Architect of the UK Online Safety Act Calls for Its Complete Repeal | Hacker News Reader

Architect of the UK Online Safety Act Calls for Its Complete Repeal

prestonbyrne.com

45 pointsiamnothere32 comments

Ah, the good old "I never thought leopards would eat my face" after voting for the 'leopards eating people's faces party'...

Somehow I have zero hope the bill she is proposing as a replacement could be any better than the absolute horror that the OSA is though...

Ditto, but also the so-called "Free Speech Bill" advocated by the publisher which explicitly attempts to import America-style free speech into the country as law. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be something Parliament is entertaining, at least not yet.

What's wrong with america-style free speech? In my opinion that's one of the few things they got more right than many european countries.

Have you not noticed what it's done to their country?

Done? I'm having a hard time seeing how not jailing people for objectionable tweets led to the election of Trump (which I'm assuming you're referring to). USA has many deep problems in their politics and if you haven't noticed, have been waging unjust wars for almost their entire history. The recent events are nothing more than a continuation of how it's always been going. If you want to attribute that to free speech, sure, but I'm not seeing the causation honestly.

This is where the propaganda surrounding American-style free speech clashes with reality. Many people assume it protects all speech unless it's incitement to imminent lawless action, "fighting words", etc. But that is simply not the case. This is in large part due to how American law doesn't do what it says. Read their First Amendment, actually read it: it's a limitation on Congress. It's become much, much more than that because their Supreme Court is a de facto legislative body.

This is how you get the Red Scare; that money is speech (Buckley v. Valeo); that legal entities are people with free speech and thus campaign donations cannot be restricted (Citizens United v. FEC); that retaliatory arrests for speech are fine so long as there's probable cause for something else (Nieves v. Bartlett); that therapists have a right to convert their underage gay clients (Chiles v. Salazar); etc. Did you not hear about Mahmoud Khalil? Or Alex Pretti? Ect?

The whole "objectionable tweets" thing is so overplayed too. British pundits like to wax poetic about the apparent persecution of people for political speech, and the "political speech" is, for example, Lucy Connolly calling for the burning down of a hotel building housing asylum seekers.

The biggest sufferers under UK speech restrictions are not tweeters, it's protesters, and yet the examples are always tweeters. Isn't that interesting?

> Many people assume

Oh, did I do that? Where?

> This is how you get ...

Not really, you're just naming a shopping list of examples of what I mentioned earlier: "USA has many deep problems in their politics", with a very tenuous connection to the laws on speech.

> Did you not hear about Mahmoud Khalil? Or Alex Pretti? Ect?

I did hear about that, why are you assuming I didn't? Can you explain the connection to the issue at hand though, because I'm not seeing it.

I chose the tweets example because it's one of the more ridiculous examples, but I could just as well have named Palestine Action or numerous other examples from other european countries. What's "interesting" about it?

Isn't it "interesting" how you're trying very hard to paint a certain picture of the discussion?

Okay, so let me make the question plain: what would American-style freedom of speech fix for the UK that isn't also a problem in the US despite having said freedom of speech.

If you read my original comment ("actually read it") you'll see I was simply stating that, in my opinion, it is better to not have ridiculous archaic laws on speech than to have them. What problem does having the restrictions on speech that are currently in place in the UK solve?

Are you claiming the problems in the USA that you mentioned are because of or despite having freedom of speech? You earlier seemed to claim that e.g. the jailing of activists was because of the free speech laws (the "this is how you get" line). So which one is it?

If all you have to offer is mere ideological preference, then I think this conversation has reached its limit of what it'll be able to achieve.

LOL. At least I'm intellectually honest about my "mere ideological preference" for not restricting speech, instead of trying to somehow construe that free speech is the cause of all the evils in the world.

@grok could you please find the part where I said that free speech is the cause of all the evils in the world?

Go go pokemon "grok argues my case for me"!

https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMi1jb3B5_585f6600-e128-49bf-9...

I just think it's incredibly funny how you assert you're being intellectually honest and then in the same breath do something incredibly intellectually dishonest. But whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Are those things because of speech? Or would they be worse if America did not have free speech?

Imagine if Trump could outright ban criticism of him or his policies, or if protests against unjust wars could be banned, or if we had UK style libel laws how would the Epstein thing have come out? Everyone who talked about it would have been shut down by lawsuits.

The reason why it would be worse is not because American-style free speech is good actually, but because you fundamentally lack the tools to hold your politicians accountable. Not only do US federal districts contain ~10x more people than UK constituencies (thus your voice is 10x smaller), but the US is suffering extreme jerrymandering, which the Supreme Court has conveniently made unconstitutional to prevent. It's also extraordinarily difficult to remove Presidents.

As for the Epstein point, I cannot say I'm aware of the full saga given that it's been a multiple-decade scandal at this point. But the files were released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Translate this to the UK and Parliament passing a law mandating their release would be unquestionable. No lawsuit would survive the briefest scrutiny once Parliament willed it. I also think it's worth mentioning that Prince Andrew, our most prominent associate with Epstein, began facing repercussions for that association in 2019, years before the files were released.

> Imagine if Trump could outright ban criticism of him or his policies

Ummmmmm. He is.

That is to say, anybody _in power_ or any in any position of authority is significantly curtailing their criticism of Trump. If you haven't noticed this by now, then I despair. Frankly it's unimportant what the little guy says about Trump. The little guys speech is 'free', but the moment the little guy is in a position of power, watch the US administration silence him.

EDIT: For the uninitiated, being 'silenced' doesn't mean being carted off to prison. It means the Trump taking away your authority, reputation, career and/or livelihood. That is all that is required.

But the US does jail people for posting objectionable content, the FBI surveil people posting extreme and objectionable stuff on social platforms and it's led to jail time in at least some cases, one that comes to mind is Lucas Nevcherlian

> What's wrong with america-style free speech?

The biggest issue might be the false belief that it’s superior to others or that the USA is somehow “more free” than other democracies. That’s propaganda, and has precipitated the erosion of freedoms in the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

As just one example of the failures of “america-style free speech”: Defending that corporations making large donations to political candidates is free speech. Talk about an incentive to corruption.

> As just one example of the failures of “america-style free speech”

Here are some more. Frankly, the USA isn't doing very well on free speech lately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

For people outside the UK: this person is not really credible. She is an incompetent moron that is desperate for any coverage, especially if it helps get attention for Reform, the party she defected to

(this is not defending the act, just to call her the architect of anything is probably too much)

On brand with their platform of "Everything the current government does is bad so you should vote for us. We don't have any better solutions, we just know that it's bad"

unfortunately that approach works

Nadine Dorries is one of the least credible, least trustworthy political gadflies you could possibly imagine, only ever truly content when being fed the oxygen of publicity.

In the age of toxic empathy, "think about the children" is a very common tool for nefarious uses.

Hmmmm:

> By harmonizing to U.S. free speech standards, the UK will make it considerably easier, as a political matter, enter into data sharing and cross-border cooperation agreements, like CLOUD Act agreements, with the United States.

Of note is that the author of this piece is the attorney defending 4chan et al against Ofcom, hence the slant and the general attitude.

I'm not in favour of the online safety act, but the problem is she is incredibly stupid - nobody will listen to her.

"harmonize UK and US law on political speech"

I can't think of anything worse. This is just the extreme right wing pushing the Overton Window even further

Step 1: reject and leave the EU to be free of their colonial rulers in Brussels

Step 2: harmonize all laws and regulations with EU anyways without voting influence because Single Market access is lucrative and vital

Step 3: start harmonizing other laws with the US in hopes of courting a new colonial ruler

Step 4: …?

———

With love, this feels like a situation where a good friend should simply have taken the car keys away.

This is RWNJ garbage dressed up in false "think tank" legitimacy.

tl;dr author wants uk to be more like the usa. nadine dorris complaining in an opinion column somewhere is a convenient way for him to pivot to talking about his think tank’s white paper about wanting to make that happen.

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