
UK government’s plans to regulate the internet are a threat to free speech - timthorn
https://freespeechunion.org/why-the-governments-plans-to-regulate-the-internet-are-a-threat-to-free-speech/
======
commandlinefan
What I’m becoming more painfully aware of with each passing year is that “free
speech” is actually (sadly) a very unpopular ideal. We haven’t really had it
in a long time, and we have less of it with each passing year - cheered on by
a not insignificant majority.

~~~
umvi
"The problem with freedom is that people abuse it and cause harm to others."

Edit: (to be clear, I do not personally believe this, just offering a little
insight as to how the "not insignificant majority" think)

~~~
macinjosh
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Words are just words. One may hear or read words that provoke them to violence
or other negative behavior but blaming the speech in whole or in part removes
agency from those who _choose_ to react in a negative way.

~~~
jonplackett
Words can't hurt directly, in that exact moment, but the consequences of them
sure can.

There has to be a line doesn't there? Is outright racism, or encouraging
others to kill or do other bad things OK, because it's just words?

~~~
mythrwy
There's a pretty clear line at incitement to violence.

~~~
pjc50
Absolutely not. There's loads of stuff that makes it into mass shooter
manifestoes that has clearly been part of inciting them to violence, but can't
be cleanly traced back to a specific individual telling them to pull the
trigger. Have a look at the subject of "stochastic terrorism".

~~~
mythrwy
You are on the slope. The slippery slope.

~~~
jonplackett
Weeeee! Sooo sliperyyyyyyyyyyyy.....

------
bennyp101
It will no doubt fall at the last hurdle.

Another attempt to 'control' the thing they don't understand, ignore any
technical advisors, and play to the crowds.

Unfortunately there are a vocal group who want little Johnny protected from
the big bad internet, and who have no desire to educate him themselves, so
want a Gov approved scheme - and these sort of plans fit nicely into that.

Hopefully common sense prevails again.

Edit: If it does go through, hopefully it will be a UK Gov Tech project, and
will go so horribly over budget and time that it will be scrapped after
declaring some allowedwords.txt was a success

~~~
CraigJPerry
I've been really impressed by GDS, i know it's popular to bash on the gov but
in this case, i really think it's mis-placed, they've been really good. Take a
peek under the covers and see that their work was adopted in other nations
too: [https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-
digit...](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-
service)

Now if we're talking about a public tender then of course i agree completely.
Are Capita still blocking new Army recruits due only to systems issues 12
years later...

~~~
bennyp101
Sure, I agree that a lot of what GDS have done is pretty cool - but it would
more than likely fall to Capita (and probably somehow shoehorn G4S in there) -
and disappear in a hole of money

------
djohnston
The last 5 years have really made question the benefits of free speech in our
hyperconnected world. My knee jerk reaction to defend free speech has
certainly been dampened by the efficacy of disinformation campaigns in the
West.

~~~
mrec
I think you have a very rose-tinted view of how these restrictions would be
applied, and by whom. The power to decide what counts as "disinformation"
would be the most valuable political real estate there is.

~~~
_jal
Exactly. If you want to see how this works in the real world, you're in luck,
it is playing out right now in the Philippines and Hungary.

If you find yourself saying, "yes, but it could work if only...", I'd suggest
you are failing to understand human nature.

------
sudoaza
Not surprising from the government who has imprisoned and tortured Julian
Assange for managing a news site.

------
crocodiletears
Could somebody in the know explain what this would change with respect to free
speech in the UK, outside of just taking things a little upstream?

The country's government's already attempted to imprison a guy who taught a
dog to perform the Nazi salute as a prank[0], sentenced a woman to community
service for posting rap lyrics[1], visit your house for having the wrong
opinions on the internet[2, 3, 4, 5]…

So exactly what is being preserved by taking things a little further, and just
preventing the speech it doesn't like in the first place?

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2018/03...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2018/03/21/for-weeks-he-trained-a-dog-to-do-a-nazi-salute-the-
man-was-just-convicted-of-a-hate-crime/)

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
merseyside-43816921](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
merseyside-43816921)

[2]
[https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/12/20/37275129/fightin...](https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/12/20/37275129/fighting-
on-twitter-in-the-uk-you-could-be-arrested-for-that)

[3] [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
surrey-47638527](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-47638527)

[4] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-
investigated...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated-
police-retweeting-transgender-limerick/)

[5] [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-
peo...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-people-a-day-
in-fight-against-web-trolls-b8nkpgp2d)

~~~
sebmellen
The UK is a police state, and the ideal of free speech is certainly dead there
(unless, perhaps, you're willing to share some unsavory views at a Madrasa)
[0].

[0]: [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/10/islamist-
ex...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/10/islamist-extremism-
remains-dominant-uk-terror-threat-say-experts)

------
rootsudo
We're okay with social media companies regulating free speech, but draw the
line at governments.

Ironic, isn't it? And yes, I'm well aware that Governments should endorse and
not stifle free speech, but this message is propagated on social media
platforms.

The very systems that enable voice and disable voices because it's a violation
of "Terms of Services" or in other words, revenue.

But then again, governments grant rights, and social media tech companies,
don't. Right?

~~~
msla
> We're okay with social media companies regulating free speech, but draw the
> line at governments.

> Ironic, isn't it?

Not unless you're Alanis Morissette.

The difference is the concept of monopoly: A government has a monopoly on
being a government in a given region. That's pretty fundamental to what a
government even is, as per Weber and Westphalia. A social media company isn't
a monopoly on being a social media company. You can talk online without using
Twitter, or Reddit, or Facebook, or even Hacker News.

~~~
Sargos
You can talk in the physical world without being in any particular country so
none of the governments have a monopoly either. With that definition we don't
even really need the concept of free speech as you always have a choice of
where to speak.

Social media sites have network effects and if you make your own site to put
your speech on then nobody will ever see it. If you actually want to interact
with others then you need to go on a big site that has a monopoly on the
speech of that group of people. It's not that much different than a government
and if we want to keep the concept of freedom of speech then we need to
discuss whether those rights also apply in some way to public forums.

------
Hitton
This would be more concerning if free speech wasn't limited so much already.
Screws are already tightened so much you will barely notice difference.

~~~
anentropic
Oh, you are right - I hadn't noticed, but now I am concerned. In what ways is
free speech "limited so much already"?

~~~
Hitton
Few examples [0] from 5 years ago. Since then it became worse.

[0]: [https://reason.com/2015/04/26/the-slow-death-of-free-
speech-...](https://reason.com/2015/04/26/the-slow-death-of-free-speech-in-
britain/)

------
raxxorrax
The current generation of legislators clearly overexert themselves. They try
to achieve something, fail and then try even harder next time. That is not
restricted to the UK.

In Germany we already got our internet corp Ermächtigungsgesetz. All with good
intentions of course... Gladly it had little effect outside of German
platforms, which are pretty much non-existent.

------
Cro_on
Apologies in advance for my lacking content comment.

I'd just like to point out the large quantity of greyed out comments on this
thread...

------
tpmx
For those of us not paying attention to UK-specific stuff.. did that default-
on porn filter legislation happen? How is this different?

------
abraxas
Elections have consequences.

~~~
raxxorrax
Not on this issue in Europe. Almost every party feels powerless and blindly
tries to get power over content. Many parties are even afraid of democracy by
now.

~~~
Shared404
> Not on this issue in Europe.

> Many parties are even afraid of democracy by now.

So they are afraid of the consequences of elections?

~~~
jlokier
For the same reason that regular people are afraid of the consequences of
elections.

It's heartbreaking, and for some life-ruining, what awful things the other
side[1] do when they get in. Democracy is no game.

[1] for each individual's value of "other side".

~~~
Consultant32452
"Democracy is people who run businesses well being forced to run businesses
poorly by people who can't run businesses at all." ~ Michael Malice

Just extrapolate this principle to everything people vote on.

------
Mindwipe
Thankfully the Online Harms bill as has been pitched simply has no chance of
ever coming to pass.

It's now supposed to do so many things that it simply can't work, it's too
big, too encompassing, and too vague. It will fall apart under it's own
weight.

------
drummer
The solution here of course is to stop voting and giving away your
souvereignty to politicians (criminals) who will rule over you by force.

------
justanotheranon
free speech should only be allowed for people to express Correct ideas.
namely, ideas that i happen to agree with.

everyone else should not have the right to free speech, and if they do speak
freely, then they are Fascists who deserve to be arrested, tried, convicted
and shot.

sadly, while this sounds like hyperbole or sarcasm, this is exactly what a
large percentage of people really do believe.

you can't have free speech when a near majority wants to abolish it.
therefore, ot's already too late.

Free Speech RIP

------
tialaramex
I'm going to guess that many readers from this US-focused site have assumed
this is like the ACLU or something but for Britain. It er... is not.

It's a platform for Toby Young in particular, and a cadre of fragile Right
Wing "intellectuals" to insist that it's wrong for anybody to even criticise
their bullshit.

This gives you some sort of idea:
[https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/4agqbn/toby-young-free-
sp...](https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/4agqbn/toby-young-free-speech-union)

I actually clicked this link before noticing the affiliation, because I
thought it might have technical content and _that_ would actually be
interesting. It doesn't.

So, ignore Toby Young, but as usual for HN people probably aren't much
interested in the actual article so much as the headline anyway, here's the
technical consequences of the "plan" if you want to call it that.

This government (and its predecessor) have a core plan that relies on how the
Internet worked in like 2016. Much of what people do is unencrypted and even
when it's encrypted you can at least identify who they're talking to. So your
backstop is that if sites are unco-operative (and we can assume many actively
criminal and terrorist sites will not cheerfully co-operate) you block them in
DNS. This is a known quantity, you can buy DNS blocking appliances at ISP
scale. You can budget for it. The service providers will want so-and-so much
money, you make them pass the cost on to their subscribers, hopefully it's not
enough to cause push back that loses too many votes.

However even this limited plan isn't actually _popular_ (it polls badly with
certain groups and it's too technical for your doorstep representatives to
have any hope of justifying their position so best to shut up about it) and
from 2016 onward the British government has had _plenty_ of more important
things to do. This plan keeps getting kicked into the long grass. To be clear:
It's a government plan, the government _could_ make time for it on the
legislative agenda, this isn't like a US House bill that Mitch won't even read
let alone bring to a vote in the Senate - but they are far too busy to
prioritise this.

Meanwhile it is now 2020. Meanwhile DPRIVE is deployed and ECH (what was once
eSNI and now encrypts more stuff) is starting to shape up. So the DNS blocking
strategy doesn't do anything any more. Now you'd have to rewrite the plan,
invent new ISP-scale blocking appliances, goodness knows what those cost and
what other problems they introduce, and you still haven't even _tried_ to see
if your plan does anything, much less achieves whatever nebulous goals are in
your current white paper.

~~~
12elephant
Is it really that they don't want people to criticize their bullshit?

Or is it that they don't want their bullshit to be censored off the face of
the planet? Whether or not we agree with their views, should they not be able
to express themselves, and how they truly feel?

Imagine if your criticism of their viewpoints was being censored instead, so
they got to speak un-opposed and un-criticized.

I constantly hear that people should "be themselves", and "should not be made
ashamed of who they are". It appears this advice falls down when the people
aren't who we want them to be, or hold views we consider "wrong".

If I hate a specific ethnic group, how else do you expect me to change, if not
through sharing my views and then being challenged on those views. If you
censor such a person, would you not then further radicalize them?

~~~
tialaramex
> Is it really that they don't want people to criticize their bullshit?

Yes. Specifically the idea is to insist on the usual "balance" argument. If
this BLM activist can say that police shot the unarmed black man in the back
seven times for no apparent reason then a 9/11 Truther ought to be able to say
that Jews blew up the Twin Towers using mind control.

If you say wait a second, but one of those is a fact about the world and the
other is an insane conspiracy theory, then to them you're now a censor, an
opponent of Free Speech.

They actually give the example of fact checking interventions from popular
social media sites. In their opinion this fact checking is biased against
them. If you watch a typical Flat Earth conspiracy video on Youtube for
example it will add a fact checking piece to the UI that explains that er, no,
it isn't and here's how we know.

People like Toby think that ought not to happen, because who are we to go
around dismissing things as untrue just because of all the evidence against
them?

Now, a cynic might think that professional contrarian Toby Young, who makes
his living saying stuff that's obviously wrong benefits enormously from this
useless "balance" and that's why he is in favour of it.

But who am I to assume such base motives. Maybe Toby is just very stupid and
actually believes every word he says.

~~~
12elephant
> If you say wait a second, but one of those is a fact about the world and the
> other is an insane conspiracy theory, then to them you're now a censor, an
> opponent of Free Speech.

No, if you remove the video from YouTube on the grounds of "removing false
information" you're a censor. This is what has happened to e.g. Alex Jones,
Milo, and many others for example.

By all means, leave a comment denouncing their idiocy. Make a response video
showing why they're wrong. Whatever. But don't remove the video FFS. It just
makes them believe it more.

You said it yourself: "the other is an insane conspiracy theory". That's
obvious to you, and its obvious to 99% of people. So why do you feel the need
to remove it?

~~~
konaraddi
False information spreads fast [0] and has real world consequences [1]

[0] [https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-
travels-f...](https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-
faster-true-stories-0308)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-
us-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-
cases.html) edit: to be clear, I think some lives could've been saved if we
took it more seriously.

------
AnotherRainyDay
Powered by AWS.

------
s0l1dsnak3123
Free Speech Union is a right-wing libertarian think tank headed by Toby Young,
who has a bit of a reputation for being a clown. A good summary here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv_kUE6t7n8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv_kUE6t7n8)

~~~
nickff
I have no idea who Toby Young is, but why describe FSU as "right-wing
libertarian"? Are they just normal libertarians? The vast majority of
libertarians do not self-identify as being 'right-wing'.

~~~
dragonwriter
> but why describe FSU as "right-wing libertarian"?

I would guess, from everything I've seen about Young and the FSU, because it
is.

> Are they just normal libertarians?

Well, right-libertarians are a common subset of normal libertarians (in the
US, most—but not remotely all—who identify as libertarians are right-
libertarians, non-right libertarians are more likely to identify differently,
but I don't think that that soft tendency applies to the UK, at least in the
same degree.) So, sure in one sense they are “normal libertarians” but not
representative of the broader group, AFAICT.

> The vast majority of libertarians do not self-identify as being 'right-
> wing'.

So? The FSU is not the vast majority of libertarians, and descriptions of
someone's policy position can be independent of their self-identification.

A Nazi doesn't become a moderate just because they self identify as
“moderate”.

~~~
unishark
My understanding of the major libertarian groups in the US is that they side
with the left on social issues like culture war, abortion, and secularism.
They side with the right on economic issues like free markets. They like to
make a 2D political compass to explain this difference. Insisting on placing
them on an extreme on a 1D axis seems like an insistence on speaking in half-
truths. At least they should be placed near the center yes. People tend to do
this when they focus on narrow issues and ignore the rest. E.g. to someone who
only cares about opposing gun control, a centrist who supports it is on the
left in their eyes.

------
confounded
I’m strongly opposed to just about everything the UK government has done or
proposed involving the internet, but the ‘Free Speech Union’ is an awful
source to have on HN.

The FSU is entirely a product of the “culture wars” of the outrage
manufacturing twitterati, and offers to protect members from “feminist
professors”.

The UK’s Open Rights Group is the closest thing to a UK EFF (founded by
Doctorow), and is generally a better source for policy like this.

Here’s their wiki page on the Online Harms Bill[1], and opinion on its policy
impact[2].

[1]:
[https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Online_Harms_white_pap...](https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Online_Harms_white_paper)

[2]: [https://www.openrightsgroup.org/publications/org-policy-
resp...](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/publications/org-policy-responses-to-
online-harms-white-paper/)

~~~
colpabar
> _If you’re no-platformed by a university—a feminist professor who challenges
> trans orthodoxy, for instance—we’ll encourage you to fight back and members
> of our advisory councils may be able to tell you what remedies are available
> to you._

it's actually the opposite - it's claiming if you _are_ a feminist professor,
they may help you.

~~~
regularfry
"challenges trans orthodoxy" is _definitely_ picking a side.

~~~
SuddsMcDuff
They're picking the side of those who are no-platformed. That's the point.

~~~
regularfry
Yes, and they are utterly disingenuous in doing so. "Free speech" has _nothing
whatsoever_ to do with the examples they've picked for their front page. "Free
speech" is protection from persecution _by the state_. What they're arguing
for is freedom from social consequences. Not only that, but the specific
example they've picked could almost be designed to highlight a specific
culture-war position; given that their front-man is Toby Young, it's hardly
surprising that they're difficult to interpret as anything close to
politically neutral.

~~~
SuddsMcDuff
Saying that they're arguing for freedom from social consequences is a very
black and white way of looking at things. They're not arguing for that at all.
But they are pushing back, necessarily I would say, against those who seek to
shut down and marginalize people who hold opinions they deem to be unworthy.

Without any resistance whatsoever from groups like the FSU, the social
consequences you mention will tend to spiral into something quite ugly.

------
koonsolo
The nanny state... I heard this expression about 15 years ago, and it is still
true today.

------
burlesona
I agree with the concerns that society is raising with unlimited free speech
at scale via the internet today. Radicalization is a real problem.

But I think decentralization and legal liability are better solutions. Drop
section 230 and it becomes legally fraught and prohibitively expensive for
Facebook to allow disinformation and hate groups to organize on its platform.

Get serious about anti-trust so that one monopoly / monopsony isnt allowed to
own another and now Facebook and Instagram have to be split up, as well as
Google and YouTube.

In a decentralized world with many more small networks, the scariest stuff
(like state sponsored election manipulation) becomes much, much harder. With
the addition of legal liability for the content your platform distributes, I
think we’d see a shift toward far more HN-like sites and far less Facebook
dominance.

Finally, consider that our democratic process in the US needs to be more
resistant to polarization and radicalization. First past the post voting and a
lack of proportional representation are the key drivers of broken democracy in
the US over the last thirty years. These are fixable!

~~~
rayiner
> But I think decentralization and legal liability are better solutions. Drop
> section 230 and it becomes legally fraught and prohibitively expensive for
> Facebook to allow disinformation and hate groups to organize on its
> platform.

No it doesn’t. Because of free speech laws in the US, there is no legal
liability for whatever it is you are calling “disinformation and hate groups.”
Moderation has created remedies against speech that have never existed before.

> Finally, consider that our democratic process in the US needs to be more
> resistant to polarization and radicalization. First past the post voting and
> a lack of proportional representation are the key drivers of broken
> democracy in the US over the last thirty years.

How would proportional representation work? It seems like most approaches
would deemphasize the states, which would cause more polarization in my
opinion. The polarization is driven by the fact that folks in New York want to
micromanage folks in Iowa in a way that rarely happens even in unitary
countries, much less putatively federal ones. In Bavaria they recently passed
a law requiring Christian crosses to be displayed in all public buildings.
Nobody is getting the federal government of Germany involved to overturn that
law. But that’s the playbook for achieving any social change (sometimes good,
sometimes bad) here in the US. Of course Germany manages to have a robust
federal system as well as proportional representation, but the focus on voting
reform seems to be mainly on increasing the power of the central government.

~~~
throwawayffffas
> No it doesn’t. Because of free speech laws in the US, there is no legal
> liability for whatever it is you are calling “disinformation and hate
> groups.” Moderation has created remedies against speech that have never
> existed before

Section 230 absolves online platforms that feature user generated content from
publisher liabilities, by revoking it facebook would be liable for everything
on its platform. For example if someone posts on facebook that a certain
vaccine causes hair loss, with section 230 revoked the manufacturer of said
vaccine could sue facebook for libel.

Edit: typos

~~~
likpok
Section 230 allows Facebook to do moderation without exposing it to liability
for everything on the platform. Look at the original motivation: Stratton
Oakmont v. Prodigy, where Prodigy's anti-porn moderation meant that Stratton
was able to sue them for defamation.

Revoking it would mean Facebook would do _less_ moderating. I do not think
this will have the effect on disinformation that you want.

One thing to note here: Stratton Oakmont was suing Prodigy because someone
posted a comment saying that they were criminals. The subject of the comment,
Danny Porush, went to federal prison for securities fraud. All this is to say:
the original comment was likely true and the lawsuit was disinformation.

