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themachinestops @lemmy.dbzer0.com

No, the UK’s Online Safety Act Doesn’t Make Children Safer Online

If they doing this might as well ban books also for harmful content to children:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments

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57 comments

  • I saw an interesting video suggesting that the real motivation is to give megacorps like Google a new business acting as "banks" for identity, i.e. the Internet would get so inconvenient that people would just save their identity with Google (or Meta, etc) and then use them to log in to other websites.

    I probably explained it badly, but the video I saw is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAd-OOrdyMw

    People in the comments pointed out that those companies would also have the ability to delete or suspend your identity verification if you did something they didn't like (or refused to do something they wanted). Reminds me of the SIN from Shadowrun .

    • Indeed. Anybody but the biggies will have an impossible task trying to convince people to verify their ID, so all the smaller sites will switch to only allowing registration/sign-in through Google/Apple/MS's Oauth, and depreciate the username/password option. When "signing in with Google/whatever", Google will simply pass a flag "adult" along with authorizing. In the end, they become the gatekeepers for the whole web, collecting tremendous valuable data in the process and gaining even more power over your identity.

      Always keep in mind that the small players will always take the easiest option, and the big players want more control.

    • The other part is that christofascists really want to ban "porn" (read: anything they don't like), and they know age verification will make their operation almost impossible. The fact that corporations like Google might get to validate people they advertise to is a positive side effect.

    • This is by far the most plausible theory.

    • Yeah, but the governments obviously want to know exactly what you're doing as well.

      I think their only objection to Google et al having so much data is that they need to jump through hoops to get hold of it.

      I suspect this will be in browser before too long. Mostly so they can automatically provide your full unique ID code to anyone who asks, so your government can keep track of you if you say "I support Palestine Action" anywhere, or so Google can look it up when you dare suggest AI is not our glorious future.

      But also because there's only so many "let us check your ID" services you can use before you end up giving your details to somebody who is going to sell them directly. How long before a dodgy porn site does a "show us your face" check, before generating deepfakes starring yourself and demanding payment not to send them to a social media profile it's already detected based on your face?

      I don't really want to be on an internet where instead of blackmist@feddit.uk, somebody can just click that and go "Oh, that's Jeff Timmons of 48 Badminton Way, Stoke-on-Trent. Ring Staffordshire police so they can go and grab him"

    • This isn't the motivation in Europe where there's a deep skepticism about those - all foreign - companies.

      There is no need for conspiracy-type thinking. "Think of the children" has always been a powerful and real motivating force, not just a cover for nefarious other stuff. You need to recognise that, even if it's wrong-headed.

      • It being a real and powerful motivational force means it's one of the more useful covers.

        Just because it motivates the voters/customers doesn't mean it's the genuine reason behind a decision.

        I cannot think of a single recent "think of the children" based action that was intended to and actually helped the children in a meaningful way.

        Can you?

        • I cannot think of a single recent “think of the children” based action that was intended to and actually helped the children in a meaningful way.

          Are you judging the motivation purely based on the effects? Otherwise, how are you working out what goes on inside people's heads?

          I think given that we all agree that there are voters who think this will protect children makes it crazy to think that politicians must somehow know better. It is well-accepted online that politicians are out-of-touch when it comes to technology, so it's not like they understand the subject of this article.

          • politicians must somehow know better.

            No, no, the accusation is that politicians are lying.

            Let's phrase this another way. Asking every single website in existence to implement and maintain an ID database and monitoring system is expensive, yes? So, why wouldn't private companies shift some of this responsibility off to a 3rd party who specializes specifically in this service?

            If I were google, I would:

            • One, be very excited about tying a user's account analytics to their government personhood; can't multiple-credit-cards your way out of that one.
            • And two, already be looking at my own 3rd-party user login service as a means of beating out all competition in this space.

            The only thing left to do is lobby. Politicians might not have this vision, but they do understand really expensive dinners.

          • Are you judging the motivation purely based on the effects? Otherwise, how are you working out what goes on inside people’s heads?

            A combination of the effects, the prior actions, reactions and consequences of the subject and others in similar categories/contexts (to the extent i actually know/pay attention).

            I don't know of another way of performing predictive analysis.

            Also that didn't answer the question.

            I think given that we all agree that there are voters who think this will protect children makes it crazy to think that politicians must somehow know better. It is well-accepted online that politicians are out-of-touch when it comes to technology, so it’s not like they understand the subject of this article.

            I'm genuinely not sure what you are saying here, but i'll go line by line, tell me if I'm reading it incorrectly.

            I think given that we all agree that there are voters who think this will protect children makes it crazy to think that politicians must somehow know better.

            I don't know what this means, there are voters who genuinely believe this, yes, i think i follow that bit.

            I'm not sure what you think is crazy here (i'm not disagreeing, i just don't understand) , do you mean to say the politicians do or don't know better ?

            It is well-accepted online that politicians are out-of-touch when it comes to technology, so it’s not like they understand the subject of this article.

            This i agree with, i can also anecdotally add first hand experience of the consequences of such lack of understanding.

            Not sure how it ties in to the other sentence though.

            • I'll try to rephrase:

              It makes more sense that politicians are simply like ordinary voters and are wrong and misguided when it comes to the internet (in this regard and others), and genuinely believe that the Online Safety Act is helpful for its stated purpose, than that they are using it as some nefarious way of helping out Google. The simple reason is that politicians are people too and just as susceptible to being wrong as voters are; we don't actually need to hunt for any greater reason than that.

              Besides that, we constantly talk about how politicians catastrophically fail to understand technology (I believe the Online Safety Act makes mention of hypothetical encryption-backdooring technology that is simply impossible). For politicians to have a different true motive - i.e. their stated motive is false - we are essentially saying that they couldn't possibly have made got this wrong, there must be some corrupt reason for it - but we don't actually believe they couldn't have got it wrong because we're constantly complaining about how they very obviously do get it wrong.

              I also mentioned (but you didn't mention being confused by it) that the UK government isn't really friendly to American big-tech firms, who are universally opposed to the Act as a whole because of its threat to end-to-end encryption.

              • Politicians are people too, sure.

                Doing a bad job of implementing a self serving plan doesn't excuse the self serving plan.

                That's some 'boys will be boys' nonsense.

                Take brexit and Alexander as example, his intent was to do something shitty for self gain, he's not an idiot no matter how it seems.

                There's no chance he believed that ridiculous tagline about the NHS funding and Europe, even if he did, someone at some point would have pointed it out to him.

                He did it anyway, that's intent.

                Regardless of the outcome, he did something he knew was shitty, for whatever reason he had.

                These people might be idiots, but their intent is usually to do something shady, that they are incompetent and do a shitty job of it isn't the point.

                Wrt to the America thing, I agree, I'm not saying the government is working with tech companies, im saying their intent usually isn't 'save the children', at that point we absolutely should be hunting for the reasons, because if it isn't the reason they have stated, what are they hiding?

                • Doing a bad job of implementing a self serving plan doesn’t excuse the self serving plan.

                  But you haven't provided any reason to believe it's self-serving (other than it is actually quite popular, so it will probably help to get them re-elected)

                  There’s no chance he believed that ridiculous tagline about the NHS funding and Europe, even if he did, someone at some point would have pointed it out to him.

                  He did it anyway, that’s intent.

                  I agree. In that case, the tagline was objectively false and it was printed anyway, so we can conclude pretty safely that the people in charge of making it were lying. That's not the case here; there is genuine disagreement about whether the Online Safety Act will be a success. It is quite popular with the public - a clear majority of people do believe it will be a success. Whether it will be is not a matter of objective fact - not only can we not see the future, there is also no objective way to balance the benefit of decreasing harm to children by preventing access to harmful content with the cost of preventing their access to useful information and the cost of increased friction and privacy breaches to everyone else. If there's a 0.01% chance of photographs of people's IDs being leaked online due to this, but a 90% chance that more than 100,000 children will be prevented from seeing content advocating suicide, is that OK? We don't know if those are the correct percentages and, even if we did, that is a moral question, not a factual one.

                  The situation is wholly different than the Brexit bus.

                  but their intent is usually to do something shady

                  Citation needed.

                  People don't go into politics to line their pockets - not in the UK anyway. It's just not that lucrative. People go into politics mostly for the right reasons (that is, they want to change the country in a way they believe will be better - even if you disagree about that) and some of them are natural grifters who try and make a quick buck off it as well.

                  im saying their intent usually isn’t ‘save the children'

                  Again, nobody in this thread or elsewhere has provided any evidence that this is not their intent. The only argument put forward comes down to "it won't actually save the children, so that can't be their intent." But that is not how it works. People can disagree about things and on this particular matter most people disagree with you (and me.)

                  • But you haven’t provided any reason to believe it’s self-serving (other than it is actually quite popular, so it will probably help to get them re-elected)

                    I can list examples of politicians promising things and then backtracking or making decisions that benefit them or their retinue directly but it's so entrenched in the zeitgeist I'd be genuinely shocked if you didn't know any examples yourself.

                    I agree. In that case, the tagline was objectively false and it was printed anyway, so we can conclude pretty safely that the people in charge of making it were lying.

                    So we've established a baseline of possibility, we can work from here.

                    That’s not the case here; there is genuine disagreement about whether the Online Safety Act will be a success.

                    Yes, politicians are people too, there will be disagreements between them, most have no idea what they are talking about with regard to this so that discussion probably won't actually help anyone, but such is life.

                    it is quite popular with the public - a clear majority of people do believe it will be a success.

                    Same with brexit, popular support isn't necessarily an indicator of a good idea.

                    Whether it will be is not a matter of objective fact

                    Agreed

                    not only can we not see the future, there is also no objective way to balance the benefit of decreasing harm to children by preventing access to harmful content with the cost of preventing their access to useful information and the cost of increased friction and privacy breaches to everyone else.

                    Indeed, and by that rationale there's no basis for saying this is a good idea with regard, specifically, to the protection of children.

                    Which is why many people say this isn't about the protection of children, because they have no way of proving it, or really even a vague idea of how to measure it , at all.

                    There is however precedent for this kind of attempt at control to be poorly implemented and abused in other areas, such that there is a provable downside.

                    So if there's no provable upside but there is a somewhat provable downside, which option should be used.

                    If there’s a 0.01% chance of photographs of people’s IDs being leaked online due to this, but a 90% chance that more than 100,000 children will be prevented from seeing content advocating suicide, is that OK? We don’t know if those are the correct percentages and, even if we did, that is a moral question, not a factual one.

                    That's a different discussion, but yes, ethics, morals etc.

                    The situation is wholly different than the Brexit bus.

                    It's a different scenario yes, but it proves the possibility of that type of action, which it seems you were denying by saying "they're just idiots they couldn't possibly be doing bad things"

                    There is an example of action not based in incompetence.

                    Citation needed.

                    Indeed, this is personal opinion/anecdote.

                    I can give you examples of shady politicians doing shady things but probably not enough to demonstrably push it over that 50% line.

                    In the same way you can't prove incompetence over intentional malice.

                    People don’t go into politics to line their pockets - not in the UK anyway. It’s just not that lucrative. People go into politics mostly for the right reasons (that is, they want to change the country in a way they believe will be better - even if you disagree about that) and some of them are natural grifters who try and make a quick buck off it as well.

                    That level of naïveté is staggering ( and also conveniently skips over power as a motivator )

                    Even if we don't agree on the percentages i think we can agree that there is a level of political corruption, a quick buck doesn't even begin to cover it.

                    Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak from recent memory, i could probably dredge up some more.

                    Again, nobody in this thread or elsewhere has provided any evidence that this is not their intent. The only argument put forward comes down to “it won’t actually save the children, so that can’t be their intent.” But that is not how it works. People can disagree about things and on this particular matter most people disagree with you (and me.)

                    That's why i stated it as me saying, not as an objective fact, though i see that might not be clear.

                    Also remember the predictive analysis based on previous actions.

                    I the absence of hard proof i'm pretty sure you'll agree that opinions can be formed using predictions based on past actions of the person and similar situations and scenarios.

                    as i said earlier(NOTE: this was actually in a different reply, but the point stands)

                    it's not:

                    “it won’t actually save the children, so that can’t be their intent.”

                    so much as it is

                    "Previously, on multiple occasions they have proven to not be doing things for the stated reasons, it's perhaps reasonable to work under the idea that they may be doing this again".

                    • I can list examples of politicians promising things and then backtracking or making decisions that benefit them

                      That proves it's possible, not that it happened this time.

                      Indeed, and by that rationale there’s no basis for saying this is a good idea with regard, specifically, to the protection of children.

                      No, just because something is not objective does not mean that claims about at are baseless. Do you think that the article here "has no basis for saying it's a bad idea"? Surely not. Politics is, more often than not, about questions that don't have objective answers. You say there's a provable downside, but it's not actually provable; it's still theoretical at this point. We don't know for sure whether anyone's data will be leaked, for example. It's in exactly the same realm as the potential upsides - it is likely (but impossible to quantify at this stage) that some people will feel curtailed in what they can do and say online, which will be negative for them. At the same time, it is likely (but impossble to quantify) that some children will not harm themselves because they won't have seen encouragement online to perform acts of self-harm.

                      Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak from recent memory, i could probably dredge up some more.

                      Boris you're probably right but I don't think Sunak went into politics to enrich himself or to seek power. The rewards you get in the UK are just pitiful - Sunak did a hundred times better by marrying into wealth, and anyone could do better by getting a job in the City. I know dozens of people who earn more than an MP even if you count all the likely dinners gifts and cushy consulting jobs they're likely to get. Why bother going to the trouble of getting selected, getting elected, and then having to show up for whipped votes, merely for a chance at some perks, when you could do better with less faff elsewhere>

                      It might be interesting to listen to interviews with politicians from across the divide, preferably after they've left office. It won't make you agree with their position, but it'll make you see them in a different light when they're able to explain their thought process (which the media culture doesn't permit when in office) and the principles behind what they did.

                      That’s why i stated it as me saying, not as an objective fact

                      If you say something is true, then you should be able to justify it. Politics is not the realm of headcanon.

                      • That proves it’s possible, not that it happened this time.

                        Yes, as I've previously pointed out, there are examples of this happening.

                        Can i prove it's a majority, probably not and it seems like a lot of effort so I'm not going to, but I'll wait while you provide the majority of examples proving incompetence over malice.

                        No, just because something is not objective does not mean that claims about at are baseless. Do you think that the article here “has no basis for saying it’s a bad idea”? Surely not. Politics is, more often than not, about questions that don’t have objective answers. You say there’s a provable downside, but it’s not actually provable; it’s still theoretical at this point. We don’t know for sure whether anyone’s data will be leaked, for example. It’s in exactly the same realm as the potential upsides - it is likely (but impossible to quantify at this stage) that some people will feel curtailed in what they can do and say online, which will be negative for them. At the same time, it is likely (but impossble to quantify) that some children will not harm themselves because they won’t have seen encouragement online to perform acts of self-harm.

                        I'm not sure why you asked about how i do predictive analysis and ask questions that ignore the answer.

                        I'm not saying this specific action can be proven to be a bad idea before it happens, i have, many times said that i judge these things based on what has come before and the outcomes of those things.

                        Read the rest of my replies for examples of how this works.

                        Boris you’re probably right but I don’t think Sunak went into politics to enrich himself or to seek power. The rewards you get in the UK are just pitiful - Sunak did a hundred times better by marrying into wealth, and anyone could do better by getting a job in the City.

                        Again ignoring the idea of power as a motivation, but sure sunak probably had/has other avenues to money (and power).

                        I know dozens of people who earn more than an MP even if you count all the likely dinners gifts and cushy consulting jobs they’re likely to get. Why bother going to the trouble of getting selected, getting elected, and then having to show up for whipped votes, merely for a chance at some perks, when you could do better with less faff elsewhere>

                        If you are judging the potential benefits of being an MP/PM solely by the salary they pull in you have already failed to consider all of the relevant information.

                        You yourself mentioned corruption, and again the kickbacks and favours are well established.

                        I genuinely don't understand how you think arguing this point and ignoring a large chunk of the salient information would work.

                        It might be interesting to listen to interviews with politicians from across the divide, preferably after they’ve left office. It won’t make you agree with their position, but it’ll make you see them in a different light when they’re able to explain their thought process (which the media culture doesn’t permit when in office) and the principles behind what they did.

                        You have to be trolling at this point, so I'll say it once more and then I'm just going to point at this line again in the future.

                        The things that they say and the outcomes that resulted from that don't match a lot of the time, after-the-fact explanations add flavour sure, but given how often this makes little difference i will continue to base my predictions on what they stated they were going to do vs what happened.

                        Reading alexanders biography isn't going to change the outcomes or the stated intents of the time.

                        Assuming he's not lying or spinning, which is a big if given his track record, then i might get some insight as to his stated intention, which i will still judge against the outcome.

                        This is the same method i would use for all political biographies.

                        If you say something is true, then you should be able to justify it..

                        If i say something is absolutely true, then i should back it up with absolute proof, this applies to everyone.

                        If i state something is my opinion (or it's clear that it is) then i should provide the information i can to show my working and how i came to that opinion, that gives others the opportunity to examine my reasoning and thought process and then perhaps question parts of it they disagree with.

                        This is how debate style conversations generally work.

                        Politics is not the realm of headcanon

                        I am legitimately unsure how you came to the conclusion that a discussion around politics (especially modern politics) has no room for the inclusion of the public opinion and perception of the politicians.

                        I mean, go up a few lines in your response for this banger :

                        Politics is, more often than not, about questions that don’t have objective answers.

                        You can't have it both ways.

                        Without objectiveness you are left with subjectiveness, also known as personal opinion and perception (headcanon)

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