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Wow: subreddit r/osawars — discussion of pros and cons of the UK Online Safety Act — has been banned from Reddit
I have no idea why, possibly just a editorial burp or maybe something more strategic about not wanting to potentially risk being seen as hosting circumvention discussions:
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I’m sorry, but the solution to Online Safety Act Age-Verification age-gating & censorship blocks is *not* to call on platforms to “ban the UK”; here I shall respectfully explain why…
Some folk, including Thomas Pearson with 115k followers on TikTok, are calling for big global platforms to shun the UK in order to “…make the UK Government lose money, and fast”. In this instance this is the wrong approach, it will cause harm, it won’t work, and here I shall explain why: Who am I?
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Online Safety Act was botched from the start | The Times
[the…] secretary of state … expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather
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James Baker of @OpenRightsGroup: son is using East Anglia fishing videos to circumvent Google’s AI age verification profiling
The kids are alright, it’s the politicians who are a mess: Chatting to son: “…so do you think your youtube account will pass AI age verification?” His reply: “I think I’m safe with all the Hearts of Iron 4 guides, but I’m going to watch a six hour video of the best fishing spots in
age verification ai censorship google James baker online safety online safety act open rights group profiling surveillance YouTubeFediverse reactions
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I’m amazed that this proposal got past both the Home Office & DSIT who presumably would first and foremost see it as potential destruction of evidence…
…on the grounds that everyone is a potential predator. Tom’s Hardware: The UK government has instructed citizens to delete old emails and pictures to help conserve water, following the announcement of a “nationally significant” water shortage. However, the advice isn’t up to snuff, as deleting emails and pictures should have no significant effect on water
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Westminster is hoping that all the fuss about the OSA is going to die down, because it’s just a bunch of nerds; in the meantime American senators are starting to say shit like this:
The UK now requires ID to read about Middle East politics, visit r/stopsmoking and listen to almost any hip hop music online. After this ruling, using Wikipedia could be next. Once sites require age verification for the UK, there’s little stopping them doing the same in the US.
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What does the government think an algorithm is? | tommorris.org
It’s perfectly reasonable to want to prevent the harms of The Algorithm. Whether we can do so in a practical and effective way is the really tough question. We can all provide a putative definition of The Algorithm by pointing to bad stuff on popular online platforms. But writing laws is quite a lot tougher.
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How long do you reckon before advanced fee fraud scammers start to include “age verification” requests?
It’s very much of the moment, so I’m expecting within a month…
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U.K.’s Online Safety Act Censors the Internet—A Preview of U.S. Proposals | R Street Institute
Ofcom hates SpongeBob GIFs & videos: It even includes “[c]ontent which realistically depicts serious violence against a fictional creature.” Such a definition would not only prohibit minors from accessing historical and newsworthy content about wars—but many episodes of SpongeBob (if posted to social media), including but not limited to “No Weenies Allowed.” This is not
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Could Wikipedia be censored in the UK? | John Lubbock
They spent years and multiple consultations trying to figure out how to do Age Verification, and were repeatedly told that it would have negative consequences for privacy, and be easy to bypass. ‘We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!’ we were told by its supporters. Well, this is the result. Subreddits
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The Facial-Recognition Sham | The Atlantic
Losing anonymous internet access means giving companies and government agencies more power than ever to track our activities online. It means transforming the American conception of the open internet into something reminiscent of the centralized tracking systems we’ve long opposed in China and similar countries. At this moment, the prospect of an internet linked to
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18 days ago: “The main change is only for users in the UK. Version 1.105 introduces legally-required Age Assurance for users in the United Kingdom to access certain moderation settings and DMs”
Reminder: we are currently the only country in the world having this illiberal, misconceived, ignorantly architected stupidity thrust upon us.
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