Can you point to the part of the bill that doesn't protect speech they don't approve of? I'm aware the UK Labour Party is in favor of censorship of disapproved topics [1], but I couldn't see any in this bill.
> Can you point to the part of the bill that doesn't protect speech they don't approve of?
Pornography is speech - and the age verification provisions effectively mean any non-mass scale platform in the UK will have to remove all adult content because the costs of age verifying every visitor are insane.
In US, it was when attempts by the courts to define what distinguishes protected speech from obscenity ended up with the judge proclaiming, "I know it when I see it" (i.e. there was no clear articulable standard).
I think there is a widely accepted view that children have limited rights, that may include free speech - porn included. They have no right to vote in all countries, no right to drink in most, no right to own guns (looking at USA mainly), so a limit on free speech does not look like a new approach to children's rights.
While this is generally true for any regulation ... for small businesses we do have one approach to address the problem of regulatory compliance: outsourcing to specialized firms. For example small sites can just use an identity provider (maybe something like AuthO presuming they add an age-verification module) which can be easily integrated.
Do you think everything in this world should be doable as a mom and pop business? I don't. For example, I wouldn't want a moon-lighter handling my medical records, or my money accounts and credit cards. We have many examples where limiting who can work in certain spaces has become reasonable.
It isn't that just anyone can demand a platform. This is usually if a debate club/similar invites someone to speak, and then some other body/higher authority steps in who disapproves of the speaker.
Ten+ years ago this happened with Nick Griffin at Durham Union Society. NUS bused in people from other universities to protest/stop the debate, successfully. A few weeks later he appeared on BBC Question Time and was utterly demolished, leading to the BNP being utterly wiped out in the election shortly afterwards.
> This is usually if a debate club/similar invites someone to speak, and then some other body/higher authority steps in who disapproves of the speaker.
And that's totally fair and part of the game we call "democracy".
> A few weeks later he appeared on BBC Question Time and was utterly demolished, leading to the BNP being utterly wiped out in the election shortly afterwards.
It is totally irrelevant, but his party was phagocytised by the UKIP, which made his ideas mainstream. These ideas later infected the Conservative Party and finally they've made it to the very recent Starmer speech to the CBI conference.
Very well; the UK cabinet is now accountable for its policy choices like never before. (Of course the short-term result of that is that they're visibly a shambles, but that's the initial effect of any improvement in transparency).
This has to be a culture difference because that kind of thing would never happen in the US which is why I think people over here have become disillusioned that sunlight works. In fact Cheeto in Chief seemed to have actually proven the opposite, sunlight only served to make the insane people realize they weren't alone and embolden politicians to campaign on that nonsense because it fires up the nutjobs and moderates are stuck voting for them anyway. It's become a game of saying the most unhinged vile shit to keep your name in the news cycle. It genuinely doesn't seem a lot of them even buy into it based on what they do once elected.
Like it's the funniest thing to watch.
campaign: "I'm gonna launch myself into orbit and destroy the Jewish space lazers with my freedom fists"
elected: "Yeah I think we should increase the budget allocation to the department of transportation next fiscal year in anticipation of the harsh winter we're about to have."
It didn't happen here, either in my view. Yes, Griffin got rinsed - but the reason his vote collapsed was not that a small number of people watching Question Time suddenly realised that he wasn't any good. Rather, the rise of UKIP took away the non-fascist right wing protest vote part of his coalition, which was always a lot bigger than the National Front-esque true believers.
We're not even on our first go around this University "free speech" game. A previous Conservative government put anti-no-platform clauses into the Education (No. 2) Act 1986[0] during the previous 'politically correct' moral panic. The practical effect is to require universities themselves to make sure that there are facilities for speakers etc. that their students union refuses to host for political or moral reasons. These duties are still in force.
> that their students union refuses to host for political or moral reasons
Weird, I figured it would be the opposite. I get if students wanted to host someone then the University can't tell them no, but when would the opposite happen. What University is that bad at reading the room? Who are they expecting the audience to be?
The usual scenario is that a bunch of students decide that they want to be principled and/or edgy and invite someone unpopular and/or unpleasant to speak. The SU says 'no, we don't let our space be used for meetings with Nazis/homophobes/Erdogan enthusiasts/whoever', and now the university (imagined by the law as a kind of parent body of the SU) has some legal duties.
I think part of the 'menace' fought by the Act when introduced was the anti-apartheid boycott of South Africa. Many SUs wouldn't platform pro-apartheid speakers, while student Conservative Party clubs generally took the British government line against the ANC and in favour of the SA government.
In the case I mentioned it wasn't the SU's space, it was the debate club's. It wasn't Durham's SU that has the problem, it was the national SU, and they bused in protestors.
Extremists are a kind of mad they don’t like so they are banned. Instead they like vax-people, lizard-people and anti-EU nutcases and so Oxford should give them a platform and maybe even a PhD.
Given lab leak theory was initially censored as "misinformation", and anyone claiming the vaccines did not stop the spread (now proven accurate) were banned from many platforms, I'm not sure this brand of censorship is targeting the correct "insane people".
After all, these policies of 'shoot first, ask questions later' are precisely the opposite of science-based approaches.
We can't ever forget that these policies led to the censorship of topics that later turned out to credible, or true. The atrocious record of this censorship is the stifling of the scientific process.
These policies that you champion not only stifle free speech, they censor credible theories if they happen to not be politically correct.
That's just from one perspective, there's also the massive issue of creating what amount to blasphemy laws. Criticism of certain religions has regularly been punished as "hate speech" in the UK and Europe.
>claiming the vaccines did not stop the spread (now proven accurate)
The opposite was evidentially proven, multiple times. Vaccines stopped the virus transmitting from infected individuals in many if not most interactions:
If you're saying it doesn't 100% eliminate the chance of infection or transmission, no one who knew anything about vaccines ever claimed that.
(As for the lab leak hypothesis, there's still only circumstantial evidence, not enough to conclusively priviledge it above the zoonotic hypothesis. There was even less evidence at the time, and anyone discussing it was only serving to distract from the conversation to blame China, a country that was already doing more than any other country to stop the spread (arguably too much)).
Are you saying that you're comfortable banning conversation of important, unresolved issues? I'm not sure I see your point, and
> There was even less evidence at the time, and anyone discussing it was only serving to distract from the conversation to blame China
is both a very strong assumption about the motivations of those you disagree with, and a very political opinion of yours that many might not agree with.
If anything, this comment of yours seems to contain an example of the exact thing being criticized: limiting certain domains of speech (including certain positions within some domain) for the reason that you don't think it's right, or dangerous, or it doesn't agree with your politics or int'l relations, or w/e.
Nothing in my comment limits speech. You'll note I'm not saying they should have been banned for talking about anything. I'm noting that presenting those topics as if the people who got banned for discussing them were merely presenting facts is incorrect, and a poor defense.
That said, I do believe those who promote actively false or intentionally misleading information (misinformation), especially that which has significant negative impact on the public, do deserve moderator actions, up to and including being banned in some cases.
(Also, discussion of "important, unresolved issues" is rarely resolved by letting random twitter conspiracy theorists say whatever they want.)
>That said, I do believe those who promote actively false or intentionally misleading information (misinformation), especially that which has significant negative impact on the public, do deserve moderator actions, up to and including being banned in some cases.
Like when Fauci and the CDC told people not to wear masks because they weren't effective (because they failed to stockpile enough masks in case of a health emergency)? Or when the US government insisted that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11? When you give the power to any central authority to unilaterally silence anyone they declare is engaged in "false or intentionally misleading information" you aren't eliminating false and intentionally misleading information, you are merely giving the central power a monopoly on disseminating false and misleading information that nobody else is allowed to challenge.
> If you're saying it doesn't 100% eliminate the chance of infection or transmission, no one who knew anything about vaccines ever claimed that.
Except it was: saying you can transmit the virus after having been vaccinated was indeed categorized as misinformation and suppressed for at least several months until breakthrough infections become common enough that the government couldn't keep a lid on it. The official line was that if you were vaccinated you could not spread the virus and diverging from this line would be met with censorship.
ISIS and the Taliban had Twitter accounts after they banned the sitting president of the USA. It's not about truth, it's about control and political power. That's also the reason people are so hysterical about Elon.
There are probably a lot of things that Twitter is not the best place for debating, but who gets to control that list and why does it always favour the left?
And part of this free speech deal of yours is that Oxford should give you a platform to talk about children of famous people, otherwise you can sue them?
a) Hunter Biden's laptop - we never got to find out as it was all suppressed. There are emails that at first glance look like shady business deals involving his father.
b) COVID La Leak - I never said it was proven, just that it couldn't even be discussed.
In many cases, these are invited speakers so compulsion doesn't come into it.
How would you get to speak if you're not invited ?
This list makes interesting reading. These are people "banned from speaking at universities in the UK and Ireland, or faced campaigns to silence them, or sack them for their views. https://www.afaf.org.uk/the-banned-list/
Students wishing to hear all sides of a controversial issue connected with any of these banned folk are out of luck even if they organize a private gathering on university premises. Higher moral authorities prevail - we are told. Perhaps the core debate should be with these people.
Skimming that list, it seems to be bulked up by many who faced objections and protests but still spoke at the talks they were invited to. Them attending to talk whilst having protests is respecting free speech of everyone. Those whom object should not have their freedom of speech silenced in favour of one other's. People don't like protests when it's against them or something they don't support but protest is speech.
There are many free speech laws and I think the way they are applied to charities like Oxford and ancient institutions is interesting. Compelled speech is dangerous and wrong, yes. I think if you are a trustee of a charity you also should be required to uphold the principles of that charity or form a new one entirely that is more agreeable. But hijacking a charity for a different purpose than it was intended is wrong. If the administrators, trustees, and professors would prefer that Oxford have a political lean and remove any who disagree that could violate the terms of the university's constitution and history.
Obviously this didn't start out of nowhere. First of all, the university has regulations on free speech[1] which are quite unrestricted. That does not mean the university enforces them that way. So the law could be said to be forcing the university to be less biased in their judgement of speech. Bringing up Holocaust denial is like invoking Godwin's Law irl. There is no mention of what views the people with grievances actually think.
Presently the university has charity status. That restricts their political speech, this could be another debate. They also receive public funding. I suppose if the university administration and professors admitted to having a bias, it could threaten their funding.
I don't think compelling speech is correct but I also think it is almost certainly a violation of the charity status and Oxford regulations to underhandedly enforce political views.
> I don't think compelling speech is correct but I also think it is almost certainly a violation of the charity status and Oxford regulations to underhandedly enforce political views.
The Oxford university is [check notes] a university. What you have in mind is the Speakers Corner, where everybody can go and speak about vaccines, children of celebrities, lizard people and whatever.
no? Did I or did I not link to a policy by the university? The council and congregation do not have the right to violate their own constitution and laws by selectively enforcing them and using underhanded hiring tactics. If they wanted to make a private political activist club, they don't have that authority to do so even if it's impossible to enforce this. So the compelled speech is a blunt instrument against the rather delicate issue of free speech grievances at the university (given that the university has its own policy which may not be enforced properly)
>Pfizer recent admitted they didn’t ever bother testing to see if the vaccine prevented transmission.
Claiming they only admitted it "recently" is intentionally misleading. They said it plainly when it was released, because there wasn't any time to test it. That's part of why it was called emergency authorization. Later research gave significant evidence that it did significantly reduce transmission.
...Because it was deemed likely based on all previous knowledge about vaccines and transmission, and that turned out to be correct.
I don't know what your objection is here. "Pfizer couldn't see the future"? "They should have just let people die while they conducted further tests of something they had every reason to believe would work (and, again, did work)"?
Read the article I just linked to. Scroll down, there's a heading for it. From my other comment in this thread:
>The opposite was evidentially proven, multiple times. Vaccines stopped the virus transmitting from infected individuals in many if not most interactions:
You have to realize that the claim of "vaccines stop the spread" is massively far from what actually happened -- vaccinated people spread the virus literally millions of times and thousands died as a result.
Let's look what Dr Fauci claimed, exactly.
>Vaccinated people become ‘dead ends’ for the coronavirus [1]
>If You’re Vaccinated, You’re Safe [2]
Aren't this claims just straight up lies? He knew they were lies at the time he said them, which makes them worse.
My mistake, I copied and pasted it from HN, didn't realize it was truncated. I've pasted the working link twice in this thread already though. Here it is a third time:
Here's the kind of thing that was being said in my country at the time: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55056016 . The vaccine is described as "effective" and "immunisation". Looking that up in published health authority documentation: "Immunization: A process by which a person becomes protected against a disease through vaccination. This term is often used interchangeably with vaccination or inoculation." "Immunity: Protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected."
The message that was broadcast, and the message that was understood, was that this was the same kind of thing as the other things that are usually described by the word "vaccine": something that makes you immune, that reliably prevents infection, such that vaccinated people don't need to take any other precautions.
In addition to the BBC, if you live in the US you should know that CNN repeated the line about vaccines stopping transmission (not ‘in many cases’) repeatedly. I’ll let you do the Googling since I’m busy and you’re the one arguing against what most people can recall.
Are we supposed to just accept labeling misinformation and suppressing claims that we don't actually have any evidence for or against, just based on "previous knowledge"? It's not that Pfizer was wrong to say that the vaccine would reduce transmission (after all, it did), but was wrong for authorities deny the possibility of breakthrough infections and transmission from vaccinated people (which was labeled misinformation for quite a while).
There's a vast, vast difference between saying "reinfection and transmission is less likely" and saying "reinfection and transmission is impossible". The latter was the only permissible line, and anything less was labeled misinformation for quite a while. If we're going to label something as misinformation, we better be damn sure it actually is false. Otherwise trust in our institutions will plummet.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/11/labour-to-vote...