Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About

It's always a bit fuzzy to me what kind of articles belong in this community compared to other "world news" communities.

But IMO this is the perfect exemplar. It's obviously news that's just straight-up not about Australia. It's not written for an Australian audience, even. But it's about a subject that has been getting a lot of Australian-specific attention in recent weeks. The parallels are perfect.

privacy-invading, freedom-crushing, technically unworkable

It's literally a lose-lose-lose policy. It has basically no redeeming qualities. The fact that in the UK it's age 18 and here it's age 16, and for them it's about porn while for us it's social media, is immaterial. It's just bad, poorly thought-out policy. They need to go back to the drawing board.

edit: oh, and a great comment under the article too:

The big issue with people looking at naughty things on the internet is the same problem with the drug war. With normal crimes you have a victim who goes to the police and says "I have been wronged, please catch the criminal who wronged me." Here, there is no victim. There are simply moral scolds standing about, apropos nothing, wringing their hands that someone somewhere might be doing something they don't like, maybe, and we must turn over heaven and Earth to find them (or at least to find someone in the name of doing "something").

1 comments

It's always a bit fuzzy to me what kind of articles belong in this community compared to other "world news" communities.
But IMO this is the perfect exemplar. It's obviously news that's just straight-up not about Australia. It's not written for an Australian audience, even. But it's about a subject that has been getting a lot of Australian-specific attention in recent weeks. The parallels are perfect.
privacy-invading, freedom-crushing, technically unworkable
It's literally a lose-lose-lose policy. It has basically no redeeming qualities. The fact that in the UK it's age 18 and here it's age 16, and for them it's about porn while for us it's social media, is immaterial. It's just bad, poorly thought-out policy. They need to go back to the drawing board.
edit: oh, and a great comment under the article too:
The big issue with people looking at naughty things on the internet is the same problem with the drug war. With normal crimes you have a victim who goes to the police and says "I have been wronged, please catch the criminal who wronged me." Here, there is no victim. There are simply moral scolds standing about, apropos nothing, wringing their hands that someone somewhere might be doing something they don't like, maybe, and we must turn over heaven and Earth to find them (or at least to find someone in the name of doing "something").