Rishi Sunak facing major Tory rebellion over internet safety law | Hacker News Reader

Rishi Sunak facing major Tory rebellion over internet safety law

bbc.co.uk

13 pointstom-hd12 comments

My only objection here would be forcing age verification through 3rd party services. I would rather sites simply implement the RTA header on URL's that may contain user-generated content and then put the liability on parents to enable parental controls that read that header and prompt for a parental password to authorize the domain. Create legislation to require parental controls in browsers, operating systems, etc... Much of this already exists and just needs tweaks to the UX. Taking control away from parents and handing it to some 3rd party will only exacerbate the harm to children as they will be using their parents credit card without permission and getting an early start in credit card fraud. There is already too much PII leakage and tracking on the internet. Let's not make it worse.

> Create legislation to require parental controls in browsers, operating systems, etc...

How would that work for open source projects? Are you suggesting a UK approved build of curl?

Are you suggesting a UK approved build of curl?

No not at all. People that want ways around the restrictions will find it. Parental controls are to inhibit actual children as determined by the parent from stumbling across adult content and Twitter. Not to be confused with the legal definition of children, I am referring to small kids that might accidentally happen across ads for a porn site or user generated junk on their parents cell phone, tablet or laptop. It must be up to the parents to decide when their little ones are psychologically armed to face the only-partially-censored-web we have today.

Legislation should require all the mainstream web clients that small children might happen upon have parental controls and honestly I think this mostly already exists. They likely just need some tweaks to the user experience and look for the RTA header. Browsers used to have this. Shimming that code back in place should take a few minutes.

Teens that are looking for porn will find ways around restrictions. If real security and authentication were forced for every web company then teens would just create an underground network. Lets call it The Darker Web. The Ultraviolet Web? The Sticky and Confused Web? I honestly can't think of a catchy name that teens would use.

As someone living in the UK I've never really felt the desire to make a 'company', but I would like to run a website some day, which permits user registrations. Something like a forum, which I wouldn't run for profit. The fact that I need to implement external age verification, so some other for-profit business knows who my users are is such a sad prospect that I just won't bother with a website.

Additionally, I'd be reluctant to hand over my personal data just so I can be in a few Discord rooms.

If they must implement this, client side TLS certs were built for this. You simply trust government approved age verification CAs on the server side and require users to provide a valid cert from them. No need to directly interact with or send data to the age verification service,

>However, supporters of the amendment, including child protection charities, argue that only personal liability for company bosses will ensure the child safety provisions are effective.

The idea of social media execs serving prison sentences appeals to me. How would this work in practice if Meta/Byte Dance relocated their UK based staff out of the country?

This is very common actually, eg. laws around banking regulation or import/export. The laws require you to have "designated individuals" who have to be residents.

For example here's a law related to handling human tissues in the UK: https://www.hta.gov.uk/guidance-professionals/licences-roles...

Here's another one to do with child safety: https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/templates/n...

Hostage laws!

I think it is easier to block all UK visitors

That's going to be how it works out, combined with everyone in the UK using a VPN.

"The provision would not apply to search engines." Why?

Probably because one doesn’t need an account to run a search, and when they do get to the website, then the website will do the necessary handling.

I’m not 100% certain of this, but it’s what I gather from the context - anyone feel free to correct me if it’s incorrect.

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