Comment by 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4 hours ago
I understand the rage generated here, but what is the alternative?
If a service implements privacy invading 'features' then we have the choice not to use that service. Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL.
What are we to do if not monitor? And how to make that scalable if not to introduce automation?
but what is the alternative
If an app can be installed on someones hardware without their intervention launch it into the air and use it for target practice. If a website requires some crypto-crap to verify objects were scanned then upload to smaller platforms and let others link to the objects from the big platform. The big platforms can play whack-a-mole removing links, it's a fun game. The smaller sites can give the crawler alternate images. Better yet just use small semi-private self hosted platforms. Even better yet ensure those platforms are only accessible via .onion domains requiring a browser that is Tor enabled. People can then make sites that proxy/cache objects from Tor onion sites to easier to access sites.
> Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL.
I completely agree with this point.
We also have some tech companies (X) openly hostile to the UK Government. At what point does a sovereign country say "you're harming the people here and refuse to change, you're blocked".
> too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online
If you don't like interacting with certain types of people online, then make or join a safe space that protects you from the offensive content. Don't impose your specific set of morals on the rest of us.
>too many people leave morality at the door
Yep, that's life, if something bothers you and it's already a crime then report it.
There is precious little in life that can be undertaken without some risk of something unwanted however small (hah).
> Yep, that's life, if something bothers you and it's already a crime then report it.
I think that's the issue with this, and why we are seeing new laws introduced.
If someone is assaulted in real life, the police can intervene.
If people are constantly assaulted at a premises, that premise can lose it's license (for example a pub or bar).
When moving to the online space, you are now potentially in contact with billions of people, and 'assaults' can be automated. You could send a dick pic to every woman on a platform for example.
At this point the normal policing, and normal 'crime', goes out of the window and becomes entirely unenforcable.
Hence we have these laws pushing this on to the platforms - you can't operate a platform that does not tackle abuse. And for the most part, most platforms know this and have tried to police this themselves, probably because they saw themselves more like 'pubs' in real life where people would interact in mostly good faith.
We've entered an age now of bad faith by default, every interaction is now framed as 'free speech', but they never receive the consequences. I have a feeling that's how the US has ended up with their current administration.
And now the tech platforms are sprinting towards the line of free speech absolutism and removing protections.
And now countries have to implement laws to solve issues that should have just been platform policy enforcement.
Believe it or not, when a crime has been committed these providers universally defer to the police whose remit is enforcement, a role they seem reluctant to undertake, I'm unconvinced this is anything other than a convenient revenue stream, an opportunity to steer public opinion, and a means of quashing dissent.
Frankly, a few dick pics here and there seems wildly low-stakes for such expensive draconian authoritarianism.
I don't think the fine is automatic like that, it's more if you don't have an appropriate mechanism to manage it. In other words you need a content policy that is enforced.
A mod who deletes nude pictures is probably enough to not get fined.
I think the real issue is what I just said... "probably enough"; that's the real problem with the online safety act. People are mostly illiterate on the law, and now asking them to understand a complex law and implement it (even when the actual implementation is not that much effort or any effort at all for well run spaces) is the real issue.
> What are we to do if not monitor?
Simple, you can choose to only use platforms that use the most stringent scanning technologies for you and your family.
You give the UK government (or the equivalent that applies to you) the right to continuously scan everything from pictures to emails to messages and then obviously you give them the right to prosecute you and come after you when one of their AI algorithms mistakenly detects child porn on your device or in your messages just like this guy: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-cs...
For the rest of us, we should be free to opt out from being surveilled by machines 24/7.
Then everyone is happy.
Edited: typos
Personally, I think this is the answer too - rather than mandating it across all platforms, they could have created a service which provides scanning so that there was an additional app people could choose to install (and would, presumably, present as an accessibility addon so it could access content in other apps).
That's not without its own issues though - creating external deps is more or less what they did the first time they tried to mandate age verification.
Although their plans fell through, they created an industry who'd expected a captive market and started lobbying heavily. Eventually, it worked and we've ended up with mandatory age verification.
> but what is the alternative?
We already have alternatives, this legislation is taking them away. If I want heavily censored discourse, I can go to reddit. If I want the wild west, I can go to 4chan. If I want privacy, I can use signal. And lots of services on different parts of that spectrum, or where different things are allowed.
But the UK government wants to eliminate that choice and decide for me. And most importantly, they don't want to call it censorship, but "safety". To keep women and girls "safe" (but nobody is allowed to opt out, even if they're not a woman or girl, or don't want this "safety")
I don't know what the alternative is, but I don't think I've ever found a situation yet where the solution has been His Majesty's Government being able to exercise more control over what people can see and hear.