Discussion
MPs give ministers powers to restrict entire Internet
christkv: So the UK is now China it seems. What a shining light for democracy and justice. There is no way this will be abused by petty little tyrant minister right?
dyauspitr: Good
colesantiago: This is fine.The internet is going to be filled with bots anyway so might as well restrict it to this age group. They should be outdoors with no access to the internet.Why not extend this to under 25s or the elderly?I'm sure the online safety act also needs to extend this to chatbots and anything that can heavily manipulate and distort this age group.
chaostheory: [delayed]
core-utility: But just a month ago everyone in the discussion about freedom.gov was saying that Europe doesn't restrict internet!https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270
mhitza: Big exaggeration. Opened the link and with the dozen comments or so that I've seen there is no rhetoric of the kind your asserting.We know from France, UK, Spain, Italy that censorship is ramping up rather than down.Still not a good enough excuse for freedom.gov when the current US agenda is to support the right wing organizations in Europe.
Eddy_Viscosity2: In effect, this is the power to restrict internet to anyone.
Refreeze5224: It is, and I have no doubt that is the entire point, despite them "thinking of the children."
fidotron: The Canadian version of this is especially cynical: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c309y25prnlo
fidotron: > So the UK is now China it seemsWestern governments have been looking enviously at China's authoritarianism (notoriously Trudeau blurted out he admired their "basic dictatorship" back in 2013) while completely ignoring any elements that might actually improve the lives of the citizens.Our politicians are determined to implement the worst of our respective systems.
apopapo: Sadly it's not only the UK. There is a global push to restrict communication world-wide. The future is very bleak for fundamental freedoms.
nexus6: I’m not convinced anymore that we can handle freedom. Many children grow up glued to a phone or tablet watching AI videos and are targets of dis-information from foreign and/or hostile actors.
sickofparadox: The UK already arrests more than 1,000 a month people for online "hate speech". Higher than the official numbers for China, whatever those are worth. They'll probably reach the unofficial, real number soon enough. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
normie3000: Sounds interesting..Paywalled.
tw-20260303-001: Well, UK is just one small part of Europe. You probably also confuse Europe and the EU.
YCpedohaven: Idk I’ve been watching the occasional BBC archives or some other old archive source, and the UK has seemed relatively authoritarian compared to Europe or the US for a while.
Lio: So now consider that the same government want to extend voting rights to 16 year olds.So you can vote but you can't control the media you use to learn about who you're potentially voting for. There is something not quite right about that.
noosphr: That's deeply unfair.China's economy is growing.
nekusar: Yeah ive been watching whats happening with the URKL (United Robot Knockout League). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62dK3Av334Musk's jokes basically disassemble when doing a backflip. Fucking joke. Whereas the Chinese bots are doing Mui Thai, karate, and loads more.But... China is copying us <LAUGH>
Eddy_Viscosity2: That article was about people suing openAI.
fidotron: It contains "The plaintiffs allege no age verification took place on the site."As if this is a problem.
direwolf20: Can you give some examples of the speech the UK arrests people for?
RansomStark: there's many to choose from, you can google for more. But here's what got Lucy Connolly a 31 month sentence:"Mass deportations, now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, if that makes me a racist, so be it".Racist maybe, although she doesn't seem to care about race.Offensive, yeah, seems that it could be interpreted as offensive, but thats not technically illegal (the high court has repeatedly affirmed to right to be offensive).Inciting violence (the offense she was convicted of) no, not at all, she was stating her political opinion and her belief that the lives of immigrants is worth less than british children.Although people will point out she admitted guilt, but the threat of significant pre-trail imprisonment was used a lot at this time to force guilty pleas.
beardyw: The article says"The acts make it illegal to cause distress by sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character” on an electronic communications network."Offensive messages cover a lot of contexts and don't sound as if they are necessarily hate speech.
globular-toast: If they cared about children they'd just ban phones for children. Would be dead easy to enforce and wouldn't have any effect on the rights of adults.Unfortunately I think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though.
_verandaguy: To be clear: this is civil action by a family, not the position of the Government of Canada.
dekken_: As if parents aren't responsible for the actions of their children
christkv: https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/wales-engl...You can get arrested for grossly offensive (completely subjective).Also they have a category called non-crime hate incidents (Hello Kafka) where they come to "intimidate" you without any charges being filed.
21asdffdsa12: Oh, that is to get power via the imported voter base.
21asdffdsa12: Im sure the likes of prince andrew and keir starmers advisors think way to much the children
dekken_: We're not smart enough to make our own decisions but we're smart enough to vote for the best people to make decisions for us?Make it make sense.
direwolf20: The UK has been China forever, they have the most surveillance cameras and police home visits per capita of any developed country and their people like it this way.
Steve16384: Do you have a source on that?
fidotron: There is no meaningful distinction, which is why a civil case in a foreign country is picked up by the BBC.Furthermore, the Gov are trying to deflect on to OpenAI (and the internet) because a huge part of the failings in that case involve them seizing the weapons from the perpetrator, and then giving them back.
indiangenz: China is better. They don't allow random criminals to enter their country illegally and commit crimes.
akersten: Oh, no, not that Europe. You were of course talking about the Europe with Spain (oh wait, La Liga has a cloudflare kill switch). You were of course talking about the Europe with Italy (oh wait, the Piracy Shield). You were of course talking about the Europe with Turkyie (oh wait, ...
tw-20260303-001: "Oh wait, I cannot download porn, stolen software, and stolen media". Censorship! /s
akersten: That definitionally is censorship, whether you think its effects are just or not.
vinni2: Ok go on finish your sentence.
akersten: I shouldn't need to - if it doesn't foundationally offend you that Spain has endorsed a private entity with the ability to routinely turn off part of the Internet for their own private convenience then fundamentally we have a different view about how this whole thing should work.
3842056935870: Too bad your internet access is not restricted.
