Comment on UK Introduces Full Social Media Ban For Under 16s - Including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.

recursivepickle@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• tenebrisnox@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  How would politicians get their class A drugs delivered if they banned under-16s from Telegram?

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• tal@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  They say that they intentionally aren’t targeting messaging services, so Telegram might be exempt.

  This would capture user-to-user platforms, whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material, alongside algorithms. The ban will therefore include platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. We do not intend for messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal to be included in the social media ban.

  That being said, I’m a little fuzzy on how this is targeting communicating with strangers, since I’d imagine that more people do that via messaging platforms than, say, YouTube:

  In a move to protect children online and address the scale of the challenge, the government will also go further than a blanket ban on social media with world-leading blocks on harmful functions such as livestreaming and stranger communication with children for under-16s. These restrictions – which together with the ban go further than any other country – will apply to a wider range of online services, including on gaming sites.

  That’s a good point on Rumble, though.

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_(company)

  Rumble, Inc. is a Canadian-American online video platform, web hosting, and cloud services business[8][9] headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with its U.S. headquarters in Longboat Key, Florida. It was founded in 2013 by Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian technology entrepreneur. Rumble’s cloud services business hosts Truth Social, and the video platform is popular among American conservative and far-right users. Rumble has been described as “alt-tech”.

  Rumble received investment from venture capitalists Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy and JD Vance in May 2021, with that round of funding valuing Rumble at around $500 million.[21] In October 2021, Rumble acquired Locals.[22] On December 14, 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced that it entered a “wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement” with Rumble in a statement that also stated that Rumble would operate part of Truth Social as well as TMTG.[23]

  And in that vein, gab.com:

  gab.com

  You won’t find Gab on the Apple App Store or Google Play. We’ve been banned since 2017 for refusing to censor speech that Big Tech demanded we remove. But you can still get our app on your phone—and it works just as well as any native app.

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)

  Gab is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service. Widely described as a haven for far-right and alt-right users, Gab has attracted users and groups who have been banned from other social media platforms and users seeking alternatives to mainstream social media platforms. Founded in 2016 and launched publicly in May 2017, Gab claims to promote free speech, individual liberty, the “free flow of information online”, and Christian values. Researchers and journalists have characterized these assertions as an obfuscation of its extremist ecosystem.

  And 4chan, while I’m on that:

  www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko

  The UK online safety regulator Ofcom has fined the US messaging platform 4Chan a total of £520,000 for failing to comply with various aspects of the Online Safety Act.

  It includes £450,000 for failing to put in age checks to prevent children from seeing pornography on the platform.

  However, a lawyer representing the company - which has previously said it won’t pay such fines - has responded to the demand with an AI-generated cartoon image of a hamster.

  In a follow-up post on X, 4Chan’s lawyer Preston Byrne wrote: “In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment.”

  [additional image of hamster]

  The latest image is not the first picture of a hamster lawyers for 4chan have sent in reply to Ofcom

  Like, if part of the net effect winds up being a transfer of Britain’s children and teenagers from websites that care about and follow British regulations to websites — some of which are hard right — that do not care about British regulation, it will be interesting.

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  • recursivepickle@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I’m thinking they might be using the definition from Digital Services Tax policies, which state that:

    The social media definition focuses on two key aspects of user participation. An online service will meet the definition when both of the following conditions are met:

    • The main purpose, or one of the main purposes, of the service is to promote interaction between users (including interaction between users and user-generated content).
    • Making content generated by users available to other users is a significant feature of the service.

    https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/digital-services-tax/dst14200

    If that’s the case, then Rumble et al would be banned too. It might just be, that the press release just mentions the most popular ones.

    That they don’t intend to target messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Signal (and potentially Telegram) is a bit of a greyzone. Telegram is more social network than messaging app these days, where channels are a huge part of the platform. In fact, it’s such an important part, that WhatsApp copied the Channel feature to their platform.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Rumble would be banned too

      Yeah, but my point isn’t really that some services, probably including Rumble, won’t care about regulatory action. So the next action, if this continues, would presumably be the British government doing what Russia did, which is mandating that British ISPs set up to block access to government-specified hosts.

      Then the VPNs and similar come out, and presumably if it keeps going, again, the UK does what Russia did, which is disallow commercial VPNs from operating in the UK without blocking traffic to said hosts internal to the VPN.

      Then the next step is things like VPNs that rely on data harvesting instead of commercial sales, so can’t be pressured by payment processors operating in jurisdictions that don’t care about legal action, Tor, DIY proxies (e.g. get cheap VPS in random place, run SOCKS proxy/VPN), and so on. At some point, the British government stops following up, and someone starts making one-click solutions juuust beyond what enforcement goes after.

      Telegram is more social network tham messaging app these days

      Ah, gotcha, thanks — I don’t use it.

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      • recursivepickle@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        That, yes. They had to arrest Durov before he started doing anything about Telegram.

        I have no notes on the rest of your points, it will likely be a gigantic shitshow.

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