The UK's Controversial Online Safety Bill Finally Becomes Law (theverge.com) 185
An anonymous reader shares a report: The UK's Online Safety Bill, a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to make the country "the safest place in the world to be online" received royal assent today and became law. The bill has been years in the making and attempts to introduce new obligations for how tech firms should design, operate, and moderate their platforms. Specific harms the bill aims to address include underage access to online pornography, "anonymous trolls," scam ads, the nonconsensual sharing of intimate deepfakes, and the spread of child sexual abuse material and terrorism-related content.
Although it's now law, online platforms will not need to immediately comply with all of their duties under the bill, which is now known as the Online Safety Act. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, which is in charge of enforcing the rules, plans to publish its codes of practice in three phases. The first covers how platforms will have to respond to illegal content like terrorism and child sexual abuse material, and a consultation with proposals on how to handle these duties is due to be published on November 9th.
Although it's now law, online platforms will not need to immediately comply with all of their duties under the bill, which is now known as the Online Safety Act. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, which is in charge of enforcing the rules, plans to publish its codes of practice in three phases. The first covers how platforms will have to respond to illegal content like terrorism and child sexual abuse material, and a consultation with proposals on how to handle these duties is due to be published on November 9th.
George Orwell foreseen this (Score:5, Interesting)
He used to worked for UK censors during WWII and this is the inevitable path of the government.
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You know, playing dumb and bullying others doesn't convince people of anything.
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Depends on how you define them.
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Do I have to be in favor of terrorism or do I get to choose?
Uh.. . I mean...
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Slashdot sure is cock full these days of people who trust government bureaucrats (and their political enemies) entirely.
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As opposed to trusting who else?
Re:George Orwell foreseen this (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't trust any of them. That's the point.
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Mostly because the alternative is to hand it instead to foreign actors.
If we could get rid of both, hey, I'd be the first to cheer for that. But there is different levels of bad, and if I can only get bad or fucking hell, I take bad.
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And when domestic bad actors start deciding that only "facts" they believe are true, are true?
Enjoy your Ministry of "Truth."
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That's already the case, look at the FBI, DOJ or at global scales, the UN and various giant media companies.
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Everyone is strongly susceptible to bias. It just blows my mind that the so-called "smart" side has been lured to the Dark Side so easily. All it took was one Orange Idiot to make them leave their senses and abandon 2500 years of western philosophy in favor of power politics, it seems.
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The difference is maybe that if you don't like your own government, you have a chance to change that.
Kinda hard to do with a government that tries to influence your people from abroad.
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That's a difference without a distinction. Stop trying to find a way to excuse violating people's human rights.
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I'm not. But you can't choose, your human rights will be violated either way. All you can choose is who does it.
Sorry, but your choice is shooting or hanging. Survival is not an option.
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Nonsense and fearmongering.
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Really? Not been paying attention to the antisocial media in the past 10 years?
It's happening. You get bombarded by state actor bullshit constantly. And since our government fared pretty well for the longest time with a population that has zero ability to check information for veracity because that allowed them in the past to just bullshit them into believing the free market gospel and the fairy tale of the invisible hand and the trickle-down, we now have a population that finally realizes that they have be
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Your sig is so ironic.
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It's also about two decades old.
What's really ironic is that I wish we could have those good times back when the only government I had to worry about was my own. And that was something I could at least influence a little. What's going on now is something you can only watch in awe and realize that the country is being brought down from the inside, just very, very different than what I worried about back then.
Re: George Orwell foreseen this (Score:2)
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Please read what I write rather than what you want to read.
The free market bit was the example I used to show that people feel they have been bullshitted by their government and, lacking the ability to think for themselves, look for someone else now to tell them what to believe.
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All true.
But just because A is bad doesn't mean B is better. It can actually be even worse.
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Mostly because the alternative is to hand it instead to foreign actors.
If we could get rid of both, hey, I'd be the first to cheer for that. But there is different levels of bad, and if I can only get bad or fucking hell, I take bad.
Sounds like the vibe I have every single election.
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It's a matter of degree. You at least have the choice between the giant douche and the turd sandwich. Some people don't even get to choose, they get both, whether they want to or not.
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What foreign actors specifically? Let's say the US Government goes to say the level it was in 1923 or 1823, what exactly would be different? The US government still had a navy, trade and commerce, laws, law enforcement etc. overall, crime was lower, people were not nearly as unemployed as they are today, taxes were lower, businesses were booming, people that didn't like it in one place took the rather dangerous trek to the west in search of adventure and gold. None of the advancements in science or industry
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I have to say, I find it weird how the people in the US keep bashing their government as if they have no power in it. And at the same time they claim to be the pinnacle of freedom and could always oust them because, hey, what is that second amendment for if not that?
Really, the level of cognitive dissonance going on in that population is staggering.
Re:George Orwell foreseen this (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, the level of cognitive dissonance going on in that population is staggering.
I was born in Iran, but I've been a naturalized citizen of the U.S. for a very long time and have traveled to many countries. What you say is true not only about the U.S., but about people in most countries. In every country, people are either distracted from paying attention to their government, fed outright lies about their government and its activities, or some of both (usually the case).
I have to say, I find it weird how the people in the US keep bashing their government as if they have no power in it.
The problems of the U.S. have much to do with its political system. A system that's made up of just two political entities (green party and libertarians excluded) is poised to pit the people against each other. At any point in time, half the people will hate the government while the other half will support it. And we truly don't have any power in the government, so long as lobbyists and corporations have free reign to either corrupt the new comers of the political arena, or to muscle them out. The whole system is rigged against the people, despite giving an illusion of democracy and freedom, which brings me to the next point ...
And at the same time they claim to be the pinnacle of freedom and could always oust them because, hey, what is that second amendment for if not that?
The pinnacle of freedom in the U.S. is the first amendment. It's the only one still untainted, unsurpassed by any government or constitution in the world. Freedom of speech in the U.S. is unparalleled. I wage you to pit any country's laws on freedom of speech against the first amendment in the U.S. But it's funny you mention the 2nd amendment and hint at a rebellion against the government. That may have been the original intent of the founding fathers, but with the laws passed over the past 200 years, the chance of people usurping their government is nil. So the 2nd amendment is watered down to "I can have a gun" and that's it.
I don't think you we can summarize the bad situation the people of the United States are in in these so few words. Everything is tied together: education, healthcare, family dynamics, corporation abuse on all fronts, including jobs, lobbying, prices, profits, etc. There really is no easy way to solve the American people's problems. But if I were to have a magic wand with one charge left, I'd wave it and wish that all the powers corporations have been given, including givein them a "first amendment right" in Citizens United vs FED, be cut back and all lobbying made illegal. I believe that would be a good start to head us in the right direction.
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Funny that you mention the first, because, another oddity, while the US enshrines freedom of speech in a constitution, I have noticed that I, without such a constitutional right over here in Europe, have way, way more leeway in what I can and cannot say. And moreover, do.
The key here is that while the US government cannot dictate what you can or cannot say, the overzealous thought police (on either side of the fence, don't feel like singling out the religious nutjobs or the "cancel culture" SJWs, they're bo
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That still doesn't mean the government can jail you for having the wrong thoughts, which is perfectly possible in Europe. The reason you think you have more leeway in what you can and cannot say is because your vocabulary is quite limited to begin with.
As a European in the US, I can say that people here a LOT more verbal when it comes to government, history and just about anything, hence the professionally outraged class exists, because in Europe you can't say some (awful) things without getting arrested. T
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The only example I could think of is the "Wiederbetätigungsgesetz" in Germany and Austria, which outlaws Nazism. Which, curiously enough, was a requirement by the USA to let them off the hook.
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Lèse-majesté is a thing on the books in the EU, hate speech is a thing that is defined as not being free speech in the EU, hell, even saying offensive things about Islam is now enough to jail you in the EU - https://www.wsj.com/articles/e... [wsj.com]
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Thanks to the USA, you cannot deny the holocaust in Germany. That's a bit that is often glossed over, and it's quite interesting that the USA insisted in installing this ban on Nazism in Germany but conveniently forgot to do something akin to it at home.
Reminds me of the old saying of "we export democracy" whenever the US invade somewhere. Kinda makes sense, we also export the crap we have no use for at home.
But snide comments aside, the US does have a considerable problem with its fringe groups. Loud and o
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The sad bit is, people do. They're looking for answers, and the easier the answer, the more readily it will be believed.
And there has never been a shortage of easy, wrong answers.
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The battle against which state? To return to the core of the problem, it's not just your state that is telling you lies. The far more serious problem is other states that try to weaken yours are telling you lies in the attempt to turn you into a useful tool for them.
Propaganda has never been a tool only employed by one side.
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The problem is that this simplification doesn't work. There is outside influence and yes, it has an impact on your democracy.
Democracy itself isn't a myth, but it requires an informed electorate, something we sadly do not have.
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What's that got to do with the problem that foreign actors are trying to undermine the country by spreading lies and dissent?
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Mostly because the alternative is to hand it instead to foreign actors.
It already has been.
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Slashdot sure is cock full these days of people who trust government bureaucrats (and their political enemies) entirely.
B-b-but the children! Think of them!
It's distressingly amazing (or amazingly distressing?) that the generations that were most keen at spotting this bullshit rhetoric back in the 90s have ended up swallowing the poison apple far harder, and far more eagerly, than the Boomers ever dreamt of.
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But it's different now! Foreign actors! AI! Trump voters! Let's give up our rights for that momentary feeling of security!
It's hand wringing, pearl clutching, and security theater, as it always has been, and only fools can't see that.
But then, the left has gone so far down the path of insanity at this point, they can rationalize anything.
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Slightly disingenuous, 1984 never mentioned or included underage access to "stuff".
'Brave New World' did, and endorsed it. 'Hunt the zipper'...
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Brave New World attempted to make the argument that liberal excess would destroy the moral fabric of society by abandoning monogamy and viewing sex as an innocent act that kids shouldn't be protected from.
While 1984 criticized censorship and other restrictions on freedom, Brave New World lamented a perceived loss of conservative social mores. Of course, Aldous Huxley would later take acid and recant his Brave New World argument, realizing he fell for the worst kind of "slippery slope" type of thinking.
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Brave New World attempted to make the argument that liberal excess would destroy the moral fabric of society by abandoning monogamy and viewing sex as an innocent act that kids shouldn't be protected from.
While 1984 criticized censorship and other restrictions on freedom, Brave New World lamented a perceived loss of conservative social mores. Of course, Aldous Huxley would later take acid and recant his Brave New World argument, realizing he fell for the worst kind of "slippery slope" type of thinking.
Hunt the zipper still sounds like fun tho.
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Which bit did you miss?
"1984 never mentioned"
Did you miss the bit where I was referring to a different dystopian novel?
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Slightly disingenuous, 1984 never mentioned or included underage access to "stuff".
Nineteen Eighty-Four is the most quoted book by people who've never read it.
Orwell was not subtle with his imagery, he was clearly talking about Nazi fascism in Nineteen Eighty-Four, not about his experiences in the war (Spoiler Alert, Animal Farm was his diatribe against Stalinist Communism). Although the Tories would love that level of control they are nowhere near competent enough.
No more Slashdot in the UK (Score:2)
Posting AC, - 1 Troll? Can't have that.
The Dog Caught the Car (Score:2)
I'm guessing the next step is applied magical thinking
"... underage access to online pornography..."
How do you determine age?
What exactly is pornography?
"... anonymous trolls..."
Troll or unpopular opinion?
Anonymous: pseudonym, pen name, registered IP address,
"... scam ads
Would this be something like yet another Toyota ad for their Solid State Battery? (Couldn't resis
Another Brilliant Law (Score:2)
In the name of security (Score:2)
As always, people will give up anything in the name of security, especially if worded properly, politician way. First of all, you have to say that "it's for children", or use any minority in order to appear "good". The tricky part lies in the last couple of words "against terrorism"... all this law will do is give more control to politicians over what people can see and talk about on the Internet.
Remember: "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither lib
Definition of "child sexual abuse" please... (Score:2)
...because there is a lot of stuff in the middle.
Re:Online trolls ? Really ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I pretty much see this just ending with geoblocks giving UK users attempting to access the site a message along the lines of "We couldn't find a way to comply with your country's bizarre laws, so here's a picture of a kitten to look at while you consider voting for more competent leadership at your next election."
Either that or doing what Nintendo Online does, where you simply don't allow much in the way of user-generated content. That still ends up ruling out social media and probably the whole of YouTube's comment section.
Online Brexit (Score:3)
Yeah, I pretty much see this just ending with geoblocks
Actually, I see it more as resulting in a Brexit for large tech companies. Once they have no UK presence they can still sell online services to UK users but will no longer be subject to UK law. That's the problem with the internet: people in any one country can access services in any other country and there is little the home country of the user can do about it.
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Yeah, I pretty much see this just ending with geoblocks giving UK users attempting to access the site a message along the lines of "We couldn't find a way to comply with your country's bizarre laws, so here's a picture of a kitten to look at while you consider voting for more competent leadership at your next election."
Pretty much this.
Firstly, companies are just going to laugh at them if they try to use this law for anything untoward.
Secondly, the Polls have the Tories (Conservatives) cruising along at 25%, for the uninitiated the UK is a two party system, with the lions share of the votes going between Labour and the Conservatives, minor parties are lucky to poll 10%. The next general election can be called anytime before mid December 2024... sadly that gives the current bunch of utter tossers a full year to do ev
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The UK chose to create the "safest" society years ago, by removing a citizens right to attack their own society with firearms. Of course, this also meant a citizen was left quite defenseless in the worst scenarios, but that hardly matters. Not when guns are bad, mmmkay.
Now ask UK statistics AND the citizens who live there; do you NOW feel you live in the mostest safest place in the world with physical restrictions on firearms?
Now you know what the end result will be with digital restrictions. Hopefully you've also figured out the actual intent of disarming a nation by now too.
Yeah and everywhere in the world should be 'stand your ground' and if you're in a place you're legally entitled to be and feel threatened, using deadly force shouldn't even get you arrested. And the law should require everyone to carry a gun. So they can feel safe, of course. Not so that the arms industry can make even more money, ohhh no no no not for that reason at all!!!1111
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Domestic gun manufacturers don't egg on wars and conflict for profit, you cringe weirdo. That would be Raytheon, whose board member Austin is our Sec of Defense. But I'm sure facts like that are a conspiracy theory to goobers like you.
You're so self-assured you probably don't even own a gun! What are you going to do when some unknown car pulls up in your driveway at 10:00 at night??? Not shoot them??
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Typical leftist rtard response to facts
Marxist
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The UK chose to create the "safest" society years ago, by removing a citizens right to attack their own society with firearms. Of course, this also meant a citizen was left quite defenseless in the worst scenarios, but that hardly matters.
This bullshit argument is so laughable. Are you telling me the military cosplay group is going to wage a war against the government? A few mouse clicks and a drone will be dispatched to their location. Maine just had someone exercise their second amendment rights to the tune of 18 dead. The firearms instructor was hearing voices and didn't need a background check to buy a gun. But I'm sure your freedom fighter cosplay scenario will surely play out someday.
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And yet at the same time leftists argue that prohibition doesn't work and celebrate the crushing defeat of the US military by three different illiterate insurgent groups with bootleg gear.
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The US homicide rate is 7x the UK homicide rate [wikipedia.org] And that doesn't even scratch the surface of suicide by gun and cops gunning people down.
The guns aren't helping. By all means keep freedom to have a gun, but reign it in with some sensible laws
Re:No way to prevent this (Score:2)
Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.
https://www.theonion.com/no-wa... [theonion.com]
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In China, they have very frequent mass stabbings in elementary schools. Death tolls are much higher than gun shootings because they're attacking children and it's hard to spot a stabber as they make no sound. You just don't hear about this since China outlaws such reporting.
Ask people like laowhy (YouTube) and his ilk who lived there for a long time and are now out.
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In China, they have very frequent mass stabbings in elementary schools.
Bullshit. Prove it. Deaths per capita.
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I gave you the source. But China doesn't publish the data, you know that.
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So you just know there are mass school stabbing sprees but there’s no news or statistics to back it up? So in other words fiction.
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Again, I gave you the source. Loawhy's YouTube channel, just search for stabbings. He actually talks about it a lot.
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Then why does violent crime and homicide not correlate with gun ownership rates at all through the EU? Why isn't Finland's violent crime and murder rate through the roof compared to the UK?
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Not the Same (Score:4, Insightful)
Now ask UK statistics AND the citizens who live there; do you NOW feel you live in the mostest safest place in the world with physical restrictions on firearms?
Well as a UK citizen, I will definitely say that I feel a LOT safer when in the UK, EU and Canada than in the US which lacks basic firearm controls. Freedom of speech means to get to share ideas. Freedom of firearms means you get to share bullets. The two are not even remotely the same...and if you want to change your society speech is a vastly more effective tool than shooting people.
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You probably feel that way because of the ridiculous reporting on the U.S. Fact is, you're perfectly safe in either country.
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Here are the actual facts. 2019 numbers. https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review.com]
The UK had 162 gun deaths and per capita that is 0.24
The US had 37,040 gun deaths and per capita that is 10.89
Only 45x more like to be shot in the USA.
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And can you tie that to the availability of guns, or is that more historic, given our history as a lawless, frontier nation, and other socioeconomic factors? Our murder rate has been falling somewhat steadily for centuries now, even as gun availability has stayed the same or increased.
My guess is you have a strong confirmation bias toward the former, as will I buy into the latter. But my view is much friendlier to my innate right to defend myself and others, and the ability to protect myself from a slowly
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Why don't you invade NSA headquarters?
Frog on a burner, dude. Better hope you don't raise the temp too quickly.
That is 10.89 deaths per 100K people (Score:2)
10.89 deaths per capita would be a neat trick if you could do it.
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Re:Not the Same (Score:5, Informative)
The fact you have to lie by including suicides in the US figure and deliberately trying to trick people into thinking it's homicide says more than anything else.
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Suicide is a type of homicide as someone is killed and it is a lot easier to shoot yourself during a bad moment then many other ways of suicide.
Consider the difference in suicide rates between the UK and US, https://www.nationmaster.com/c... [nationmaster.com]
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Suicide is a type of homicide as someone is killed and it is a lot easier to shoot yourself during a bad moment then many other ways of suicide.
Consider the difference in suicide rates between the UK and US, https://www.nationmaster.com/c... [nationmaster.com]
I'm pretty sure most western democracies do not consider suicide to be a criminal homicide. Sure the OP was lazy in not cutting it down, but it didn't really invalidate the point. The fact remains 20,000+ American a year are killed by firearms and 26,000+ are murdered in total. Last year the UK had 770, fewer than 50 involving a firearm. Even with the differences in population the rate in the US is phenomenally higher.
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The fact you have to lie by including suicides in the US figure and deliberately trying to trick people into thinking it's homicide says more than anything else.
What's a lie about it?
The UK figure also includes suicide by firearm.
Having to make that up means your point is even weaker.
In the interest of fairness, UK Suicides in 2021 were 6,556 (pop 67.33 million), the US had 48,183 (pop 331.9 million), so that's a rate of 14.5 per 100,000 for the US and 9.7 per 100,000 for the UK. Homicides are a far more interesting scenario. There were approximately 770 homicides in the UK (697 for England and Wales, 49 for Scotland and 24 for Wales) in 2021/22, the US
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Is that some sort of flex or brag? Oh all those guns deaths are just suicides. They weren't murdered, things are just fine. The next question you should ask (but won't) is why people are ventilating their skulls at a disproportionate amount.
So the bottom line is the USA is still losing loved ones to gun violence at a rate higher than any other developed country.
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Strange. I have not been shot. The only person I know of who was shot, shot themself. I am around armed people all the time. I do not fear them.
What I do fear is people who have nothing to lose. Whether or not they have a gun is irrelevant to me as getting shot to death honestly sounds better than being beaten to death with a bat or stabbed to death with a knife, or the worst, getting killed bare handed.
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Nice deflection there chap. They asked if you feel safer on the Internet, not whether you feel physically safer outside of your country. I guess it is useful to know that you do not think people should be allowed to defend themselves because it also gives them the ability to attack you. But that wasn't what the question was about and I assume you will not answer the actual question because you already know this law was created for spying purposes, not safety purposes.
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I feel safer here without guns in circulation, than I would in the US. And let's not forget that the US nearly suffered a coup just a few years ago, with most of the insurrectionists being unarmed.
The UK's problem is not a lack of guns. It's our democracy, and the fact that it gives governments too much power with too few checks and balances. Years of "strong and stable" governments.
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I'd rather bring a gun to the knife fights that are now common in British culture. And if you ban the knives, it will be clubs or something else. People will always find ways of killing and threatening each other. Overall crime in the US is relatively low, except in the very large metros where guns have been banned, like Chicago, New York and every shithole city in California.
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If people here actually could bring guns to knife fights, they wouldn't be knife fights for very long. The reason kids carry knives is mostly fear and misguided ideas about self defence.
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Kids, is that new-speak for criminal? Because guns and knives are outlawed in the UK, criminals don't care. You have an entire armed militia in your backyard that has killed 2000 people with guns and bombs since the 1970s and then point at the cartel and gang wars (where most of the shootings happen) as not existing in your country.
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If that was a coup then by your definition so were the much more violent riots led by the leftists you adore. And checks and balances are only worth the paper they're written on. The US has them out the wazoo and they're worth fuck all because there's no actual recourse when the government simply stops pretending to play along.
Except for force. Which is the ultimate root of all authority in the world. The difference between a UK subject and a US citizen is that the UK government has a monopoly on violence.
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When you guys remove Rashida Tlaib and AOC from your caucus for overt pro-terrorism and anti-semitism, is when I start listening to criticism about relatively standard election procedure [youtu.be].
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And you voted for someone who just deliberately lied to have a Jewish woman in her district assassinated through stochastic terrorism. You don't have a moral high ground.
Re:Physical 1984, meet Digital 1984. (Score:5, Informative)
I absolutely feel safe in England. Far, far safer than I was in the US, where I lived for 20 years. I do not regret for an instant signing the Snowdrop Petition.
I find those that object to the British having the sovereign right to tell their government to restrict firearms to be churlish and immature. I also find them ignorant. Firearms aren't banned, plenty of people own guns, they're merely in the hands of people who have any business handling guns.
The online restrictions are quite different because they were not demanded by the people for the people. They were demanded by government. And the only part of the bill I have any problem with is the clampdown on end-to-end encryption, as the lack of that would end all eCommerce and Internet banking.
Re:Physical 1984, meet Digital 1984. (Score:4, Informative)
US statistics: 2 mass shootings a day, population 350 million
UK statistics: 1 mass shooting every 10 years, population 70 million
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Maybe you're thinking of the big ones like Hungerford, Dunblane, Cumbria, etc, but actually there are more than you think:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But your point is valid: fewer mass shootings in the UK since the end of WW2 than the US has had in the last two months. Interesting that those numbers include the shooting from the Libyan embassy, but not those by the Irish terrorists.
Also interesting that the list of mass stabbings is even shorter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Depends on what you define as mass killings. The UK doesn't have the same definition as the FBI, there are 'mass shootings' that happen just as well in other countries and 'mass stabbings' and 'mass bombings' and the UK has an entire war at its Irish border that it's not counting that continues to date.
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Only if you count a drug deal as a "mass shooting". Get rid of the top 3-5 democrat controlled cities that ban guns entirely and the US gun crime problem disappears almost entirely.
And while we're at it how do you explain the profound difference in violent crime rates between Finland and the UK? Finland should be a bloodbath by your logic.
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US statistics: 2 mass shootings a day, population 350 million UK statistics: 1 mass shooting every 10 years, population 70 million
It's not a mass shooting if less than 5 people injured or killed or the shooter knew them in advance. Complicated rules to pretty-up statitics.
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If the defender has a gun, the attacker is less likely to have a knife, and the attacker is always going to be able to shoot first.
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As a Briton who's lived in the US and was working in an office 10 miles from the Columbine shooting, I can absolutely say that I feel safer in the UK. Talking of the repercussions of Columbine and many other mass killings at schools since then, we don't have metal detectors and guards at our schools, let alone the rest of the crap because it's just that much safer and a healthier environment for raising children.
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Certainly safer than living in Lewiston, Maine [wikipedia.org]
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The British citizens might be confused over your use of that word. What exactly does it mean?