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Comment by Tallianar | Hacker News Reader

I think that the fact that no one is fully sure is part of the problem.

The act is intentionally very vague and broad.

Generally, the gist is that it's up to the platforms themselves to assess and identify risks of "harm", implement safety measures, keep records and run audits. The guidance on what that means is very loose, but some examples might mean stringent age verifications, proactive and effective moderation and thorough assessment of all algorithms.

If you were to ever be investigated, it will be up to someone to decide if your measures were good or you have been found lacking.

This means you might need to spend significant time making sure that your platform can't allow "harm" to happen, and maybe you'll need to spend money on lawyers to review your "audits".

The repercussions of being found wanting can be harsh, and so, one has to ask if it's still worth it to risk it all to run that online community?

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bearing in mind, this is also a country that will jail you for a meme post online.

The full agenda of course is: if we jail someone for the meme, then we get to force the company to remove the meme, and then we get to destroy the company if they do not comply with exacting specifications within exact times. Thus full control of speech, teehee modern technology brings modern loopholes! "shut up peon, you still have full right to go into your front yard and say your meme to the squirrels"

You can say it in your back yard to a garden gnome, the front yard is within earshot of public lands and the squirrels are locally endangered.

> If you were to ever be investigated, it will be up to someone to decide if your measures were good or you have been found lacking.

This is the problem with many European (and I guess also UK) laws.

GDPR is one notable example. Very few people actually comply with it properly. Hidden "disagree" options in cookie pop-ups and unauthorized data transfers to the US are almost everywhere, not to mention the "see personalized ads or pay" business model.

Unlike with most American laws, GDPR investigations happen through a regulator, not a privately-initiated discovery process where the suing party has an incentive to dig up as much dirt as possible, so in effect, you only get punished if you either really go overboard or are a company that the EU dislikes (which is honestly mostly just Meta at this point).

NOYB is a non governmental organisation which initiated many of the investigations against Meta. E.g. they recently filed a complaint against the social media app BeReal for not taking no for an answer and continuesly asking for permission for data collection if you decline.

> The act is intentionally very vague and broad

Exactly the complaint that everyone on here made about GDPR, saying the sky would fall in. If you read UK law like an American lawyer you will find it very scary.

But we don't have political prosecuters out to make a name for themselves, so it works ok for us.

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