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Comment by sva_ | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't blame Imgur for that, but the UK gov + people who elected them/didn't resist.

Pray tell, precisely how should we have resisted?

It's ironic that even when the subject is resistance you are looking for a master to tell you what to do. If you want to be free there must be a choice and for there to be a choice there must alternatives.

  How *could* we have resisted? What were our options?

This is not just a theorethical complaint. I think there were in practice many different things you (in the plural sense) could have done that could have worked adequately. Too many things to list here, you can look up how other people protested in the past.

Don't tell me what I'm doing, it's very annoying and arrogant. I'm not looking for a master to tell me what to do, I'm asking OP to justify their slight.

As for the many, many things which could have worked in your opinion, people have been resisting the introduction of such laws for years. A common, and correct, refrain on HN is that the people resisting have to win every battle; the people trying to introduce such legislation only need to win one.

> the people resisting have to win every battle; the people trying to introduce such legislation only need to win one.

To some extent this is true I suppose, but these laws are not (yet) irreversible. The people introducing them have to keep winning for them to remain on the books.

I invite you to name one UK law of this type which has been reversed.

They haven't suspended elections, they haven't outlawed protests, they aren't sending dissidents to camps. When these things happen that's when the decline gets hard to reverse.

You could protest but then you'd be arrested for disturbing the peace.

Oh yes, please don't think I was blaming Imgur!

imgur could simply not comply, they aren't a UK company

All parties supported the OSA (and it's surprisingly popular too) because "something must be done [about the internet], this is something, so this must be done".

It's hardly the stupidest thing British people have voted for in the last two decades, probably not even in the top 5.

Well, we didn't exactly vote for the Online Safety Act. It was introduced by the Tories in 2023 and despite them being voted out in 2024, Labour (Tory-lite) decided to push ahead with the implementation of the draconian law.

However, I don't doubt that a lot of the UK would vote for such a law as most people have a knee-jerk reaction to "won't anyone think of the children?".

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