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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

I think this is probably the right approach, but only by accident given how poor the UK government understanding of all things digital.

Westminster is, after all, being quite unreasonable in expecting foreign companies to serve as competent police forces for what is basically chit-chat rather than traditional publishing, and for a user-base roughly 30 times the UK’s entire population.

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They aren't "foreign companies"; they're multi-national entities doing business in the UK. If, in the course of doing business here, they generate costs for the nation, they should be expected to help out. There's no reason the UK taxpayer should foot the bill for negative externalities generated by the business practices of multi-national entities. They can either invest in whatever it takes to solve the problem themselves, or they can be taxed so that state can take care of it for them.

Would anyone else honestly blame tech companies for generating the costs of deradicalizing UK people? Doesn't the blame lie more on the people themselves or the ones radicalizing them? The UK is free to block access to parts of the internet if it thinks is people aren't fit to safely access it.

> The UK is free to block access to parts of the internet if it thinks is people aren't fit to safely access it.

Really? Wasn’t that the kind of thing us tech geeks have spent the last 20 years arguing against?

> foreign companies

Companies that operate in the UK and make vast amounts of money from operating in the UK.

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