Comment by HDThoreaun
5 days ago
HN is extremely pro free speech and the UK has recently decided to engage in censorship. Part of the issue users here reckon with is the recency. Unlike many authoritarian countries that seem hopeless with regards to free speech the UKs censorship is a recent development that many think can still be undone through political action. Similar to takes on why Israel is being protested when places like sudan arent.
Indeed: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce83pj1ggmeo
In the uk you can very much be imprisoned for "hate speech", which in my view is a form of censorship.
This has passed me by - can you give me some specific examples?
I personally don't feel limited in my speech, but I'm willing to accept that I may be wrong
Nobody I know in real life is talking about censorship or free speech in the UK
My dear friend, please start with the online safety act, and continue with the recent developments regarding age verification and/or device scanning on all operating systems to check for nudity. No, nobody is talking about it here, but we should be.
"Nobody I know is talking about censorship" is a certified HN banger.
I don't know, I would expect it to come up in the pub or something if people were concerned about it, it's not like we have the thought police here
2 replies →
The UK has a censorship bureau, ofcom. The example that comes up most here is 4chan, which the UK is currently trying to ban because they refuse to do age verification. If you read the threads here you will see other stories. One that sticks out to me is someone who was talking about their struggles running a forum about depression. They live in canada and were contacted by ofcom demanding the forum add age verification, cant totally remember the reason but it was something about kids being able to access talk about depression. Ofcom said that if he doesnt add age verification to his forum he will be arrested if he ever enters the UK. He even blocked uk IPs but they said that wasnt enough. We can quibble about whether age verification is a form of censorship, I think it clearly is, if only because it is a large regulatory hurdle that stops people from hosting forums because its too much regulatory work.
The UK also has a very broad definition of hate speech that many users here detest.
Makes sense, thank you. I am opposed to the age verification laws that we have introduced recently.
> Nobody I know in real life is talking about censorship or free speech in the UK
Yeah because free speech has never really been a core value in the UK
They’re talking about British hate speech laws. They think other countries have universal free speech and they absolutely do not, but for some reason they think Britain goes too far. Although “think” is probably too generous - they’re parroting talking points.
The downvoters are welcome to offer actual counterarguments.
>HN is extremely pro free speech
It is most definitively not, at least in the 10ish year's I've lurked.
It is "pro free speech" in the sense Elon Musk is a "free speech absolutist": in pretty much the diametrically opposed meaning of the phrase.
> HN is extremely pro free speech
They like to think so. But if someone makes a comment that goes against the groupthink here, they will get downvoted, flagged, and shadow-banned.