British PM Candidate Promises Social Media Crackdown (politico.eu)

Theresa May's party "is expected to win a majority at the June 8 election," reports Reuters -- and she's promising they'll pass new social media laws. An anonymous reader quotes Politico: They want to introduce a new measure that could fine or punish internet firms which fail to adequately flag and take down content harmful to minors or "direct users unintentionally to hate speech, pornography or other sources of harm," according to a press release. "The internet has brought a wealth of opportunity but also significant new risks which have evolved faster than society's response to them," May said. "We want social media companies to do more to help redress the balance and will take action to make sure they do"... The Conservative digital platform also promises to better protect Brits' personal information, compelling social media companies to trash user records from before the age of 18. The party plans to encourage the development of digital by default government and business services, as well.

Comments

Alternative title:

[Gravis Zero]

British PM Candidate Explains, "I don't understand how the Internet works!"

There seems to be an awful lot of politicians that don't understand how powerless they are to control what happens outside of their country.

Re:Alternative title:

[Anonymous Coward]

There seem to be an awful lot of techies who don't understand that politicians can in fact control what happens outside their country.

Maybe not on the entirety of the internet, but certainly for a few big social media companies, which is all that matters to the millennial crowd anyway, since they have elected to move entirely to corporate centrally controlled internet services. It works especially well when the social media company - let's call it Facebook for example - agrees and wants to self-censor to avoid the bad PR associated with free speech. Even that is not strictly necessary though. Especially not if the whole EU is aligned. When the social media company has offices and infrastructure in a jurisdiction, it can be pressured by that jurisdiction to take actions even outside the jurisdiction itself.

Don't be too over-confident. Yes, you'll still have your darknet. But for most people "the internet" is nothing more than a handful of social media companies any more, and with that centralization comes the ability to exert pressure on just a few points.

Not surprising

[etnoy]

In the EU, the GDPR will give EU citizens roughly the same powers. The UK is leaving the EU, so this law will be a replacement for it.

Re:Not surprising

[AmiMoJo]

No, this goes way beyond the GDPR. The EU rules are mainly about retaining control over your data, and clarifying existing rules on the right to be forgotten (which isn't what you think it is).

The Tories are proposing mandatory porn filtering, with fines if the filters don't work. The proposal is vague, probably because they don't have any real idea how it would actually work or the burden it would place on ISPs, so it is hard to evaluate the precise level of stupidity involved.

Most likely it's just an election promise that will be quietly forgotten after a consultation where ISPs tell them it's moronic. They have proposed similar things before, but the cost usually ends up putting them off, and they already have to help pay for the new data retention and surveillance powers.

"direct users unintentionally to"

[HalAtWork]

"direct users unintentionally to"

So if it's unintentional that means a bug or error has been found in software designed to define the content

Are we going to punish companies for bugs? Perhaps the measure should at least allow the companies to address it in a timely manner, or to prove that they were at least attempting to be stringent? A punishment for something unintentional seems a little extreme.

Not a PM Candidate

[Pop69]

We don't directly elect our Prime Minister so Theresa May isn't a PM candidate. Wish people would get this right

Law of Unintended Consequences

[hyades1]

This could go a long way toward persuading average Brits they should protect their privacy...and make it considerably more difficult for law enforcement to sort out the really bad stuff from relatively harmless things.

For example, if I were an ISP, I'd probably start offering discounts to customers based on the level of internet security they were willing to employ. If a customer was willing to make it impossible or incredibly difficult and expensive for me to determine what sites they were visiting, I'd be willing to knock quite a bit off their monthly internet bill.

Re:"Harmful to minors"

[gweihir]

It is basically a Victorian agenda with zero scientific evidence as a basis. The one thing it shows is the utterly evil nature of those that push this agenda, nothing else. And of course, this is just the preparation step for full censorship. The UK is already half a police-state, and that universally (if not stopped decisively) devolves into a full police state and ultimately full-blown fascism. The strange thing is that a lot of people in the UK seem to be cheering this process onwards, just like if it never happened in history.

Re:Free speech

[Gort65]

Free speech dies when social justice is "enforced".

So you think that Teresa May and the Conservatives are concerned with enforcing "social justice"? Then again, maybe you're so far to the right of her that it feels that way.

Re:But banning "hate speech" is totally Ok

[ShanghaiBill]

UK already has hate speech laws, which must've been fine with you.

Representative democracy doesn't work that way. Just because the party in power implements a particular law, that does not mean the voters are "fine with it". The choices in an election have a very coarse granularity. You vote for a party, not particular policies. If you vote for Labour so that you get more enlightened censorship laws, then you also get a PM that thinks the British economy should be more like Venezuela's. People care about their paycheck more than they care about the free speech rights of Holocaust deniers, but that doesn't mean that every Tory voter supports censorship.

Re:Freedom, States and Irish passports

[ShanghaiBill]

National citizenship rules should be changed. Instead of getting automatic citizenship based on where you are born, you should instead get provisional citizenship until your 21st birthday, and then you pick permanent citizenship in the country that best fits your political and economic views.

Re: Freedom, States and Irish passports

[EmeraldBot]

No, this issue always existed. Why didn't the Japanese who were interned move away to a state that would project them? Why didn't gay people just move to another state in the 50's that would properly protect them? Why couldn't people who are in prison for drug usage move to another state where drug usage was legal?

Because nobody ever stood up for them, hence there was no place to go. Blaming "the federal government" is a cop out; rather than admit that the multiple states approach didn't work, because conservative Americans held (and still hold) very little sympathy for people who lead lives different from themselves, it's much easier to blame something as large and abstract as the federal government. When we talk about outsourced jobs, is it the federal government's fault, or that of the companies for willingly and knowingly sacrificing quality and employee welfare for a better bottom line?

Re:Watch all the Freedom-loving Brexiters dance!

[serviscope_minor]

Except having to conform to their numerous orders.

You do realise that we won't be able to do whatever the fuck we want after we leave, right? I mean, no one will agree to do a trade deal with us if re refuse to agree to any rules.

And you know, if we refuse to agree to the EU stuff on fisheries, we risk getting what the EU juust managed to prevent which is a full blown fish stock collapse. Once that happens, you can piss and moan however much you like but you still won't be able to get fish out of the sea.

Just one example, banning creosote for tarring fences; maybe irrelevant to you (or to EU residents in sunny Spain and Italy, or basement dwellers) ) but a big deal

Well then you're a right fucking numpty because you can still get creosote if you know where to look.

It also is terrible for the environment so selling it to every tom dick and harry to tip down the drain is a fantastically poor idea too. Creosote is really rather carcinogenic, so yeah, it's a pretty good idea to not have it for general sale on the grounds that not having people kill themselves for not have the right piece of obscure knowledge. But you can still get hold of it easily enough, though without your own pressure treating kit, you won't do nearly as well as if you simply buy pretreated fencing.

Now, you lazy, ill informed git, here's somewhere that'll actually sell you the stuff:

https://www.creosotesales.co.u...

for me as I maintain several hundred yards of fencing in the damp misty hills of Wales.

Well, I hear Tories love Wales, so I'm sure you won't be at all fucked now you've just handed them all the power.