Comment by frumplestlatz
8 months ago
Watching the rollout of speech laws like the “online safety act” in the UK makes me rather dubious of the wisdom of that idea.
8 months ago
Watching the rollout of speech laws like the “online safety act” in the UK makes me rather dubious of the wisdom of that idea.
And that just in the UK. For the EU's own shenanigans, we have persistent attempts such as these examples of fuckery:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240
There have been many, many other examples over recent years. Anyone making any claim to the superiority of the EU regulation state in how it respects digital rights for individuals is full of shit or sheerly ignorant.
> Anyone making any claim to the superiority of the EU regulation state in how it respects digital rights for individuals is full of shit or sheerly ignorant.
The EU is a huge organization and too often the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing.
But, the EU isn't alone in curbing digital rights for individuals, it's a worrying trend all over the world even over here in the states, with congress introducing a bill of our own along the same lines (Kids Online Safety Act) - we'll see if it goes anywhere, but the overton window is shifting to being in favor of regulation like this, unfortunately.
Authoritarianism is on the rise everywhere, and rapidly.
Authoritarianism is much easier to implement in a pervasive surveillance environment, digital or otherwise. Unfortunate for all of us, even those who think they are immune.
The unfortunate truth is that all governments suck at dealing with technology in a positive way. The EU has some wins, the US has some wins, and so on... but they all have significant fails too. It's a question of which bad things you can live with, more than a question of who doesn't do bad things.
Correct I’ll take the cluster F of what we have now over the UK style of the government watching over my shoulder as they force me to give up anonymity on the web for those sites that most require it
If you live in one of the states that hasn't yet added one of these laws. I expect it will become a federal bill in a year or two so there aren't 20 variants of the same law.
You can really feel the "big tent" nature of the GOP when these bills are being pushed despite being absolutely abhorrent to large swaths of Republican voters.
I actually can see an argument for age verification, if it could be truly guaranteed to apply only to porn.
The constitutionality of the current laws was upheld on the basis of treating age verification for access to porn as an incidental burden, and thus warranted only intermediate scrutiny.
My (naïve?) hope is that any future mission creep will be rejected by the Supreme Court under strict scrutiny, especially as it extends into general and political speech.
However, once you have the legal and technical frameworks in place, mission creep is almost inevitable, and it could easily take years of litigation to resolve.
“Think of the children” has always been the thin end of a wedge used by those looking to incrementally dismantle inconvenient civil liberties.
All that said, we’re in a much better position in the US under the first amendment. The UK’s “online safety bill” is already targeting a myriad of forms of political speech, and is just the latest example of the significant shift towards the curtailment of free speech across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
I voted for Trump and would make the same choice today without hesitation but agree the Republicans pushing this state by state age identification is pretty bad. State level Rs and house reps leave a bit to be desired. My vote is essentially a vote against the other party. Sometimes we have to choose between the best of two less than perfect choices. Politics is so often a deal with the devil against a worse devil
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Sure would have been great if, in 2016 and 2024 elections, the democrats had nominated someone who could have beat Trump. Or conversely, had not nominated the two people who didn't stance a chance.
But yeah, keep railing against the GOP.
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