device based solution already exists (Score:2)
Privacy elimination and panopticon bill (Score:2)