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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

> This is clearly [...] about controlling American corporations

Not exactly. On the surface, it's about kowtowing to pearl-clutching UK NGOs that are empowered by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's hysterical tabloids; and underneath, the real agenda is about restricting the influence of unsanctioned sites that could influence UK discourse - influence that established UK press barons (like the Murdochs, Lebedev, etc) want to keep very much to themselves.

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The people who are most responsive to NGO campaigning aren't overlapping much with people who read The Sun. Sorry but Murdoch can't be blamed for this one.

The OSA is mostly supported by people who read The Guardian or The Times and watch the BBC. It was originally the work of academics (not big tabloid readers usually) like Lorna Woods, who is supposedly a professor of "internet law", a guy who is the founder of Ofcom, and Baroness Beeban Kidron. If you search Google News for their names you will find lots of left leaning broadsheets and not tabloids.

https://news.google.com/search?q=Beeban%20Kidron&hl=en-GB&gl...

The first five news sites for that search are: Financial Times, The Guardian, BBC, The Times, The Guardian again. Zero tabloids.

Politicians, who write the actual laws, are all extremely sensitive to tabloids.

That hasn't been true for at least 20 years. The tabloids have routinely attacked Conservative/Labour policy for a long time now, and nobody in Westminster even noticed let alone cared. They're much more sensitive to being attacked by the BBC or the Guardian because that's what they, their staffers, friends, colleagues and to a large extent their voters are consuming.

I profoundly disagree. Politicians might despise the tabloid press, but they are still very much susceptible to it - because their barrage inevitably seeps into broadsheets and the general press. A simple example: the likes of the Guardian despise Farage, whereas he's an absolute darling of tabloids. Was he invited to BBCQT a billion times because broadsheets wanted him there? Obviously not.

BBC couldn't care less about conservative tabloids and certainly excluded Farage as much as they could for the longest possible time. He gets invited regularly now because of his polling numbers, not because of some sudden sea change in tabloid coverage.

> certainly excluded Farage as much as they could for the longest possible time

This is a narrative. Reality is something else. These stats are from June of last year; by that point, Farage (leader of a party with barely an MP for most of the past decade) had been invited more often than SNP leader Alex Salmond, who was literally in power and ruling over dozens of MPs. https://theconversation.com/bbc-question-time-analysis-of-gu...

> could influence UK discourse

Is 4chan attempting to unfairly or unduly influence UK "discourse?" Or are they just _contributing_ to it as members of the public on an anonymous forum?

> Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's hysterical tabloids

Which actually are an attempt to influence UK discourse. The framing errors are interesting.

> _contributing_ to it as members of the public on an anonymous forum

Your naivete is endearing. Every general-purpose public forum, these days, is heavily manipulated by bots.

influence that established UK press barons (like the Murdochs, Lebedev, etc) want to keep very much to themselves.

I could see that last century. But do they even care about influence anymore? Isn't the money all they care about now?

The Sun has cumulatively lost about £500m over the last few years. I presume there must be some other purpose for keeping it around.

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