Comment by idle_zealot
7 months ago
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.
Going to need a citation on that millions ... Sure ~57% of Americans disprove of Trump but can't extrapolate "disprove" to "ending of humankind".
Although to be fair to your hypothetical millions, a guy known for repeating getting bankrupt was elected to lead the country. Seems a bit fair to say his track record implies he'd bankrupt the country.
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Give it time. Misinformation and disinformation need to marinate to have a large impact.
I joke with my friends (I'm old) about how great the internet is for looking up information. When I was growing up, someone told you the wrong thing and you just knew the wrong thing for years.
Misinformation and disinformation were terms created by censors as an excuse to censor ideas they didn't like, mostly criticism. What we call misinformation and disinformation has been a property of communication since grunting. People are wrong about stuff, even people who we currently think are right. To censor is going back to just knowing the wrong thing for years because someone with censor powers thought they were right.
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.