MEGA-THREAD: Hysterical Lawmaking and Online overreach

[Artaxerxes II]

https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/a ... ine-safety

When a coroner concluded that social media had played a more than considerable part in the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, it caused global shockwaves.

It was seen by many as big tech’s 'big tobacco' moment, and a wake-up call for Silicon Valley execs who consistently put growth and market share before child safety.

A lot and little has changed since then. In the UK we have an Online Safety Act which meaningfully takes effect next year. The regulator Ofcom will imminently set out its rules for tackling illegal content. But heated debates remain about how to best protect children from the harm of social media. And crucially, platforms are little safer than they were when Molly died.

Bans would have a chilling effect on the progress we’ve made here with the Online Safety Act
Molly was just one of countless young people whose lives are tragically lost to social media. A UK family loses a young person to suicide where technology plays a role every single week.

New research shows the biggest social media sites abjectly failing to tackle suicide and self-harm content and promoting it through aggressive algorithms to children. It is in this climate that there is an understandable push by parents for politicians to do more. To get something done.

As we’ve seen with Australia, much of that has been focussed on banning children under 16 from social media.

While we understand the need to do more, this is fundamentally the wrong approach. This retrograde step that would push risks and bad actors onto gaming and messaging services and leave young people at a cliff-edge of harm when they turn 16.

Bans would have a chilling effect on the progress we’ve made here with the Online Safety Act and put much needed safety-by-design measures on hold. Governments should deliver legislation to make online platforms safe and age-appropriate rather than bans that would paradoxically increase harm in the short to medium term.

Another proposal being floated, including by Josh MacAlister in his Private Members' Bill, is to increase the so-called ‘digital age of consent’ to 16.

We don’t believe this is the best approach. Until we see regulators meaningfully enforce age assurance measures, increasing the age at which parental consent is required will essentially be no more than an academic exercise.

There is also limited if any available evidence of meaningful improvements in children’s safety or wellbeing in Ireland, France or other countries that set a higher age.

The UK government so far has been clear that it doesn't support a ban, and instead looks to the Online Safety Act as the solution. This is the right approach.

The government can and should go further by committing to building on the Online Safety Act with new legislation that can strengthen its core principles and more effectively hold the regulator’s feet to the fire.

Over the last year, structural issues with the Act have emerged. Further legislation can fix these issues and refocus Ofcom’s approach around measurable, sustained harm reduction.

The road to regulation has been slow and grinding. Much more must be done. As we stand at basecamp, we can either be daunted by the journey ahead of us and decide to turn back, or we can redouble our efforts to reach the summit.

Ministers now have a real opportunity to act boldly and decisively to strengthen regulation, and to demonstrate to children and parents that ambitious change is coming. Polling data shows that parents, children and civil society will be right behind them.

A new Online Safety Act is the best way forward to embed a duty of care on social media sites. This isn’t time for backward steps or sticking plaster approaches, but for the government to finish the job and comprehensively protect children from preventable harm.

[Artaxerxes II]

Telegram Founder Promises French Court He Will Strengthen Censorship Program

https://www.rt.com/news/611118-telegram ... ise-court/

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has pledged to strengthen moderation efforts on his social media platform, speaking before a French court on Friday, according to Franceinfo.

The Russian tech mogul, who also holds citizenship in France, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis, was arrested in Paris in August 2024. The French authorities charged him with over a dozen offenses related to illegal content on Telegram, including complicity in the distribution of child pornography and enabling drug trafficking, among other allegations.

Durov was eventually released on bail of €5 million ($5.15 million), but was prohibited from leaving France and required to report to local police twice a week.

During Friday’s hearing, Durov told the court that Telegram is committed to “improving its moderation procedures,” Franceinfo reported. He explained that the platform deletes “between 15 and 20 million user accounts for breaking the law” each month and argued that Telegram is not alone in facing these challenges.

…

When the judges pointed out that many of these moderation initiatives were launched after his arrest in August, Durov said that only at that point was he made “aware of the seriousness of all these facts.”

Durov further stated that Telegram has increased cooperation with the authorities worldwide to combat illegal activity. Over the past six months, the platform has provided user data from approximately 10,000 accounts to law enforcement agencies globally.

[Jim Burton]

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/uk-qu ... t-websites

The U.K. government appears to have quietly scrubbed encryption advice from government web pages, just weeks after demanding backdoor access to encrypted data stored on Apple’s cloud storage service, iCloud.

[Jim Burton]

https://circleid.com/posts/chat-control ... -in-europe

Support for the European Union’s contentious Chat Control legislation—designed to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM)—remains strong, yet a rising chorus of opposition now threatens to complicate its path to adoption.

The proposed regulation, formally known as the Danish version of the CSAM scanning law, mandates all messaging platforms to screen user content, including encrypted messages, for illegal material. If passed, implementation could begin as early as October 2025. However, the bill has drawn mounting criticism for jeopardising digital privacy and weakening encryption, a core pillar of secure communications.

[Officerkrupke]

Anti-pedophilia is a trojan horse for authoritarianism and censorship.

[Aspire6]

This bill is aimed at "stopping" child pornography and "keeping kids safe" but it will only make their situation worse. They will not ban encryption nor be able to stop people communicating privately. Large companies will comply but smaller, self-hosted and decentralized places will tell them to fuck off, as they should. Europe will soon complain how the problem is "out of control" a year or two after it goes in, assuming it unfortunately passes. That's when you can point and laugh.

I already use services that would tell them to fuck off and continue to support hosts who run their own decentralized servers elsewhere.

[Not Forever]

This bill is aimed at "stopping" child pornography and "keeping kids safe" but it will only make their situation worse. They will not ban encryption nor be able to stop people communicating privately. Large companies will comply but smaller, self-hosted and decentralized places will tell them to fuck off, as they should. Europe will soon complain how the problem is "out of control" a year or two after it goes in, assuming it unfortunately passes. That's when you can point and laugh.

I already use services that would tell them to fuck off and continue to support hosts who run their own decentralized servers elsewhere.

Which maybe, for them, this situation isn’t so bad: as long as there’s an emergency, they can stockpile resources and build political campaigns on it. I can picture in five years’ time people talking about Mastodon as “the problem” and so on...

And after having required scans of chats, facial scans, and documents on every service with even a bit of popularity, they’ll ask for Tor to be shut down and for Windows operating systems to be monitored, with integrated AI to check whether you’re using it “correctly.”

They can profit from it—economically and politically—for a century.

[BLueRibbon]

[A]fter having required scans of chats, facial scans, and documents on every service with even a bit of popularity, they’ll ask for Tor to be shut down and for Windows operating systems to be monitored, with integrated AI to check whether you’re using it “correctly.”

This is really as much of a 'fuck you' to non-MAPs as it is to MAPs.

It's an outrageously impractical and mal-intentioned proposition that will mostly leak nudes of random people to the police

I'll publish an article summarizing my thoughts this weekend.

[Not Forever]

This is really as much of a 'fuck you' to non-MAPs as it is to MAPs.

In my country there was a scandal recently because of pirated/pornographic content spread online, and there are already politicians starting to propose the abolition (unfeasible, I hope) of online anonymity.

The scariest part? There were so many people agreeing with it, talking about accountability, saying things like, “Well, we’re a democracy so it’s not that serious if there’s stricter control over the internet”, and so on… lots of people ready with their ID in hand to be scanned. It was unsettling.

[Liyowo]

Anti-pedophilia is a trojan horse for authoritarianism and censorship.

This. 100% this. That sums it all up.