As a non-techie and a bit of a dinosaur, I am intrigued by how the government will actually enforce this law. *scratches head* Will people in the UK see a message: This content is not available in your area or what? Kids are savvy enough to use VPNs Surely, it is up to the parents to keep better control over what their children view online ...
It'll be intelligence-led policing. They already know who criticizes them in public. Search warrants will be issued for those people, and their computer equipment will be removed and illegal content found on it.
I wonder what will be designated as harmful content? Will a story with violence in it posted online be designated as harmful?
Beethoven rated for harmful content, must be destroyed. I wonder how smaller sites such as this one will apply or handle age restrictions?
The UK's tendency towards nanny state and censorship has always been unfortunate. This move is strange in that it seems to be lacking the usual false pretense MO in the form of evidence that the internet is routinely harming people via currently unpoliced content. I think age restrictions could only be semi-plausibly enforced with a state issued internet license.
At the heart of this legislation is the protection of children. It is not about censorship - it protects free speech - but targets illegal content. Surely, child safety is of the utmost importance.
Yes, agree. But if they dont police the content t in schools, how will they police online? Kids in the UK are being brainwashed... I recently joined Snapchat to stay in touch with my grandchildren in France. Every day I get requests from random strangers to add that person as a friend. I wonder if they will monitor this and the AI friend content.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. the responsibility is put on the tech companies Do you mean by online content?
Meh. People have been being brainwashed since we discovered education. I'm sure they'll take their responsibilities as seriously as the pharmaceutical and tobacco companies do.
There is no parallel between what is being taught in schools and harmful online content. The motivating principles behind school curricula is inclusion, empathy, knowledge and understanding. Needless to say, these are not the motivating principles of an online predator or a terrorist recruiting cell or a suicide instigator.
Which no corporation would ever break. Or earmark a few billion in expected fines rather than do the right thing from the git.
Suicide instigator... oops called the wrong hotline. Terrorism and pedophilia are already illegal. Well, so is assisting an unregulated suicide. The UK already has a process in place at least for scanning for CP and following up with arrests. People can read about self harm/suicide, bullying or other abuses, and terrorism in books, as well as see them in movies, so the UK had better hurry up and keep that content from being published in those mediums as well. On average, the Internet 'harms' people just by dominating their lives. Which is to say people harm themselves by spending too much time on the Internet instead of other gainful things. Right now the purveyors are upset because the harmful language part was actually taken out of the bill in order for it to be seriously considered. 'Gutted' is the word they've used, and they will keep trying for it. This is the country where this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=In a specific sense, the,expression under the common law.
Right, so this is the content that they are targeting. You have kind of answered your own point. Social media is a very different form of communication than reading a book. There is instant engagement and an addictive quality to it. I think social media works very differently on the brain. You're getting responses and young people are susceptible to using those to judge themselves. With back-and-forth social media, young people need to show who they are. Many feel that they need to "fit in" but that doesn't happen when you read a book. Besides, social media is replacing reading books.
A purely knowledge-based curriculum may fit into an industrial-age model, but it's wholly inadequate for 21st century learning. Students need to be taught to understand and manipulate knowledge, they must develop critical competencies, must be able to compare the quality of different information. Otherwise, they're no better than AI. Students must be able to do something better than AI.
The problem is that it's wildly impractical. Even a company the size of Meta can't moderate every bit of content someone posts to their platform. As with most things involving governments and the internet, the aims are understandable but the implementation is fucking stupid.
So we just do nothing? Laws like these send a strong message at the very least. Maybe they'll have to rely on reporting of illegal content, but there needs to be a channel to confront and contain harmful content.
And what exactly are they going to do when meta who arent based in the jurisdiction of a British court break the rules? Fine them and when meta don’t pay what then ? like nige said it’s an understandable aim but it’s not enforceable short of doing like the Chinese and blocking certain services which the British public will never wear the best way to keep kids safe online is responsible parenting not legislation
that’s very much half the story, the offence was much bigger than one tweet, it was an investigation into a series of harassing messages sent to Daly another of which was “ I’m going to find you and drown you in your pool you cocky twat. People like you make me sick” so yeah appparently harassment and making threats to kill is illegal, who knew ? ( pretty much everyone except for the perpetrator)
You assume the tech companies will not comply. Already, Ofcom is the online regulator. let's hope they have some teeth. From the UK government: UK children and adults to be safer online as world-leading bill becomes law Can't disagree with that.
