Comment by noir_lord
7 months ago
Same - frankly google/alphabet should just HTTP 451 the UK (and I say that as a brit/someone in the UK).
It'd be interesting to see how fast the policy would get reversed then.
This was always a stupid policy and so protesting it by pulling services is one way to draw attention to that.
If big tech wants a reaction, pull all investment out of the UK.
Microsoft + Google + Amazon + Nvidia + Meta + Apple = $630 billion in annual operating income.
They'll react to a change in capital investment faster than anything else.
The end game of these rules seems to be that it's impossible for small forums to cope, so content gets centralised on big tech. I would be surprised if they don't support this.
> pull all investment out of the UK.
Wow I didn't know big tech invested so much in the UK!
"Investment" here seems to be operations and personnel, resulting in taxes going to the UK government.
They aren't making $630 billion per year in money off of those companies, but the operating income means they're getting taxes on that $630 billion (income tax from company and employees, VAT for purchases, etc.) and the personnel working in the UK are probably spending most of that money in the UK (velocity of money theory comes into play here).
The resulting economic benefit for the UK government is enough that they'd notice the drop if all that started to transition away.
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I'm sure the UK would cope. They did ok without them less than 30 years ago.
Damage to stock value would be the bigger blocker (from both sides of the pond).
Might kickstart some actual competition though, as that happening would create a large hole to fill.
The world was a very different place 30 years ago.
> should just HTTP 451 the UK
Didn't something like that happen about 15 years ago maybe due to net neutrality? Or maybe it was wikipedia's black outs over SOPA.
I do worry that the ability of people to understand that there is more than one law that affects internet services.
the first clue is that its the ICO that is running this. the ICO has nothing to do with the online safety act.
Secondly asking a commercial company to conform to basic data protection isn't that onerous.
Honestly its almost like HN has tumbler level reading comprehension.
Yeah this is where i am getting mixed up because the article isn't saying what the cause was. I thought it was related to the digital id thing that every site need to make sure they check for minors..