Harmful messaging offences added to online safety bill | Hacker News Reader

Harmful messaging offences added to online safety bill

bbc.co.uk

10 pointsRansomStark3 comments

Sending "genuinely threatening" communications such as a threat to rape, kill or cause financial harm, would become a criminal offence.

Is threatening to kill someone not currently illegal in the UK, or is the BBC whitewashing this law, making it seem more narrow and reasonable than it is? Again:

This offence would cover "false communications deliberately sent to inflict harm", such as a hoax bomb threat.

So sending hoax bomb threats is currently legal in the UK? This article is filled with red flags for deceptive reporting. So it's no surprise how vague it is about seems to be the main thrust of the law:

If passed, the government's online safety bill could see social networks fined 10% of their global turnover if they fail to remove harmful content. The latest changes mean social networks will also have to proactively find and block harmful content.

What does this mean? If a harmful (as defined by this bill) message is left up for more than 24 hours, it could mean a 10% global revenue fine? 'Proactively' implies they'd have to do it without being ordered to by the courts. Although 'courts', 'judicial', and 'warrant' are conspicuously absent from the text.

It already stated that websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, hosting user-generated content would have to swiftly remove illegal content once it was reported to them.

Reported by who? Random users? Government officials? Does a judge have to sign off on it? Are there any safeguards to prevent legal content from being removed by false reports?

I thought the BBC did real journalism, but this reads little better than a government press release.

Another step into Orwell's new world.

Before, you had parents and the society was providing education to kids.

No, it is like the spirit of the us 'prohibition' extended over the world.

Once we were strong condamnation of China censoring of free speech. No, it looks like that all gov have realized that it is the best way to keep their population under control and their dictatorial views safe.

If you look at the proposed rules, they are so easy to be abused to be used against you even if you do nothing wrong. Same thing as what is happening currently in Honk Kong.

No, everyone has to live under fear of everything that could be used against you. Not very good for free societies.

I'm just surprised that they are so few politics and voters that realize this issue and campaign to save the free speech.

These restrictions on speech seem well-intentioned but are of course another step in locking down the narrative.

  The government said the bill would not prohibit "misinformation" as long as those spreading it were unaware that what they were saying was false.

Laws like this one extinguish journalism (or what is left of it). Back in the day you could still counter the government narrative and claim Iraq didn't have WMD without legal repercussions (though it could get you killed [1]). With this, they'll arrest you on grounds of spreading harmful deboonked conspiracy theories. It's not hard to see that this is how it's going to play out.

With "misinformation" laws getting implemented amidst a wider trend of sanitizing the narrative, investigative journalism has now not merely fallen out of fashion, it has become illegal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)

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