Comment by chairmansteve
7 months ago
Maybe one way to do it is to exempt smaller operations from regulation. eg less than say 20,000 users, no regulations.
7 months ago
Maybe one way to do it is to exempt smaller operations from regulation. eg less than say 20,000 users, no regulations.
The UK had a rule that gave small employers a £4,000 discount on national insurance.
Sketchy large employers like G4S responded by setting up tens of thousands of "Mini umbrella companies" [1] with directors in the Philippines, each company employing only a handful of people - allowing G4S to benefit from the £4,000 discount tens of thousands of times.
Sadly, exempting small operations from regulation isn't a simple matter.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57021128
If it was something we wanted to punish, it needs claw backs and draconian fines plus piercing the corporate veil when those companies are suspected of it. Usually though, there's little downside to abusing the system, so the risk/reward is badly skewed.
To reinforce your argument, in the linked article GFS claim that they weren't responsible for the tax avoidance. The recruitment companies they subcontracted out came up with this wheeze.
Complex corporate structures enable plausible deniability. The CEO of GFS probably didn't know what was happening, but also probably didn't want to know whilst enjoying the low fees charged from the recruiters.
> Complex corporate structures enable plausible deniability.
It's literally managements job to be aware.
Imagine if a crossing guard waves cars through an intersection as children crossed and goes "Well, you know, I wasn't driving the car".
It can't be "no regulations", but yes, in general every law that requires compliance infrastructure should include a minimum size to ensure it only applies where it is relevant. In this case though, I believe the intent of the UK law is to ban all online communication that is not subject to safety scanning and the like. It's fundamentally a draconian law.
It can be no regulation.
There has not been regulation for online forums for forty years and Earth did not explode or human kind did not end.
That’s not true. There’s been laws in many jurisdictions, including the US, applying to online forums, since before the internet even existed.
The famed section 230, passed in 1996, is an update to a section of the 1934 Communications Act, which is but one set of laws regulating many aspects of forums. Lawsuits in the early 90s led Congress to modify, but not abolish, the stack of laws regarding all communications technology.
Now that you know but 2 of the many laws affecting online forums, you can dig up plenty more yourself.
> There has not been regulation for online forums for forty years and Earth did not explode or human kind did not end.
But how about Trump winning popular vote? Millions of people are sure this is about as bad as explosion of the Earth or ending of the humankind.
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Give it time. Misinformation and disinformation need to marinate to have a large impact.
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And in cases where you can't make small operations exempt then the government should freely offer the services to handle the regulatory burden.
Tiered requirements scaled by size and/or impact is an obvious middle ground between equal obligation to all entities and a binary on/off status.
As an example of impacts not necessarily correlated with size, a comms platform for, say, the banking or finance communities, or defence and military systems, would likely have stronger concerns than one discussing the finer points of knitting and tea.
This is eminently sensible, should happen everywhere.
It almost always doesn't, because the big guys have lobbyists and the small guys don't.
The big guys would rather not have to comply with these rules, but typically their take is, well, if we're going to have to anyway, let's at least make it an opportunity to drive out some of the scrappy competition and claim the whole pie for ourselves.
Lead poisoning is not less dangerous when your house is built by a small builder.
It is not, however calls for racist violence are less dangerous when they're posted on a niche forum with 20 daily active users than when they're posted on Twitter.
True. But the small outfits tend to get their supplies from big ones, lead is something that can probably be dealt with at supply-chain level.