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The farce of the Online Safety Act. YouGov tweets are now being censored – politicalbetting.com

Last week the Online Safety Act came into force and as long predicted it is a bloody mess as we can see social media companies such as Twitter having to censor content regarding the act which is an Orwellian nightmare, the screenshot above shows a YouGov tweet having to be hidden.

Read the full story here

This is odd - presumably a Kiss Cam in the T&C?

Otherwise, how could it be done?

You've probably replied to the wrong message but kisscams are standard at American sports to fill in the interminable gaps in what passes for sport over there: baseball, NFL, monster trucks.

So kisscams will no doubt be a standard rider in any stadium tickets.

On-topic question: When somebody says they "have to" do something because of the OSA how do we know this is not due to them taking an erroneous or absurdly risk-averse approach to it? Esp if they are an avowed opponent of the legislation.

Have a look at this.

The onus is no longer to remove ‘harmful’ content, it is to stop it being posted in the first place.

The illegal content duties are not just about removing existing illegal content; they are also about stopping it from appearing at all. Platforms need to think about how they design their sites to reduce the likelihood of them being used for criminal activity in the first place.

The kinds of illegal content and activity that platforms need to protect users from are set out in the Act, and this includes content relating to:

child sexual abuse
controlling or coercive behaviour
extreme sexual violence
extreme pornography
fraud
racially or religiously aggravated public order offences
inciting violence
illegal immigration and people smuggling
promoting or facilitating suicide
intimate image abuse
selling illegal drugs or weapons
sexual exploitation
terrorism

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer

That is going to make the job of the PB mods even more onerous.

I'm pretty sure you don't aspire to becoming a test case for the limits of free speech, as a part time hobby. However much a few PBers might wish you to do so.

Isn't the "platform" Vanilla though?

I don't think that would absolve TSE and Robert from a similar responsibility, even if Vanilla had legal responsibility..
And anyway might actually make it worse. If Vanilla or similar companies fear jeopardy from decisions they don't make, they might just shut sites down without explanation.

The text quoted above says, "Platforms need to think about how they design their sites to reduce the likelihood of them being used for criminal activity in the first place." (emphasis added) It doesn't say they need to achieve perfection in stopping these things from ever being posted.

FPT:

Regarding the OSA. I don't in principle object to age verification in some cases, although certainly not as broad as it is when the likes of Wikipedia are affected. What I can't understand is how the legislation is so badly drafted.

1. Not standardising the verification is plainly a big mistake. Ofcom isn't regulating verfication providers at all, and there are already many examples of trivial spoofing and issues with overreach and data protection.

2. Verfication would be a billion times easier if it was done on a client and end-user basis. Prove your age to Apple or Google once, and then have a frictionless zero-knowledge proof of age available for all apps and services, like any other permission you grant a web browser or app, such as location, camera access etc.

Ofcom have simply washed their hands of standardisation, regulation, and making the verification practical. Ofcom are plainly not competent to enforce the OSA in any meaningful way, and I'm certain will mainly make a song and dance of taking major sites to task when they inevitably get things wrong on occassion.

The OSA wants binning, as does Ofcom.

Were Ofcom the people who asked for OSA or merely the people told to sort it out without being given any resources to do so.

If the latter I’m not surprised they’ve done a quarter arsed job

I don't know but I heard the boss of Ofcom the other day and she acknowledged that most people will choose a VPN over repeatedly verifying their age by giving personal information to God knows who, she also didn't seem to have any issue with how verification was done and seemed to think "the market will decide" what is best. So the boss of Ofcom understands the issues, at least to a degree, but either doesn't feel she needs to push-back or is unwilling to publically voice any opposition, which in my book is more than enough for me to think she's not fit for the job. Any competent person running the organisation should have been telling the government this is a bad idea, it will not work as you want, and will have many bad unintended consequences (people using dodgy VPNs, visiting even dodgier websites, personal information leaks). A competent person would have said wait for standardisation, platform age verification, and regulate or inspect how it is implemented. Give it some sort of Kitemark if you will.

It was exasperating to listen to someone who seems to at least comprehend there are big problems, but also seems unwilling to do anything about them. What's the point of being the boss of Ofcom if you think all your job entails is doing the stupid things the government has told you to do?

Ofcom is another Ofwat in the making.

CEO Andy Byron's moving forward with suing Coldplay for ruing his life.

"A song cost me my family, my job, & everything I built." – he said.

It's good to see Andy taking responsibility for his decision to have an affair.

Arguably there is a partial responsibility for Coldplay in that they called out his bad actions for the world’s attention. Perhaps a judge will determine that they are 20% responsible?

But it’s just a shakedown

It was a considered action by the plaintiff to attend the gig. The same cannot be said of a performer on stage in front of a large audience.

0.2% might be closer to the mark.

Under what tort is he claiming damages, anyway ?
At a public event, reinforced by the terms and conditions on the ticketing, 1st Amendment surely applies.
And what duty of care is owed in those circumstances ?

If Chris Martin hadn’t acted in the way he did no one would have paid attention.

Recklessly acting in such a way as to cause damage?

If the couple themselves hadn't acted the way they did, it's likely that no-one would have noticed. If they'd simply smiled and waved, the camera would have moved on, Chris Martin wouldn't have said anything, and they could well have got away with it. By acting furtively and trying to hide their faces, they were guaranteed to draw attention to themselves.

And equally, they could have appeared on a website or newspaper in a crowd photo, or on a clip on TV, or been recognised by someone who knew them. All the singer did was reference a possible affair, which is hardly a crime

And more than that, if Byron wants to allege defamation they must prove they weren't having an affair.

I imagine he'd allege breach of privacy rights.

Is what is being suggested.

They will be queuing up at court for a ringside seat.

As pointed out, previously, all tickets to concerts come with a "you are accepting that you may be recorded/broadcast" thing in the small print.

But not a “and the singer may broadcast his views of your assumed relationship status to the world and thereby bring your world crashing down about your ears” thing in the small print

Oh FFS, he needs to own the consequences of his actions. If you have an affair there is not an obligation on the rest of the world to cover for you.
A large part of having an affair is ensuring that it is kept secret from your partner, that should determine who, where and how, if you can't manage that then either don't stray, manage the fallout or accept the consequences.

Sure but it wasn’t *solely* he (and her) actions. Chris Martin played a role too, and it was Martin’s actions that caused the damage (Byron simply created a vulnerability)

For goodness sake. This shows no understanding of the law and no common sense.

There's no defamation here because the infidelity does not appear to be in dispute (and in any event, Chris Martin didn't make the accusation in fact - he said they were either having an affair or were very camera shy).

There's no breach of a legitimate expectation of privacy because there is no legitimate expectation of privacy at a concert with thousands of people, a megatron, and standard ticket Ts&Cs.

Your position seems to be that if there is any element of causation, there must be liability. That's wrong - there needs to be a specific and established tort, the elements of which need to be made out. On your argument, a colleague who had simply informed the wife that her husband was having an affair would in some way be liable for damage done to him because, whilst true, she'd not have known but for the colleague. That is hogwash, and has no basis in law or indeed sanity.