UK government proposes fine or block if website fails to tackle “online harms”
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
No, I don't think TBL would agree on this. The cited organization started by him explicitly calls for the opposite [1]:
- Ensure everyone can connect to the internet so that anyone, no matter who they are or where they live, can participate actively online.
- Keep all of the internet available, all of the time so that no one is denied their right to full internet access.
- Respect people’s fundamental right to privacy so everyone can use the internet freely, safely and without fear.
[0] https://us.cnn.com/2019/04/07/opinions/uk-government-online-...
Do they mean fear on the consumer end or the content creator end? There is a natural tension there which must be resolved. A fearless internet for content creators means lots of ungood content out there (sometimes doubleplus ungood!). A fearless internet for passive consumers means they won’t run across this ungood content, unless they go through great efforts to seek it out.
That's one way to generally interpret "fear" but not in its context of a right to privacy. "Without fear" in this context must mean fear of what happens when you don't have privacy, that is chiefly: embarrassment and persecution.
Somewhat less glibly, it's compartmentalization, basically. Take an ordinary, not-especially-intelligent person who has basically authoritarian intuitions, teach them liberal principles, and you'll get a person who espouses the liberal way only in the particular examples you taught them. (Or in other examples that someone else explicitly connects to those principles.) Most people are just really terrible at applying things they notionally believe outside the specific contexts they associate them with.
People throughout history are the same as they are today. Subservient to authority, self-serving, lazy thinkers, and barely even able to think for themselves in the first place.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, are you saying that no well-educated person would have any conservative viewpoints? That seems patently nonsense.
This person self-identified as liberal. However, they only recognized liberal views within the contexts they had been pre-familiarized with. In fact, this person read, regurgitated, and lauded conservative views for years while beleiving them to be liberal views. This is a particularly hyper-educated person (though in a non-technical field completely removed from economics, politics).
This just draws a moat around existing behemoths that will protect them against future disruption.
So, basically any site with user content can be fined/blocked at any time at the official's discretion.
Interestingly, this is the same tactic dictatorships use to quell rebellions.
While it never will happen, this rule would mean that the BBC should be banned too. It published fake news that started the Iraq war, and one of the famous hosts was a child molester.
Instead they will ban sites that disclose the military propaganda that is published by the government media. Will they now try to block wikileaks and other similar journalism?
My greatest fear is that these waves of censorship are there to remove resistance against a 3rd world war. The US, Israel and UK are currently very aggressive.
Just as an example: Propaganda on Iraq and Venezuela https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7eW4ASIo3I
You may be less excited as a result, about his other claims.
What? 100,000+ people marched in the street against it[0]. We knew the UK Government stole a student's essay for their "Dodgy Dossier" and tried to re-package it as intelligence before too[1].
We knew full well it was false before invasion. It didn't stop them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
What I did think was that even if they did, there were other options on the table and that those had not been pursued to their full extent. Yes Saddam was playing 3-card Monty, but never the less we had time at our disposal we also didn’t pursue corroborating evidence and it all seemed like making up a reason for war rather than an actual casus belli. I mean, so what some known terrorists had passage? It’s not as if Saddam didn’t have his own insurrections to deal with.
There was no nuance. It was all let’s go! Most dissenters were more like, slow down, we’re not there yet, we haven’t exhausted all options yet.
> In January 2003, United Nations weapons inspectors reported that they had found no indication that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons or an active program.
So we knew.
I think mostly it was the establishment (Dems, Repubs, Globalists, etc. m) that wanted Saddam out, no matter what. Only old-style conservatives and leftists and other small constituencies dissented.
>[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
These just seem to be anti-war protests. I'm not seeing anything that suggests they knew it was false, or that that was the reason for the protests
The "anti-war" thing was just a big-tent message that most of those against the war could agree to (with each group having their own reason for being against it).
The correct information was available, but largely ignored by mass media. For example:
> 13 March 2003
> The Blair Government has known, almost from the day it came to office in 1997, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were almost certainly destroyed following the Gulf War.
> Of all the pro-war propaganda of Blair and Bush, and their current threats giving Saddam Hussein yet another deadline to disarm, what may be their biggest lie is exposed by this revelation.
> Two weeks ago, a transcript of a United Nations debriefing of Iraqi general Hussein Kamel was obtained by the American magazine, Newsweek, and by Cambridge University analyst, Glen Rangwala (who last month revealed that Blair's "intelligence dossier" on Iraq was lifted, word for word, from an American student's thesis).
> General Kamel was the West's "star witness" in its case against Saddam Hussein. He was no ordinary defector. A son-in-law of the Iraqi dictator, he had immense power in Iraq; and when he defected, he took with him crates of secret documents on Iraq's weapons programme.
[...]
> In 1995, General Kamel was debriefed by senior officials of the United Nations inspections team, then known as UNSCOM, and by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The complete transcript, now disclosed for the first time, contradicts almost everything Bush and Blair have said about the threat of Iraqi weapons.
> For example, General Kamel says categorically: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed." All that remains, he says, are the blueprints, computer disks and microfiches.
Read the full article: http://johnpilger.com/articles/iraq-s-weapons-of-mass-destru...
Key US/UK claims were debunked by UN weapons inspectors in the same UN hearing where they were presented.
That the “Winnebagos of Mass Destruction” weren't the mobile WMD labs they were portrayed as (and that the US and UK knew because the UK had literally sold them to Iraq) was also also public before the war.
> In the run up to the war, perhaps questioning the sources and information provided by the government would have been labeled fake news
No, worse, it would just be ignored by large masses of the public who would believe the government anyway, and even forget that they'd been given repeated information about how they were being lied to.
Negative on this one.
Everyone knew this was fake beforehand. Colin Powell almost got laughed out of UN for the “evidence” he presented.
Everyone who was paying attention could tell this was 100% a propaganda-piece.
Why should I take him seriously when he acts like an asshole to people on Twitter, calling them AlQuaeda supporters.
https://twitter.com/mollycrabapple/status/104300934636216729... https://twitter.com/charliearchy/status/1112842690255708161
Did he aplogize yet for spreading outrageous lies about Khan-Sheikoun 2017 chemical attack, smearing doctors and first responders? The investigation of that attack is over. It would be appropriate, now that there has been a 2nd aniversary a few days ago.
They will implement it without any trouble. No one cares because they don't realise what they already have.
Most media outlets will report on it as a "good thing" of course which doesn't help either
Very, very scary but interesting times ahead.
Iraq lies were territory of "fake news" and conspiracy theories, same as a lot of what Tulsi Gabbard is saying about the US military industrial complex.
Every group of individuals will always have psychopaths whom try to cheat to exert control over others. Obviously many powerful people in the world dont want a democracy of individuals sharing ideas freely.
https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-m...
"So what, I just have to POST https://law.uk/onlineharm, and I get to take down the BBC? That's ridiculous!"
Any given strawman is ridiculous.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Also, the published code of practice:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Statement and parliamentary discussion:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/4576d30e-52ad-42d9-b5c...
I’m not sure how this will shake out in America versus Europe, but this seems as paradigm shifting as the civil war or the new deal. The next decade will be critical for Internet freedom.
I wonder what US citizen Anwar Al Awlaki would have said to that argument. The truth is that political free speech has limits, even for the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/magazine/the-lessons-of-a...
Your link then would be support for their point, not a refutation.
Generally speaking, point out something in the past few years that’s an example of what the person is talking about isn’t a way to refute that things are changed — that you can only point to recent ones is evidence that things have changed.
Of course, Obama has no respect for American traditions, broadly: he’s the first president in history not to leave the capital and to continue to be politically active during his successor’s term.
His actions certainly aren’t what I’d put forward to someone claiming that American values used to be something, but have recently changed — Obama in general is an example of that collapse in principles.
[1] My personal opinion is that praising terror and “inspiring” others is not free speech, but I don’t pretend otherwise
You have a very idyllic view that people can’t break the rules and get away with it: Obama murdered an American in violation of the law, but there is a tradition of not holding presidents accountable for their crimes.
Personally, that lack of accountability seems to have led to a ratcheting level of presidential misbehavior and a collapse in societal norms — precisely what this thread is about.
[0] https://www.metro.news/exclusive-by-theresa-may-we-are-leadi...
[1] pdf about audience - https://d212k0qo5yzg53.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/201...
The issue isn't really about silencing people, but removing their access to a mainstream audience.
Those sound approximately like the same thing to me. What about the difference do you see as relevant?
Conversely, if you're popular on Youtube, you will be suggested to people who are not looking for your speech.
The difference is subtle, and that was my original point. Such acts of government will indeed not silence speakers, but it may as well do, because it stifles their ability to reach a greater audience.
> construction of buildings will just lead to seasteading.
You're calling it out as a slippery slope argument [1], which is fair enough - except there is already evidence to suggest that users kicked off of these platforms migrate to Minds (Twitter alternative), Gab (Facebook alternative) and BitChute (Youtube alternative).
The BBC article for example has almost 70 comments on Dissenter [2]. Removing a persons ability to comment only hides the problem, you can't stop them thinking a given way and you're less likely to change their mind if you cut off dialogue with them entirely.
> The issue isn't really about silencing people, but
> removing their access to a mainstream audience.
You're removing their access to a mainstream audience by silencing them. In this case they are the same.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
[2] https://dissenter.com/discussion/begin-extension?url=https%3...
The UK already does that with some decisions (which is technically the Queen-in-Parliament delegating to the Queen with the advice of the Privy Council), but that doesn't stop action (Orders in Council) on those matters from occurring. Of course, in practice this is almost exactly delegation from the Parliament to the government.
HN put shadow bans on hundreds of users for non-conforming posts. It seems like anyone who had a wrong stance on the whole "NPC meme" is affected, even if they only found it mildly amusing.
Source: I found it amusing, openly said so and I'm shadow banned on this IP.
dang has previously said that they’re more critical of people who perturb the groupthink, and take action against them for things people supporting popular opinions would be excused for.
That’s what it means when they say they censor to keep “civility”: if the groupthink finds you disruptive, you will be silenced by arbitrary application of rules others (who subscribe to groupthink) are excused for — and in this way, an insistence on civility always favors groupthink.
The pretense of censoring for civility here is merely dishonest gaslighting about their ideological policing, in favor of groupthink.
It’s precisely the same kind of dishonesty you see in YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook’s censoring of conservative voices: hyperpartisans screech, and complicit moderates use that as a pretense to enact their biases.
The other claims you make aren't really falsifiable, though I can tell you we go out of our way not to moderate HN based on ideology, and I can also tell you that for whatever ideological position you'd care to name, people loudly complain that we're biased against it.
Repeatedly.
> dang has previously said that they’re more critical of people who perturb the groupthink, and take action against them for things people supporting popular opinions would be excused for.
Your entire moderation policy is based around precisely what I claimed, as you yourself stated: the arbitrary application of increased standards for comments which disrupt groupthink, or to use a euphemism, are “divisive”.
Uncivil comments about divisive topics lead to flamewars. Flamebait comments don't "disrupt groupthink"; they reinforce it, because what flamewars do is reinforce pre-existing opinions with jacked-up intensity. If you want to change other people's minds, you need to actually reach those people. Verbally tasing the other side makes them go rigid and think whatever they thought before, just more angrily.
I didn’t mean to imply that the rule was arbitrarily selected, merely that your application of it was arbitrary — that it, at the sole discretion of a small group of people, without guiding rules, and without systematic review for p, eg, bias.
Force, such as bans, applied in an arbitrary manner is inherently tyrannical — and your appeals to civility a rote recitation of a millennia old justification for tyranny. Tyrants are never merely enforcing their biases on others — it’s always for the greater purpose!
Having been a member of this community for a while, my reply would be that flame war groupthink is better than this groupthink: flame wars can occasionally change minds and show the diversity of extant opinions — while your groupthink preserving censorship distorts people’s view of the diversity of opinions while leading to no more changed minds, and is therefore strictly worse.
I too am sometimes frustrated by how HN conversations go. There are numerous times where I know I'm taking a contrary position on HN, and despite my best efforts to present my argument politely and succinctly, the audience seems unable or unwilling to honestly engage with my logic. It's doubly vexing when my comments are downvoted without clear justification. (To be clear: I'm talking only about downvoting, not thwacking from the site admins.)
But I also think there's plenty of evidence that taking a harsh tone in the discussion is unproductive in such conversations, and is ineffective at curbing the behavior of (what I perceive as) unjustified penalization of my comments.
So here's my idea: How about treating this as an intellectual challenge? The goal is to study the form and substance of these contentious discussions, and identify trends regarding successful vs. failed presentations of contrary viewpoints. And then see if adopting those forms results in more satisfying discussions of the points you're trying to raise?
If you're able to nail that skill, especially with a sometimes-fickle audience, you may find it benefits other areas of life as well.
Do you believe a non-sequitur ad hominem was a constructive comment?
I’d prefer not to learn that style of social skill.
Your comment is also factually wrong: the reason that censorship for civility developed as a strategy is that it’s maximally effective suppressing ideological conversion for the amount of speech it suppresses. Your comment then becomes nothing more than “working under adverse conditions teaches resiliency”, which is true — but not a reason to stop questioning the censorship policy.
People do not rationally switch positions — they switch positions during an emotional cascade after a sufficient number of rational reasons have accumulated. That “avalanche” where an emotional spark triggers the awareness of a substantial shift in your beliefs.
These criticality events necessarily require an emotional trigger such a failing to be able to substantively reply to provocatively phrased arguments or the inability to factually correct mocking humor.
Civility suppresses precisely that: the emotional barbs in arguments and the mockery which might provoke a person to change their stance, in a substantive manner.
Rationality alone is all powder, no spark.
I think your point about cascades is interesting, and it seems to jive with my experience. And I can see how censoring for civility would, as a result, be an impediment to changing minds.
I also believe @dang's point that not stifling incivility leads to unproductive flame wars. Which, I'm guessing, also results in conversations that fail to change minds.
So where does that leave us regarding HN discussions? Can you think of an approach that addresses both your and @dang's points? Are we stuck with having HN admins try to find the optimal censorship policy that somehow balances the issues you and @dang have raised?
Please also consider the possibility that you may have a greater appetite for (hopefully productive) acrimony than the majority of HN's target community. In terms of your theory of changing minds, the HN owners may wish for this site to be where people can discuss the logical / empirical aspects of issue in a calm and pleasant manner, and leave the mind-chaning, emotional stages of the discussions for other forums.
People sometimes claim otherwise but such claims never seem to come with links that would allow readers to make up their own minds. If what you're saying is even 10% true, there should be an abundance of such links available.