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Comment by hunglee2 | Hacker News Reader

"Worse, this isn’t even intentional. It’s happening because ministers have not really thought through the implications"

don't often agree with Telegraph but their analysis is accurate.

Our era of soundbite politicians vulnerable to populist measures which superficially sound reasonable (sue big tech for hosting bad content) but disguise deep complexities (what is bad content, who decides this, it is universally applied?) which have profound implications for society (blaming platforms for user posted content means no more user posted content without prior moderation)

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> It’s happening because ministers have not really thought through the implications

I think they've thought through the implications perfectly well. Or at the very least they've been told what the implications are by their legal advisors. The real problem is that they do not care about those implications.

But this is Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, writing in the Telegraph - both publications have been the absolute cheerleaders of the Conservative administration’s descent into an idiocracy. Reap what you sow, Fraser, you dolt.

Indeed, the Telegraph literally campaigned for this legislation. They had a special logo for the articles they wrote to breathlessly promote it.

> Our era of soundbite politicians vulnerable to populist measures which superficially sound reasonable

I’m deeply skeptical that this is a real problem. I mean, there’s defined a list of extremely popular issues which have no support from politicians (like a healthcare reform in US), and also a long list of unpopular policies enacted a lot of times with bipartisan support.

"Worse, this isn’t even intentional. It’s happening because ministers have not really thought through the implications"

It might be right that the ministers/politicians have not really thought through the implications. But someone else surely has and is making censorship (of the things that challenge their power) a matter of policy. The actions of big tech are a matter of their internal policies. Which "populist" opinions politicians respond to (and which they ignore) is a matter of policy. In an age when populist opinion is manufactured through control of content and media, politicians are no longer moved by the opinions of their constituents but rather by those holding onto that control. Instances of bipartisan support in the US, for example, are merely instances where the topic is important to the elite and need bear no relationship to the opinions of the people.

> Worse, this isn’t even intentional.

Of course it is intentional. It's about manipulating the population. It's simply about the control of the people.

Why is that so obvious? Italics and the word “simply” do not actually make a convincing point. It seems like you’re implying that politicians never fail to anticipate the (un-)intended consequences of their rhetoric and policies.

Laws might have unintended concequences, but that verbiage " powers to censor anything deemed “legal, but harmful”" is a strict play at a wide-ranging authority on what that means.

Vague verbiage is the name of the game... Because it's their full time job as a politician... I

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