Comment by zmmmmm
7 months ago
There's an opportunity for a service like CloudFlare here give people a simple toggle that manages geoblocks on legal liability factors. It's way too much for every organisation to individually track every country's laws day by day in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability. And it sounds like the UK would have just self-selected out of the list of "safe" countries.
If something like this was in widespread use it would have much more impact since countries would see whole swathes of the internet immediately go dark when they make stupid laws.
I wish Wikipedia would take one for the team, and go dark in the UK. (And I'm in the UK).
Wouldn't work with somewhere like China, but the UK might still be capable of being shamed.
At this point, the UK government is beyond shaming. On the contrary, it shame and record-breaking unpopularity seems to empower them.
I wouldn't put it passed them to require the digital ID to access the internet passed curfew.
*past (in both cases)
Something that I think normal, decent people don't appreciate enough: you can join an organization without believing a word of what it stands for. It's perfectly possible to just pretend. It doesn't take a ton of resources or a big coordinated conspiracy to join and betray an organization, it just takes a bit of self-confidence, or chutzpah.
One person I believe knows this, is Keir Starmer. It's very hard to explain why things happen in UK politics without assuming he is trying to tank Labour.
15 replies →
Tbf, well implemented digital ID would be much preferable to the idiotic situation that we're in now. The emphasis on well implemented.
16 replies →
Wikipedia gets a lot of donations from the uk. I’m not sure how many Brits would continue putting £10-100/mo into a charity that explicitly doesn't operate in their borders.
Wouldn't make a dent in their budget. They are not poor by any means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...
2 replies →
Any stats on this? I'd be surprised if the number of Brits putting £10-100/mo into Wikipedia greatly exceeds 10.
18 replies →
Never underestimate the power of spite
This has been happening for years but if you're in the US you don't realize. For example I can't access my local Montana newspaper web site from the UK "because GDPR" (even though the UK isn't in the EU).
There is a UK GDPR, it’s the same framework but adopted under UK law:
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-the...
There are several US news websites that are completely blocked in the EU and UK since GDPR came into effect, because it was easier than caring about data collection. Probably many of them adapted since then, because everyone realized GDPR has no teeth and most websites that are not global platforms are not compliant.
3 replies →
I don't remember the exact details now but that was mostly out of spite from presumably one entity (or a handful at most) that owns many US local newspapers though. They're not subject to GDPR anyway as they explicitly don't target EU users as customers, they just wanted to put pressure, pass a message to the EU.
And as you can see they didn't even bother updating their block after Brexit.
[flagged]
I can't imagine that working for even more than a couple of days. If it did we have much bigger problems than access to Wikipedia and would like be looking at the beginning of civil disobedience and war as I doubt wikipedia would be the only freedom of speech site.
[flagged]
Evidence?
15 replies →
> in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability.
This is a dangerous precedent though that IMO everyone should fight against.
It's how we get the balkanization of the internet, and the death of it as a global network.
TBH we also shouldn't put the onus on blocking "unsafe" countries on the website owners, nor an intermediary like CloudFlare. If a nation wants to block certain content, let the nation deal with it by getting their own ISPs to block and make sure the citizen's anger gets correctly placed on their government and not the site operators.
> If a nation wants to block certain content, let the nation deal with it by getting their own ISPs to block and make sure the citizen's anger gets correctly placed on their government and not the site operators.
I don’t really understand comments like these. Even if you’re exactly right about how it should work, how would you make this happen in the world we live in? Neither the tech community nor ISPs nor cloud companies decide these things. Just because a matter affects us doesn’t mean we have much of a voice in it especially if it’s legal.
Laws about tech are decided by (idiot) politicians/parties/governments and the consequences are enforced by massive fines, imprisonment, etc. by law enforcement and selective (and often politically motivated) prosecution. In some of the worst places the consequences could include death.
Afghanistan just lost access to the internet almost entirely. China and North Korea are famous for their firewalls. Much of Asia has internet blackouts whenever there are large scale protests. The western world’s government has more legal jurisdiction/economic influence on the companies that run these things and are increasingly leveraging that for their desired censorship.
If the answer to this is democratic influence, the populations of many countries don’t really have that, the majorities in countries that do have it certainly doesn’t know or care about these things and wouldn’t vote for the pro-censorship politicians in the first place if they’d then vote to cut off their nation’s access to uncensored internet while preserving the uncensored variants, and even if the majority ever did care to get the system to work in this way there’s a global trend away from having their opinions on such things matter anyway.
I’m equally baffled by all of these calls for extensive regulation and enforcement of Internet rules on HN. Someone in the comment section is unironically calling for imprisoning parents who let their kids use the internet. There are suggestions throughout the comment section calling for ID checks on websites.
Is nobody thinking about what this actually means? Do you really want the entire internet to require ID validation every time you use it? Do you want your government deciding if your content is okay to view, or okay to post? Do you welcome the level of tracking of privacy violations that inherently come with this much government intervention?
It seems people on HN have a sudden wake up call whenever these rules get too close to reality, like when access to websites gets cut off or ID verification is added to websites that they use. My theory is that they’re imagining a world where only the services they dislike get regulated: The TikToks and Facebooks of the internet. None of these people calling for extensive regulation are thinking that sites they use would ever end up on the regulated sites list, but if you enjoy any site with user submitted content (Hacker News included) then you’re calling for additional regulation and tracking of yourself when you demand these things.
6 replies →
The balkanization is being caused by the UK. No technical solutions prevent this.
It’s rather ironic, because the very kind of “social credit score” that we were told the Chinese are subject to is has existed in the West and is being implanted in a far more sly way with things like tone policing; arbitrary accusation of rule breaking of ever increasingly narrow, convoluted, and subjective rules enforced by faceless mods and surely son by AI bots, bans, and even extraordinary lengths to hunt down anyone that “evades a ban”.
I just heard about that TikTok has already implement a censorship regime that excludes topics and concepts for which you get a ding on your social credit score. Not even something that was done when China was racially in control of TikTok.
4 replies →
It depends on the kind of website. If you're not advertising, selling anything, or otherwise doing any business through your website you're much more emboldened to not care about every jurisdiction.
But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries and I don't have a ton of objection to you needing to follow foreign laws.
I'm fine with "balkanization" (I know some people from the Balkan countries... maybe they'd object to the use of that word) if it means a freedom divide and actual consequences for countries ever eroding freedoms.
> But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries.
Say, I'm the provider... well sorry, you (the customer) are doing business with a foreign country (mine) and you should do it in accordance with YOUR laws about YOUR country's foreign trade.
That's the only way to properly conform to jurisdiction, amirite?
In other words, UK has no jurisdiction over US businesses who conduct business from US soil, UK cannot force them to obey UK law just because a UK citizen decided to buy something over the internet. The UK can punish THEIR citizens for what the UK considers unlawful trades and that's always the case no matter what.
Claiming jurisdiction over foreign businesses ends up in a completely lunatic situation where every business, in every country, has to obey the laws of every other country just because some people might decide to order from abroad. Block, ban, punish only where you have jurisdiction, everything else ends up in sheer insanity.
8 replies →
The huge plus of the internet is that you can be disruptive on a global scale on a somewhat even footing to the giants.
If you place a giant burden such that before you even do anything of value you need to conform to 100s of different laws/regulations from 100 different countries you create a world where only large companies can exist and everyone else is pushed out.
1 reply →
It's how we get the balkanization of the internet, and the death of it as a global network.
That ship sailed at least a decade ago.
From small instances like your employer blocking certain web sites (Google Translate, seriously?) to China's Great Firewall to nations restricting access in certain regions (India, many others), to nations restricting access to certain web sites (Turkey, many many others), to entire countries taking themselves entirely offline (Afghanistan, most recently).
https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/:zone/security/sec...
then take action "Block". i know what you mean by a simpler option though
The point the parent is making is that you don’t have to manually keep track of the countries you need to block. You just tell Cloudflare what your website does / what type of laws may be problematic, and Cloudflare manages the blocklist automatically.
Makes a lot of sense actually that it’s surprising they don’t have this yet.
My guess is liability factor. If they get it wrong, massive liability on their side especially since someone could be like "I told you X" and Cloudflare didn't think the law applied or not.
Better to put onus on the customer.
2 replies →
So the entire internet goes off during La Liga?
1 reply →
Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's. Fine/imprison parents. This is a parenting problem, not a technical/business problem. Remove the supply of children and things will get better. A business cannot make laws or override laws with ToS and invent their own moral compasses - rather it is the sole responsibility of the parent on what their child gets exposed to (whether politics, porn, weird beliefs, spam, chat/user generated content). The parents have been getting a free pass all this time.
I completely agree with your argument.
Some parents are awful at parenting, so much so it makes me question why they had kids if they clearly don't care about bringing them up properly.
It's a no brainer that kids should have minimal screen exposure. There's even organisations which specifically state the most ideal screen time (basically none up to 18 months, 1 hour max up to 5 years old). iPad children will be a detriment to the future of any country.
The screen time is bad enough, without the sloppy content you can very easily find online. The best ways to destroy a kid are to saddle them with social media, media consumption and porn/gambling/vices at an early age. Their brain is being fried during development.
> imprison parents.
I’m consistently shocked at how authoritarian and draconian HN comments can be. Throwing parents in prison if their 12 year old uses the internet? Jail them and send their kids to foster care? This is your plan for improving the lives of children?
If you give your 12yo access to a gun, and shoots/kills another child (even by accident) - who is at fault? The 12yo? The gun? The parent?
> The parents have been getting a free pass all this time
I totally agree but the UK government – particular Labour – doesn't want people to take responsibility really, because that would take from their own 'power'. There's nothing the UK loves more than a stupid population hooked on benefits and devoid of education, critical thinking and financial freedom.
Not the UK, Labour.
11 replies →
The internet is an extremely useful educational resource. It provides ways of communicating with people you want your kids to communicate with. it needs management by parents.
My kids have learned a huge amount from the internet. I have guided them, discussed what are credible resources, the harms possible etc, who they talk to and what they tell them....
There are solutions that would make it easier for parents - people need tools to manage this. Require that children use child safe SIM cards in their phones (they are available already - EE advertisers them). Home internet connections should be by filtered by default that can then be turned off (or off for particular devices in the ISP supplied router that most people have).
Internet should not be filtered by default, that’s ridiculous. Either make it a separate product that large ISPs have to offer (like you either choose the ‘internet package’ or the ‘child-safe filtered internet package’) or ask people as part of the sign-up flow whether they want filtering.
I think it’s bad for society to treat adults as children, I’m happy that it should be made obviously available (there’s some merit to the argument that tech-illiterate parents often don’t know devices they give their kids have parental controls at all), but not on by default.
1 reply →
> It provides ways of communicating with people you want your kids to communicate with
Who do you want your kids to communicate with over the internet ?
3 replies →
> Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's. Fine/imprison parents.
It's an interesting idea. I presume that the there would be similar laws to selling guns. So there would need to be the national ID card and checks when selling any internet-enabled device. TVs, phones, cameras etc.
I as, a parent would probably need a phone safe, into which I could place my phone when I wasn't using it (though I suppose conceal-carry would be permissible). I;d probably want to have biometric locks on my TV, Chromecast etc etc and the children wouldn't be able to use the TV unsupervised unless all smart functions were locked down.
Doesn't sound particularly cool.
> It's an interesting idea. I presume that the there would be similar laws to selling guns. So there would need to be the national ID card and checks when selling any internet-enabled device.
12 year olds are not buying their own iPhones and monthly service plans contracts.
Creating a national ID system for this is a weird suggestion that would have no impact on kids whatsoever but would create another centralized database for adults and make basic purchases more difficult and prone to tracking. Why even suggest this?
All solved problems.
Phones can have passcodes, fingerprint readers, facial recognition (for parents face) to keep kids off them.
Devices can have multiple user accounts, each with different purposes and applications. On my linux laptop, I have two accounts, one for work & one for personal, with distinct applications and configuration.
If all else fail, each manufacturer can product a simple device that can only chat & call with parents in case of emergencies. Can be a simple smart watch or pager like design, or just a dumb phone.
We are at the point where children should not even be exposed to the news (which is primarily incendiary politics these days) unless it is a major event. Smart TV's has so much garbage on them, why should they be allowed to even watch what they want on it?
Either way, ALL of these requires the parents to actually be parents. We can create the perfect technological solution but if the parents expose the child to porn/drugs/social media etc etc and fry their brains, it is a parental problem and not a tech problem.
5 replies →
I don't think we need to ban kids from the Internet or punish parents that let them use it. It's enough if we make it clear that parents are responsible for what their kids do on the internet, both for harm that comes to the child and for any liabilities the child may incur there.
> Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's.
wait... wut? Gun ownership for 12yo's? wtf :D
Though the idea of "internet only for adults" is not that bad IMHO. Yes, internet is (well, at least was advertised as) infinite-resource-of-knowledge but we know how it turned out - IMHO minority of underage use it to spend hours reading wikipedia and instead spend hours glued to crap like tiktok (though crap like that should be banned altogether as well :D)
So a service like CloudFlare is the Great firewall of the world and CloudFlare can shut you down if you go against their interests as a supranational gatekeeper.
Smart thinking Batman.
> CloudFlare can shut you down if you go against their interests as a supranational gatekeeper
They already can.
> Smart thinking Batman.
“Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
“Be kind. Don't be snarky."
Sometimes I think you can ignore the "rules" a bit - they are really guidelines. Your parent was clearly expressing exasperation and engaging effectively and intelligently.
Only if you want to keep using CloudFlare. You can make your site available without.
agreed on that ... I'm not too happy with how CloudFlare tried to flex their influence on AI training, so I certainly wouldn't want them in charge of gatekeeping the whole internet.
But the truth is, we are already there. CloudFlare can already do this, they just won't because the their customers will leave if they violate their trust.
The people turning on the "block UK" button can block the UK regardless of what CDN they use.
Cloudflare just offers a button with fewer false positives than naive GeoIP databases. They're not so much gatekeepers as they are the security guards hired by the stores themselves.
Cloudflare just provides the tools, ultimately it’s the website owner’s decision how to use them.
Not really. It's more like Cloudflare is providing an ipset in your iptables config. It's not Cloudflare's decision: they're just making it easier for you to do it.
There are alternatives to cloudflare tho. If the government cuts you off or starts enforcing 24/7 surveillance there's not a lot that can be done other than tossing them out in the next election (if there are elections) or civil disobedience until they renege
Quite the opposite! There's an opportunity for a service like CloudFlare here to give people a simple toggle that manages to circumvent such geoblocks. ;)
They call it warp
>There's an opportunity for a service like CloudFlare
i don't think "compliance" in a micropennies per click market like imgur is a full on "opportunity"
Does anyone know what their actual exposure currently is/was in the UK? They actually had offices and staff there?
To your point about the proposed service, isn’t that what cloud providers basically already do in rudimentary ways or could do with finer grain regions?
Also, it seems the internet/WWW is basically being snuffed out right before our eyes as governments start using all manner of specious arguments to censor and control adults… for the children… of course. You as an adult are not allowed to have your rights because children may be harmed if you have your rights. “ No, no, we can’t keep the children from engaging in things that we deem harms them, your rights have to be relinquished instead.”
> for a service like CloudFlare
Not Claudflare though, let's not feed another monster monopoly :)
what's wrong with a vpn?
mullvad basically allows me to go around all the censorship in my country: https://mullvad.net/en
I was going to say, had this happened back when reddit was still using imgur exclusively, then the UK would have really suffered.
Maybe they can tell the countries where they are anyway not going to do any business anymore - no, you block it.
CF already provides this
You can pretty much get rid of the entire internet that way. All across the USA there are "child protection laws" banning pornography (what's pornography? some politicians say it's mentioning that trans people exist!). Countries like China and Russia have legal mandates to store and process data within their borders. China requires a license to even host a website. The UK and EU have the GDPR, and now the UK also has the OSA. Then there are the incompatible privacy laws (for instance, EU courts have considered DNT as a legal measure to deter tracking, while several American states ban explicitly prevent the DNT header from counting). Oh, and of course, any website with any kind of user-submittable content is subject to laws like the DMCA and the recent EU anti-CSAM laws which put site operators in grave legal risk.
I don't even know what laws apply to the Middle East, Africa, or South America, but I'm sure there are enough of them to make most sites culpable in some way.