UK Politics

4106 readers

151 users here now

General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

flamingos@feddit.uk

frankPodmore@slrpnk.net

Everything the right - and the left – are getting wrong about the Online Safety Act (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by Olap@lemmy.world to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Dubbed the UK censorship act these days, will it survive the political backlash we are witnessing? Will big tech work to get it right rather than cut off the UK? Can the UK put a stopper back in the bottle? Is this really about social media when it is pornhub doing the blocking? No mention of the fediverse in this article either sadly, but a good read nevertheless. And he has got something right: the US megas have been extreme amplifiers. But Pornhub is Canadian

top 7 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] ctry21@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 hours ago

Also in the guardian today is an article on how the combo of proscribing Palestine Action and introducing the online safety act is causing platforms to censor information about Gaza. His counter-argument in this article is that Meta were censoring information on Palestine already, but Meta had always been overzealous in their content moderation, now it's every platform.

He says in this that he's worried being too specific would be more authoritarian but I would say the opposite is true - if what needs censoring is too vague, platforms are gonna be extreme in what they block and put behind age verification because the fines are so high. And vague guidance can be used to justify blocking anything. It only entrenches big tech further because small sites can't afford the age verification or the risk of a £10 million fines.

[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean, if small forums are having to shut down, it isn't a big tech issue. It's an overreach of regulation issue.

[–] Olap@lemmy.world -1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I agree. But I suspect most small forums are still exempt reading this article and the law. If you don't have potential to cause harm (no porn essentially) you don't need to do anything. But this has yet to be tested in a court to set any case law yet and so forums are understandably being very cautious

[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

User to user communication is considered a risk - so any forum falls under this law.

Small sites are not exempted (see reply for petition to remove this legislation).

No leg to stand on there - it's a solid unworkable overreach.

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

And yet, if you read act: there is a reasonable argument within the legislation. And the article posted mentions it too, from the architect. So you are correct in the fact the size of the site matters not. But if you are reasonably not about questionable matetial, you are likely exempt. Which is essentially what wikipedia are testing. So call it an overreach all you want; but this is yet to be proven

[–] Womble@piefed.world 8 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

I wouldnt be so confident in that. The wikimedia foundation are already in legal proceedings arguing against the act being drawn so widely that they would be included with the likes of instagram and twitter as a large scale social media company just due to their talk pages.

[–] Olap@lemmy.world -1 points 23 hours ago

An interesting test case. Wikipedia contains vast amounts of information about harmful items, and children will use it. Ultimately libraries don't restrict lending and so I suspect the article here illustrates that they shall emerge victorious