> A major expansion of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) has taken effect, legally obliging digital platforms to deploy surveillance-style systems that scan, detect, and block user content before it can be seen.
If this is implemented as it reads, just a note to everyone else, everywhere in the world:
For this policy to work, everything must be scanned. So now, every time you communicate with someone in the UK, your communications are no longer private.
> The UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) unveiled the changes through a promotional video showing a smartphone scanning AirDropped photos and warning the user that an “unwanted nude” had been detected.
"Unwanted"
How's that lawsuit with 4Chan going ofcom? Last checking, just now the site is still online.
Time to move my colocated servers out of the UK.
> To meet the law’s demands, companies are expected to rely heavily on automated scanning systems, content detection algorithms, and artificial intelligence models trained to evaluate the legality of text, images, and videos in real time.
this means either devices need to evolve to do this locally, or the items need to be sent to external service providers, usually based outside of the UK, to scan them unencrypted
I also assume this means the government here in the UK are okay with all whatsapp messages they send to be sent to an LLM to scan them for legality, outside the UK?
Okay, everyone here is talking about dick pics but let's be clear here the goal is
>A major expansion of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) has taken effect, legally obliging digital platforms to deploy surveillance-style systems that scan, detect, and block user content before it can be seen.
Do we really believe that no government forever is not going to use this to prevent certain "misinformation" from circulating?
And by misinformation we mean things like MPs breaking COVID lock down rules or "problematic" information about the PM being involved in a scandal, or the list is endless.
Let's be clear this isn't at all and never has been about dick pics this is 100% about being able to control what you can see and share.
So wait - would this be something like... you trying to send a dickpic via WhateverMessenger, the content would be scanned first and you would be presented with a message along the lines of "This message cannot be sent as it violates our T&Cs"?
I understand the rage generated here, but what is the alternative?
If a service implements privacy invading 'features' then we have the choice not to use that service. Letting tech companies self-regulate has failed, and too many people leave morality at the door when engaging online, something which doesn't happen at scale IRL.
What are we to do if not monitor? And how to make that scalable if not to introduce automation?
Nothing any government in my lifetime has done has arrested this feeling of decay, decline and desperation. It's like the occupational political class has a miserable vendetta and must afflict it upon the population. But I'm not actually miserable like you, I don't want to feel like you, we invented liberty in this country, now fuck off the lot of you thank you.
How will it know if the dick pic is wanted or unwanted?
Pre-cog, you say?
Tech industry walked right into this one, well done Musk.
Literally China
Wow nobody saw this coming /s
They whipped up a mini pandemic of people being subject to an onslaught of unwanted dick pics (not mentioning even once about the "block" feature on every single platform) to justify it
This is the Ministry of Truth building up their toolset
UK has fallen
Sex Pistols are more actual than ever.
God save the Queen
The fascist regime
It made you a moron
Potential H-bomb
God save the Queen
She ain't no human being
There is no future
In England's dreaming
Don't be told what you want to want to
And don't be told what you want to need
There's no future, no future
No future for youMost of these comments I think are off the mark. For some reason anything to do with EU or the UK legislating to protect citizenry is seen as some Orwellian conspiracy to mind control people. I agree some of the policies feel like always using a hammer - but I strongly suspect it's because the tech industry is clearly not playing ball.
Children being sent dick pics, or AI generated nudes of them being sent around schools, etc. are real problems facing real normal people.
I think people here need to be reminded that the average person doesn't care about technology. They will be happy for their phones to automatically block nude pictures by Government rule if the tech companies do not improve their social safety measures. This is the double edged sword: these same people are not tech savvy enough to lock down their children's phones, they expect it to be safe, they paid money for it to be "safe", and even if you lock a phone down, it doesn't stopped their class mates sending them AI porn of other class mates.
Musk is living proof that a non zero number of these giant tech companies are happy for child porn ("fake" or not) to be posted on their platform. If I was in his shoes, it would be pretty high up on my list to make sure Grok isn't posting pornography. It's not hard to be a good person.
This website recommends Gab, Truth Social and X under the claim "Unlike Big Tech companies, which often harvest user data for profit, these smaller, privacy-focused platforms tend to resist such practices".
https://reclaimthenet.org/free-speech-friendly-and-privacy-f...