They're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act:
> Luckily, we don’t have to imagine the scene because the High Court judgment details the last government’s reaction when it discovered this potentially rather large flaw. First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. They suggested asking Ofcom to think again and the minister agreed.
> "They're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act:"
Err, BlueSky is enthusiastically complying with that one (as you read by clicking through to their corporate statement),
> "We work with regulators around the world on child safety—for example, Bluesky follows the UK's Online Safety Act, where age checks are required only for specific content and features... Mississippi’s new law and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) are very different. Bluesky follows the OSA in the UK. There, Bluesky is still accessible for everyone, age checks are required only for accessing certain content and features, and Bluesky does not know and does not track which UK users are under 18. Mississippi’s law, by contrast, would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children."
It's bold of them to attempt to shift the Overton Window in this way ("OSA is actually moderate and we should hold it up as an example of reasonableness to criticize other censorship laws against"). That happened fast.
Bluesky has never opposed or criticized OSA. Am I over-indexing on that?
Their July 10 blogpost even frames OSA as a collaboration—it's written plain in the title, "Working with [sic] the UK Government to Protect Children Online",
The meta point here is that both parties are basically the dregs of the last generation of politicians to not be "native" to the interner and are now having one last go at ramming it into a box (e.g. all the bad stuff is shoved into X dot com) which they can ban.
The thing is there's a decent chance it'll work. We have beaten out any liberal or even conservative sentiment in mass consciousness
> all the bad stuff is shoved into X dot com) which they can ban.
I'm not entirely convinced that's a bad thing.
We need outlets for free speech, but who those outlets are controlled by matters. Look at the impact Murdoch has had over the past many decades. That's what we want to stop.
>We need outlets for free speech, but who those outlets are controlled by matters.
What kind of nonsense is this? Have you considered the logic of your comment? Free speech is good, but let's reserve the legal right to control who builds platforms for it so that its the "correct" Kind of free speech. Of course there's no risk at all of that being grossly misused to crush real free speech.
For all the Murdoch fear mongering, there's no shortage at all of progressive, left-leaning media publications, news channels and organizations, globally or in any developed, more or less democratic country you care to look at. Would you support a conservative government shaklling them because of claims about their impact?
>The meta point here is that both parties are basically the dregs of the last generation of politicians
No it’s not. That is a completely different point than what you initially made. You specifically called out leftists for causing the OSA and then tried to pivot to saying “by leftists I actually meant everyone” after someone pointed out that your point was invalid because you were factually wrong
The meta- part of that sentence would imply it's a different scale.
And I obviously don't mean "everyone" or I wouldn't have made the distinction.
There is almost zero distinction on social policy between most of the current labour front bench and a Tory wet. Other than the latter being more pro-trans
You mean the Tories. Given that they massively increased what was already record-high immigration (while promising the opposite) [1,2], calling them "conservative" is laughable.
They absolutely took control of Luigi. Rather than becoming a revolutionary icon who inspired people to water the tree of liberty with the blood of capitalists, he got turned to a meme, co-opted, defanged and reduced to nothing, like a Che Guevara t-shirt.
> because it allowed criticism of Israel, at least according to the people that reintroduced it and got it passed
This is nonsense. I worked on that bill. The Israel lobby was, like, there. But to my knowledge is delivered zero votes. At the end of the day, if you want a bill passed, you are very careful about saying no to support.
From a broader social-media advertising perspective, the war in Gaza has been a financial bonanza.
> Luckily, we don’t have to imagine the scene because the High Court judgment details the last government’s reaction when it discovered this potentially rather large flaw. First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. They suggested asking Ofcom to think again and the minister agreed.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/online-s...