I had similar thoughts while thinking about the right to own copies of music or films.
That is - increasing ease of recording and transmission of cultural artifacts has homogenised that output, and reduced the urge and ability of individuals to preserve and pass on that output.
I'm not sure that's true, at least for music we've seen an explosion of covers and style remixes. Depending on the popularity and virality of a song, you can often find between dozens to hundreds of different covers of varying quality. And there are artists dedicated to converting popular songs into various other genres.
Used to be, almost everyone learned to play an instrument. Families would play together around the fire, or children who excelled would be invited to perform to entertain at their parents' party.
Sheet music was the "Top 40" of the pre-Edison days, and people made good livings writing it.
OTOH, mixes and remixes, greatly spurred by innovations in rap, have proliferated in the last 30 years. But that's not the same pervasive skill set in society.
FWIW I agree with the intent of the Act, and am generally in favour of a sovereign firewall.
Edit: In a nutshell - almost every other transfer of goods and services across national borders is subject to quality standards. Why do we give a pass to a system that allows deep, individualised access to people's personal lives and mental processes?
I'd argue transfer of services is not really an issue. People buying services from a foreign entity is a pretty fringe case, and most legitimate businesses will try to establish a local presence for that anyway.
Sovereign firewalls are mostly used by countries that have them for censorship and surveillance, and I think letting governments use a pretext of digital services being able to avoid tolls and taxes to establish such a powerful tool would be a huge mistake.
Right now you're downvoted for expressing an opinion that I believe deserves a deeper discussion.
I don't want the government to decide which thoughts I can access and which ones I can't, but I also understand that allowing a foreign power (let's say Russia, although "the US" works just as fine) to freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization campaigns without any recourse doesn't look good either. And while I agree with "when in doubt aim for the option with more freedom", I can understand those who share your position.
What about domestic entities running undercover propaganda campaigns - as we have seen e.g. with Cambridge Analytica? Should we maybe focus on the more fundamental problem of our democracies being vulnerable to propaganda campaigns rather than making sure that only "good" and "sovereign" propaganda campaigns are allowed?
> Should we maybe focus on the more fundamental problem of our democracies being vulnerable to propaganda campaigns
Step 1 is reduce your attack surface :)
As a second point, democracies are propaganda campaigns - it's a feature, not a bug.
I believe that national cultural and societal norms play a key part in self-regulation. I think it's too much to ask for those balancing forces to work as effectively without first turning down the firehose.
Being able to implement any decision by running a targeted campaign discouraging it's opponents from voting and swaying the undecided can't be a feature or we have very different understanding of democracy.
By closing up we defend us from some threats, but open gates wide for others. Foreign actors compete against much stronger domestic media machines and as you mentioned have to operate in foreign cultural environments. Gaining true influence also always involves financial flows, not just propaganda campaigns, so it is sure possible to mitigate these threats without closing information flow.
Consider the opposite threat of democracies being undermined from within. If some internal "threat actor" gets control of the executive branch and of the media and also can prevent information flow from the outside, very little can be done against it.
I think it is critical to keep in mind this second possibility even when the first threat seems more urgent.
There are entire political industries openly dedicated to swaying the undecided! It's a messy business, but that's what we have.
Propaganda is not necessarily to gain influence or money. Eg: Country x just wants to mess with people's heads and turn them on each other to weaken a rival country. Or: Country y runs a crafted propaganda campaign against a rival. As a result, some sector of its own economy starts doing better at the expense of its rival.
>If some internal "threat actor" gets control of the executive branch and of the media and also can prevent information flow from the outside, very little can be done against it.
I understand the scenario (it's far from new), but that's what the design of any particular democracy is supposed to minimise. Term limits, separation of government powers, etc.
Something needs to be done. The outcomes are manifestly bad. I can't take the pro-freedom intellectual argument seriously unless it's coupled with a suite of pragmatic solutions to the negative side effects I am observing with my own senses. The intellectual walls of text just aren't papering over that reality.
That's just as bad of an argument as so-called intellectual walls of text. Nothing needs to be done, the outcomes are not bad. My argument is as strong as yours.
The Internet Research Agency organizing multiple Black Lives Matter protests due to control over approximately 50% of the largest identity-based Facebook groups is just one small example on a long list of examples of social unrest and the consequential ushering in of sectarianism and destruction of democracy that the current status quo is enabling. The pro-freedom types do not even know this is happening let alone have any solutions to it. Turning a blind eye is all they have. So until they show an awareness of the existence of the issue I will be siding with the only people who have put any effort into addressing the problems.
Lets assume you are right that there is effectively a constant stream of low level sybil attacks attempting to destabilize society, and they are effective.
Censoring view points is equivalent to signal boosting other view points. Why do you trust the UK government to select the correct view points given all the strong evidence to the contrary?
>I don't want the government to decide which thoughts I can access and which ones I can't
That would be an interesting discussion in itself, but even so - accessing material in isolation over the internet removes all of the benefits of cultural and community self-regulation.
>freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization campaigns
I'm of the opinion that WWW3 has already happened - it was a war for hearts and minds waged over the internet, and we've already lost.
> I'm of the opinion that WWW3 has already happened - it was a war for hearts and minds waged over the internet, and we've already lost.
If the open, unfettered exchange of culture and ideas is such a threat to our system then we deserve to lose. If my only option is to be stuck in a system that enforces ideological conformity on its subjects, then I’d rather it be the Chinese system. At least it’s not so dysfunctional!
If we are receiving all of the downsides of a liberal democracy without the benefits, what’s the point anymore?
You have it backwards. Ideological conformity these days is enforced by creating the illusion that everyone around you is ideologically conforming.
The question is: is there a defense against this?
Your answer currently is there is no defense because creating an illusion of unanimous ideological conformity counts as an exchange of ideas and that exchange must not be hindered.
The debate is over whether the right to conduct Sybil attacks is more precious than the right to freedom of thought. The question is vastly harder than many people in this thread seem to believe.
My personal take is that the right to freedom of thought is more fundamental and that the value of freedom of speech is via its support for freedom of thought.
>The way we protect British kids from the Internet is to make better and more capable Britons, rather than to try and kidproof the entire internet.
If only it were that easy. For me as a parent, my approach is to implement a "Great personal firewall" - that is, internet restrictions that decrease over time as they mature, and starting with essentially zero access. Unfortunately, it's probably doomed to fail as other kids their age (5 + 7) and in their peer groups are already walking around with smartphones.
To put it bluntly, too many parents are too unenaged and lazy (or self-centered).
Some peoples are funny :) And there are parents ;)
Kids go to school, have lessons, right ? And few minutes breaks between lessons ? How that parents want to censorship what kids talk about ? Not to mention phones use. And why exactly ?
Thing is as it always is: parents make fundamens in culture/world view eg via their views and religion they subscribe. And then society and reality takes over. What society you have ?
Not exactly. Before smartphones, sure, you weren't able to police the kid 24/7. The kid gets out of the house, comes back in the evening, god knows what happened in the meantime. But nowadays parents actually do have the means to exercise absolute control over their kids. That's a huge game-changer. First, most of interaction happens online. If you ban the kid from the internet, your kid won't have friends, problem solved. And it's not like kids nowadays rush to gather outside.
Grooming is exactly what scared the shit out of me in my kid's Discord. Teenagers promoting sex to children. Well these idiots at least have a hormonal excuse. But adults hanging out online with children and teenagers...
Exactly, plus there's free, mostly unrestricted wifi everywhere. If your child has some pocket or birthday money they can freely spend, they can walk into an electronics store, buy a cheap smartphone or tablet and have unrestricted access.
At home measures are at best a delay, not a fix. What you also have to do is actually communicate with your child. If you're strict about what they can and cannot do on the internet, they will feel shame for doing it anyway, which may also mean they would be too ashamed to talk to their parents if for example they are getting groomed online.
That was originally going to be my plan - my kids can have a smartphone when they can afford to buy one themselves. I figured that by this point they would be old and experienced enough to deal with it. As I pointed out above, some of their peers at ages 5-7 already have parentally-supplied smartphones. It sucks that I'm probably going to have to talk to my currently 5-year-old girl very soon about what the internet has to offer.
If the government wanted to do something it would enforce optional controls for the bill payer, and provide decent training (via videos and in person in libraries) on how to use parental controls.
I tried setting up parental controls on Fortnite and it was a nightmare, having threats multiple accounts with multiple providers, it felt very much designed to force people to go “ahh forget it”.
> it would enforce optional controls for the bill payer,
They do; in the UK, if you want to have access to porn, you need to tell your ISP and they will unblock it.
Of course, that's a game of whack-a-mole because you can render porn in Minecraft servers or join one of many communities on Whatsapp or Discord if needs be. It mainly blocks the well-known bigger porn sites.
1. Educate children about bad actors and scams. (We already do this in off-line contexts.)
2. Use available tools to limit exposure. Without this children will run into such content even when not seeking it. As demonstrated with Tiktok seemingly sending new accounts to sexualised content,(1) and Google/Meta's pathetic ad controls.
3. Be firm about when is the right age to have their own phone. There is zero possibility that they'll be able to have one secretly without a responsible parent discovering it.
4. Schools should not permit phone use during school time (enforced in numerous regions already.)
5. If governments have particular issues with websites, they can use their existing powers to block or limit access. While this is "whack-a-mole", the idea of asking each offshore offending website to comply is also "whack-a-mole" and a longer path to the intended goal.
6. Don't make the EU's "cookies" mistake. E.g. If the goal is to block tracking, then outlaw tracking, do not enact proxy rules that serve only as creative challenges to keep the status quo.
and the big one:
7. Parents must accept that their children will be exposed at some level, and need to be actively involved in the lives of their children so they can answer questions. This also means parenting in a way that doesn't condemn the child needlessly - condemnation is a sure strategy to ensure that the child won't approach their parents for help or with their questions.
Also some tips:
1. Set an example on appropriate use of social media. Doom scrolling on Tiktok and instagram in front of children is setting a bad example. Some housekeeping on personal behaviours will have a run on effect.
2. If they have social media accounts the algorithm is at some point going to recommend them to you. Be vigilant, but also handle the situation appropriately, jumping to condemnation just makes the child better at hiding their activity.
3. Don't post photos of your children online. It's not just an invasion of their privacy, but pedophile groups are known to collect, categorise and share even seemingly benign photos.
Okay, but just blocking content isn't much better than being unengaged, in the long term. They will get exposed anyway, if only from a friend (whose parents are unengaged and lazy) who has no restrictions on their phone. The important thing is to teach and train media skills. Teaching an understanding that comment sections are cesspools and amplify negative feedback. Teaching that people flame because it's so much easier than keeping silent, or putting in the thought to say something useful. Teaching that there are truly horrendous things on the Internet.
That's exactly my point. They are likely to get exposed to the worst of the internet at a significantly younger age than they will have the maturity and experience to handle (and younger than I can have any hope of trying to coach them in), all thanks to parents who give young kids (I'm talking 8 and younger) smartphones to keep them quiet.
My oldest girl is 5. She's already very aware that other kids in her class have access to tablets and phones. How on earth do I responsibly explain to her the dangers? I have enough trouble asking her to get dressed and keep her nappy dry at night.
Abusive online relationships.
An attention-suck that I can't handle as an adult, with the corresponding lack of development of other life skills that I consider essential to a successful and fulfilled life.
I say "I consider", because skills self-evidently essential to a good life (emotional regulation, focus and attention span, ability to read other people's emotional states, effective communication, physical skills) are increasingly not generally considered that way.
in terms of speech development, TV was found to be a massive benefit in increasing vocabulary - how are you so sure the internet (nebulously defined as that is) is detrimental to communication abilities, arent they on there talking to their friends?. And if we are talking about the internet in general and not just twitter/tiktok, then its largely NOT doomscrolling and ragebait. Hackernews (heck, every single news organisation EVER) has an "algorithm" for "increasing engagement", books are written to increase engagement, its been going on for centuries but only since social media appeared do we suddenly dislike it.
> TV was found to be a massive benefit in increasing vocabulary
By who, and for who? My kids (ages 5+7) watch significantly less TV than their peers (as well as currently almost zero internet access), and are frequently complimented on their command of vocabulary and ability to express themselves.
>And if we are talking about the internet in general and not just twitter/tiktok, then its largely NOT doomscrolling and ragebait.
By amount of time that people spend on the internet, it is mostly doomscrolling and ragebait. If only we could take that part of it away.
> My kids (ages 5+7) watch significantly less TV than their peers (as well as currently almost zero internet access), and are frequently complimented on their command of vocabulary and ability to express themselves.
Compliments are nice I suppose, but theyre a poor metric when regarding vocabulary size.
> By amount of time that people spend on the internet, it is mostly doomscrolling and ragebait. If only we could take that part of it away.
"most" people I assume doesnt include you? Youre too smart to fall for it, obviously.
Have you read the paper you linked? It indicates at best a slightly positive outcome on average, with many caveats (video is worse, the younger the kid the worse the effect, removing educational content results in a negative correlation, etc). It also links to another metastudy that covers a larger age range, and indicates a negative correlation.
>theyre a poor metric when regarding vocabulary size.
I'm talking about school reports, among other things.
>"most" people I assume doesnt include you? Youre too smart to fall for it, obviously.
It's something I struggle with daily, and have put a lot of thought into what I want from my use of online technology. Eg, I don't have a smartphone. How can a kid be expected to make good choices if I can't?
For one, cars old enough to be without emissions or safety equipment are becoming more rare, to the point that they are now worth a significant amount of money. Anything that is currently in that grey, "pre-classic" area is already a very complicated machine that is very hard to maintain without OEM spares and support. Anything newer is designed from the ground up to hit a specified lifetime then get ground up into flakes for recycling. Opinions vary on the positive outcomes of this.
For two - regulations are constantly changing. Many cities have low-emissions zones. The EU is making significant changes to their vehicle end-of-life laws.
"Poor people" are not going to be maintaing classic old cars as a cheap form of transport, like some rose-tinted view of Cuba. They already lease brand-new cars.
That is - increasing ease of recording and transmission of cultural artifacts has homogenised that output, and reduced the urge and ability of individuals to preserve and pass on that output.