I’d much rather get arrested in Britain than Russia or Iran. And I certainly wouldn’t put the UK in the same bucket as Russia and Iran. Not even close.
Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democratic country that tries sth in that area.
So to be clear, your sole expectation of a liberal democracy is that it have a better judicial system than Russia or Iran.
And beyond that, you applaud any democratic country's efforts to reign in speech by arresting their own citizens in order to combat foreign influence operations?
And the fulcrum of this argument is that we believe that Russia and China have uniquely pernicious influence operations and there are no other state-level actors domestically or semi-domestically whose intelligence services also exert influence through the passage of laws restricting speech?
Having seen the last two years of politics in the UK and the US, your impression is that there is an overwhelming Chinese-Russian troll farm operation which self-evidently justifies rolling back the last two centuries worth of hard-fought and incremental precedents won for free speech and free press.
And again, the water-line we need to stay above is merely "this is still better than being arrested in Russia or Iran", keeping in mind that many countries we would not consider to be democracies at all also meet this bar.
> And beyond that, you applaud any democratic country's efforts to reign in speech by arresting their own citizens in order to combat foreign influence operations?
I probably made my point not very well. I am indeed worried about freedom of speech, and your example about Mccarthy ism is very very valud. I come from Germany; the Nazis, and later the Stasi, were masters in suppressing freedom of speech, and both committed the most brutal atrocities that must never be repeated (and also, as a side note, completely ran the country they ruled into the ground).
Freedom of speech is really, really important. And yes, we absolutely must defend it. But it bothers me that it is used as a complete killer argument when politicians try to talk about other problems.
Our societies are getting more and more polarized. We are being bullied by various actors, and whenever someone points it out someone else (often the perpetrator) is quick to hide behind the false argument of freedom of speech.
I personally really believe that we need to do something against that polarization. It’s an attack vector that’s very actively and very effectively being exploited by adversaries, foreign and domestic alime. It’s not a new thing, propaganda and misinformation is centuries old, but in the age of the internet the dynamics change, and we need to adapt.
This is a super complex problem. And there is a huge risk that people abuse it to implement surveillance they always wanted to have. But yes, my general position is that I think it’s good that proposals are being made, and because of that, I don’t want to see Starmer in the same bucket as Putin in this discussion. It’s also good that there are fights about which proposals are good and bad. But my overall feeling is that we ignored the problem for too long, and now we have to catch up. Otherwise, we’ll just get more and more polarized societies, and this really, really worries me.
It may at this point also be worth pointing out that the proposals really are very different.
- The UK went for a centralist proposal on age verification around porn, which can very easily turn into a surveillance tool. I think it’s a terrible solution.
- Australia opts for banning social media for minors. Doesn’t strike me as a big surveillance tool. Maybe extreme if you don’t share their view on the dangers of social media, but clearly a very different approach, and also a different problem they think they identified to the UK
- Germany goes for better parental controls, i.e. mandating manufacturers to make it really easy for parents to enable a walled garden for their kids. I like it because it’s still up to the parents whether to enable it or not, and no government surveillance is involved at all.
The cool thing of having different countries experiment with different approaches - not just solutions, but also assumptions on what problems would need fixing - is that you can run many experiments in parallel. The scientist in me is very happy about that.
If we’re lucky, one or two of these will over time come out as great solutions and get widely adopted.
If you live anywhere in the west, you should be more concerned by being arrested by your own government then by some government in the other part of the world.
I'd rather get arrested in the UK too, but that's completely irrelevant.
> Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms?
Non-sequitur. The existence of troll farms doesn’t mean it's such a big problem that we should give up our rights surrounding speech and communication that we fought hard for.
I don't think it's completely irrelevant. Can we admit some nuance where the UK's fast ramp up of arrests for previously legal speech is genuinely concerning, but also that raw number of arrests (not even convictions!) is not the only basis for comparison?
What are people saying that gets them arrested? This important but as-yet-unanswered question is crucial to evaluating the severity of the UK's censorship regime.
Probably the most high-profile case was the Lucy Connolly one, where she posted:
> "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the
bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government
and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these
families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it”
For additional context (which was relevant during the prosecution and sentencing) this was posted during a time of riots and arson attacks centred on asylum accommodations, and very shortly following a highly publicised mass-murder of children which was (entirely wrongly) being blamed on asylum seekers.
She also pleaded guilty to the charged offence, rather than contesting the charge, for clarity. While not all cases will be quite like this, it is definitely not the case that - as some parties of the right have claimed - she is a free-speech martyr, a political prisoner, and so on.
If that comment meets the bar for "explicitly calling for violence", tens of Hackernews posters would be getting arrested daily for how they talk about billionaires. AOC should avoid travel to the UK because her "eat the rich" rhetoric is an explicit call for violence under this standard. Etc etc.
No, what they've done is create a low and unclear bar for what constitutes criminal speech, which allows the police and judges to apply the law selectively. So yeah maybe technically it's illegal but you won't get arrested for saying "eat the rich".
> following a highly publicised mass-murder of children which was (entirely wrongly) being blamed on asylum seekers.
The mass-murder was a consequence of the asylum system. Given what is publicly known, parents of Axel Rudakubana were overwhelmingly likely to have been asylum seekers.
> The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is
It can be, but free speech types like to pretend it's nigh impossible. The UK has had modern hate-speech laws (for want of a better term) since the Public Order Act 1986, which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred. Amendments in 2006 and 2008 expanded that to religious and homophobic hatred respectively. This exists in stark contrast to the common strawman touted by freeze peach types of "are you just going to compile a list of 'bad words'?!" Hate speech is not magic: you're not casting the self-incriminatus spell by saying the bad word.
That said, I wont pretend like that aren't misuses of police powers in regard to speech, and expression more generally. We've seen a crackdown on protests over the past few years which is more than a little frightening. That said, it's become a pattern that anytime I encounter a discussion online about the UK trampling on freedom of speech or whatever, it always comes back to hate speech. It's almost never about protest or expression. I think that's interesting.
EDIT: Correction, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 did not make stirring up or inciting "homophobic" hatred an offence, but rather hatred on the basis of sexual orientation. So one could get prosecuted for being inciting anti-straight hatred.
In the UK the arrests are mostly about "grossly offensive" speech. That's more of a grey area than the clearly defined hate speech. Often there are arrests and investigations but convictions on these are less. Convictions of hate speech also occur but are not news worthy and no one objects. The two different offenses are being confused and so it becomes news. In the US they don't have the grossly offensive category.
It's an issue because people are being investigated because people are offended by some things while others are not, and others (like comments here) see the difference between offensive speech and outright calls for violence. The police in some areas are encouraged to actively investigate reports of offensiveness whether or not they seem to them serious. It's a good idea on paper but the ambiguities and unequal application of their policy is newsworthy. It leads to conspiratorial and political theories.
There is also a related newsworthy issue of the widening of what hate speech means to encompass forms of offensiveness. So some may say it's a direct call to violence to say some things but others may say it's not. This ambiguity leads to an effect and discussions.
"Silence is violence" and "From the river to the sea" are topical example quotes used in this debate.
Yeaaaah, the Communications Act 2003 is not fit for purpose in the modern information age where [seemingly] the vast majority of conversation is taking place in digital spaces. Sidenote, I do think it's amusing how, prior to the Online Safety Act 2023, it was an offence to Cunningham's Law someone (posting a knowingly-false statement online to annoy someone into correcting you). That said, I'm more or less ambivalent about "grossly offensive" speech: most of the examples I find people moaning about are people being gratuitously abhorrent and should have known better. But again, there are examples of police and prosecutors getting it wrong.
But I think the leap from acknowledging that to "speech should never be infringed", as many freeze peachers would advocate, to be infinitely more destructive: just see what it's doing to America. Just look at what the infiltration of American-style freedom of speech principles is doing to this country: we have people defending Lucy Connolly, the woman who publicly advocated for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers, calling her a "political prisoner", that the government is "silencing the right".
One part where I agree with you is "From the river to the sea": there are two versions of this (more than two, but they are variations of the same thing), the first being "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and the other "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty". Guess which one our government finds objectionable. And guess which one is being used to justify a genocide. It does bother me that the government can chill and punish speech that objects to its foreign policy. But I feel as if (this is just vibes, feel free to correct me) the most harm being done is through anti-protest laws, not grossly offensive digital communications: I personally know of multiple people who regularly post abrasive, if not downright virulent "silence is violence" type content online, but do not go to protests because they fear arrest, detention, and being fired.
> being gratuitously abhorrent and should have known better.
This is an incredibly stupid take, and I would vote for a legislation to penalise incredibly stupid ones before gratuitously abhorrent, and more harshly so. It would be gloriously wonderful, too.
> which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred.
If you point out that one racial demographic is responsible for more crimes than another, would that run afoul of the statute?
If not, what if you additionally point out that the reason these crimes were committed is likely because that behaviour is normalized in their culture? This seems like it would definitely run afoul of the statute, and if this logical deduction were valid, then this sort of criticism would be suppressed despite being legitimate, and could be weaponized against people.
I'm frankly not so convinced that it's possible to define hate speech in a way that does not allow for these failure modes.
Does the law explicitly specify that dry facts would be excluded? Or is it sufficiently broad that dry facts could be included if some over-zealous bureaucrats get it in their head that some speech or people are problematic?
I am interested in the letter of the law, because that's what matters, not how it's being applied while the winds are blowing in a particular direction.
Okay, so just to be clear, you don't have even a single example of someone being prosecuted under hate speech laws for stating facts in the 40-odd years since its passage? Why is this not just concern trolling?
As to the general question, no, a statement being true does not immunise it from an accusation of it being used to stir up or incite hatred, or at the very least such a defence is not defined within the Public Order Act 1986. We do have the Human Rights Act which protects Freedom of Expression, but whether you could use it or other defences is pure speculation on my part: I would need to see some actual caselaw.
I've attempted my own searches but have only encountered the usual suspects: holocaust deniers and their ilk. Please let me know if you find such a case because I genuinely think that would be interesting to debate, but debating over pure speculation and innuendo is very boring.
> Okay, so just to be clear, you don't have even a single example of someone being prosecuted
To be clear, I haven't even looked, but being a recent topic of debate, it seems important to clearly establish the letter of the law.
> Why is this not just concern trolling?
Because the law-as-written is what matters, like I said, not the law-as-it-has-been-exercised-so-far. Unless you think people inclined to abuse the law will never be elected.
> I've attempted my own searches but have only encountered the usual suspects: holocaust deniers and their ilk
Depending on the specifics, that already seems problematic. There are also chilling effects that are not clearly visible until after the fact. How long have some people wanted to discuss the over representation of some ethnicities in sexual assault clusters, but couldn't because of these laws?
> How long have some people wanted to discuss the over representation of some ethnicities in sexual assault clusters, but couldn't because of these laws?
I don't know, perhaps you should give some examples of this actually happening rather than relying solely on implication.
Yeah, I'm failing to see how this is an example of "people [wanting] to discuss the over representation of some ethnicities in sexual assault clusters, but couldn't because of [hate speech laws]". The article makes no mention of hate speech laws or anyone being prosecuted under them for discussing the representation of various ethnicities in sexual-assault statistics.
What the article does mention is that local officials and other agencies were "wary of identifying ethnic origins for fear of upsetting community cohesion, or being seen as racist", which is mere cowardice. In fact, I am somewhat surprised you are not using this to argue that government officials are too scared of free speech to do their job: that the implied threat of some people using their free speech to call the local government racist is enough to paralyse its function.
No, to me, what this article shows is how unfettered speech actually functions: a foreign billionaire with the loudest megaphone in history is dredging up a decade-old stain in our country's criminal history to aid and abet our domestic right and far-right political parties. And I think the fact that those parties immediately jumped on this in the media shows that it's very much not something that'll get you thrown in the gulag for discussing.
It's pretty apparent that the arrests are happening to people who explicitly call for violence, eg the woman who called for burning down all hotels housing immigrants. Musk, Rogan, etc are patient zero of the ones amplifying the false idea that you can get in legal trouble "for posting an opinion."
> It's pretty apparent that the arrests are happening to people who explicitly call for violence
Unless the statute specifically makes that distinction, then that's not very compelling. There are already laws against inciting violence. Hate speech laws are specifically understood to be about outlawing speech that contain or incite "hate", whose definition is typically broad.
Do you not think that trying to malign your opposition by putting a comical misspelling in their mouths is a bit infantile as a rhetorical tactic? The same thing being done to you would look something like an insinuation that what is being banned is "hurting someone's widdle fee-fees"; surely the discussion here would not benefit if everyone stooped down to that level.
> surely the discussion here would not benefit if everyone stooped down to that level.
Oh we were already at that level by that time: the comment mine responds to makes the claim that "it is really difficult to define what hate speech is" (untrue); that "more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition" (unsubstantiated); and claims that the UK government's intentions match that of Iran and Russia (untrue).
For some reason, so many people seem to tolerate outright disinformation but draw the line at mild childishness. It's bewildering.
Do you think that the people who made those remarks you cite considered them untrue themselves? If yes, you are suggesting bad faith (which should be grounds to extricate yourself from the discussion and/or call it out, not add fuel to the fire); if not, you are suggesting that factual disagreement is appropriately answered by childishness, which basically is saying that you think every discussion worth the name should devolve into childishness.
Often, it seems like this concept of "disinformation" you invoke just serves as a way people give themselves moral license to suspend normal rules of debate conduct in the face of disagreement. Being charitable to your opponents and having to engage with their claims is tiring and difficult, and sometimes they even come better prepared - how much easier if you can just frame dissent as dangerous enemy action and shut it down.
Do you also insist that we treat with proper decorum those who throw out assertions that jetfuel cannot melt steel beams? I notice you have yet to criticise them for posting what is at best misguided and unsubstantiated misinformation, and at worst disinformation. Hardly decorum on their part, is it? Instead, you are hyperfocusing on my "freeze peach", disregarding everything else I said in my comment. I find this to be a boring distraction from the topic at hand.
Well, I don't see anything obvious to criticise about what your interlocutors posted; their statements seem plausible enough to me, and if there is actually a knockout argument against them, I don't know it, because the person who seemed to disagree (you) was busy making childish noises instead of making it!
> jet fuel/steel beams
This debate was carried out sufficiently publicly that I got the sense people actually ran experiments confirming the pro-beam softening/structural failure/whatever case; certainly the "truther" case should have been taken seriously before that, and with decorum always because there is no situation in which any debate in a moderatable forum benefits from playground behaviour.
The previous law used to control racial hatred was the law of criminal libel; it was successfully used to prosecute antisemitism etc. As a species of libel, it had an absolute defence of of speaking the truth. Now, clearly you can be clever enough to spread hatred by only the use of true statements. But we have reached the point where those speaking the truth about atrocities committed by a foreign government are imprisoned for hate speech, and vastly more self censor. Your implied claim that those criticising the law just want to be free to be racist is not defensible - and indeed, you're not bold enough to defend it, merely "find it interesting".
It's inaccurate to say there's a war against Hamas. We have enough video evidence by now, posted by the people doing the acts so there can be no doubt to its authenticity, to see it's a war against civilians.
Norwood vs UK was about Norwood displaying an "Islam out of Britain" sign.
Samuel Melia was jailed 2 years for publishing downloadable stickers saying "Mass immigration is white genocide," "Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back," and "Labour loves Muslim rpe gangs".
Are those messages controversial? For sure. Should originator of these messages be prosecuted? I don't think so. Are anti-christian, "dead men don't rpe" or "eat the rich" messages treated the same in uk? Absolutely not.
If you want to spell rape on HackerNews you can just spell it. There’s nothing wrong with using the word in its proper context, or in quotations. There’s no algorithm censoring the word, and you’re not shielding someone from “getting triggered” by replacing the vowels with an underscore.
> Norwood, a member of an extreme right-wing political party [the British National Party], placed a poster on his apartment window that called for the removal of all Muslims from Britain.
> the poster in question contained a photograph of the Twin Towers in flame, the words “Islam out of Britain – Protect the British People” and a symbol of a crescent and star in a prohibition sign. The assessment made by the domestic courts was that the words and the images amounted to an attack on all Muslims in the UK. The ECtHR largely agreed with the assessment, and stated that such a general, vehement attack against a religious group, implying the group as a whole was guilty of a grave act of terrorism, is incompatible with the values proclaimed and guaranteed by the Convention, notably tolerance, social peace and non-discrimination
> Melia was the head of the Telegram Messenger group Hundred Handers, a social media channel that generated racist and anti-immigration stickers that were printed off and displayed in public places.
> The stickers contained "ethnic slurs" about minority communities which displayed a "deep-seated antipathy to those groups", the court heard.
> The judge told Melia: "I am quite sure that your mindset is that of a racist and a white supremacist.
> "You hold Nazi sympathies and you are an antisemite."
> Melia, who was also found guilty of encouraging racially-aggravated criminal damage, was sentenced to two years for each charge to run concurrently.
It is really difficult to define what hate speech is, it certainly can be used as a cudgel to silence the opposition though I'm not sure about "more often than not" and bluntly everything can be used that way: my previous commute took me across the lines of what was officially known as (translated) an "anti-fascist protection rampart"* to keep people from leaving a country that put "Demokratische" in its name.
For the UK, it's not even clear what Starmer doesn't want to hear, he's got the charisma of the 10th-worst-in-class GCSE-level presentation on a topic not of his own choice. This can be observed in the poll ratings which are both amusing and the kind of thing that should only be found in a farce and not reality.
I'd instead point to Musk, who has openly said that "cis" is "hate speech" on Twitter now he owns the site. Starmer may or may not have such examples, but it's just too hard to figure out what they even are 'cause he lacks presence even as PM with all the cameras pointed at him.
More precisely, an Egyptian citizen who was given British citizenship recently without having visited the country, and his views (about Jews, killing police) clearly not being factored in when granting said citizenship. Whether right or wrong, your comment omits improtant details.
Do you have any evidence for that claim or is it a gut feeling?
> in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.
In a literal sense that can't be true, since upon change of government, the hate speech definition does not suddenly change. In contrast, Putin and Khamenei are very literally able to personally define the definition.
In a figurative sense, that's likely true. As a democratically elected representative of the people, what he wants censored reflects what the people want censored, so is in alignment with a democratic society. If the people change their mind or realize it's not actually what they wanted, they elect somebody else next time. Good luck trying that with Putin or Khamenei.
> In a literal sense that can't be true, since upon change of government, the hate speech definition does not suddenly change. In contrast, Putin and Khamenei are very literally able to personally define the definition.
Well it might if people systematically vote for politicians who promise to change the hate speech definition.
Just read the damn law before spouting nonsense. There have been hate speech laws since the 1980s. There are simply just more and more insane neonazis groyper-types online to which it is applicable.
I don't think groyper speech is (or should be) automatically banned, though. It's a point of view that many find abhorrent, but it should be possible to express it. Same for far left messages encouraging the public to "eat the rich".
Please do not equate demands for more taxations with calls to do more genocides of jewish people. The far right is uniquely problematic in our modern political landscape.
And I disagree, free speech is a liberal value, you don't get to say nazi shit and hide behind free speech. Being a groyper is not a crime, but calling for genocide is and should be punished. Else we run the risk of normalizing these abhorrent ideas and repeating the worst times of our history, like the US seems on a course to doing.
It means defending Nazi shit by claiming you're allowed to say anything you want.
Timmy: "I think it should be legal to kill Jews."
Moderator: (bans Timmy)
Timmy (elsewhere): "Help, I'm being persecuted for expressing my beliefs!" / "Moderator X is a fascist oppressing people based on their opinions!" / "Platform X hates free speech!"
You can see it even in the comments on this post about the UK. Most complaints about UK censorship don't say what was being censored. If Timmy said why the moderators banned him, his argument wouldn't even survive a cursory glance.
Well, censorship has been recentky applied to Palestine Action supporters too (they're routinely arrested in the UK, and they're normally far leftists), so it's not only nazis. The thing that makes hate speech laws safe and fuzzy is that they're initially applied to restrict the speech of your enemies. Then the tide changes, and the same laws get applied against you and your friends.
They're not excusing themselves with "I can say whatever I want to" and "arrests for speech are invalid", are they? - they're not hiding behind free speech. They're excusing themselves with reasons like "You're arresting me for terrorism but I didn't do any terrorism" and "The UK is helping Israel do the next Holocaust, and it's important that we talk about that and hopefully stop doing it"
That would be "eat the rich"? It looks like more demand for homicide and cannibalism, at least at a face value.
> free speech is a liberal value
That is a really nice definition that allows your side to say whatever they want, but the other side to have their speech restricted. It looks like "free speech" because you say it is, but of course it is not.
> but calling for genocide is and should be punished
And that is the usual strawman. "Calling for genocide" is incredibly vague. Is repatriation of immigrants genocide? Is CECOT genocide? Is advocating bombing Gaza genocide? Is "from the river to the sea" a coded call for genocide? Is, God help us, saying that trans women are men advocating for "trans genocide"? (apparently that's a thing)
I have this feeling you don't want to establish a line in the sand for free speech to be free - you just want to pick and choose the examples that you deem acceptable.
> That would be "eat the rich"? It looks like more demand for homicide and cannibalism, at least at a face value.
Very bad faith interpretation. You know full well that's not what is meant when this phrase is employed.
> That is a really nice definition that allows your side to say whatever they want, but the other side to have their speech restricted. It looks like "free speech" because you say it is, but of course it is not.
Free speech is a liberal value. Don't take liberal as meaning "american left", take it as meaning pro-freedom. Nazis famously don't believe in it. The Trump administration only believes in it when they're making themselves to be the victims of supposedly unfair censorship, but then use the full power of the state to silence media, or individuals.
Should we extend free speech to groups actively trying to suppress it? That's the paradox of intolerance: "if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance". Example of this to be found in the US.
> And that is the usual strawman. "Calling for genocide" is incredibly vague. Is repatriation of immigrants genocide? Is CECOT genocide? Is advocating bombing Gaza genocide? Is "from the river to the sea" a coded call for genocide? Is, God help us, saying that trans women are men advocating for "trans genocide"? (apparently that's a thing)
You're completely muddying the waters, you know what is a genocide. And throwing in a line about trans people for some reasons, because your side is literally obsessed with making their lives as miserable as possible.
> Very bad faith interpretation. You know full well that's not what is meant when this phrase is employed.
I hope you're willing to extend this charitable way of interpreting intentions to the hyperboles made by the far right in their slogans. What if a anti-immigration group came out with the "eat the aliens" slogan? Should they be allowed to chant that? Make signs?
> Should we extend free speech to groups actively trying to suppress it
Again, it cuts two ways. Should we extend free speech to groups trying to suppress public discourse by deplatformimg, cancelling and banning people they don't like from speaking in campuses?
> You're completely muddying the waters, you know what is a genocide. And throwing in a line about trans people for some reasons
I only mentioned trans people because not believing their self appointed sexual identity was famously equated to erasing and genociding them. As you see, the waters are indeed very muddy. You see them clear just because you already made up your mind about what kind of speech you want to allow and what kind of speech you want to ruthlessly ban.
It's a quote that justifies homicide of the wealthy class, popularised during the French revolution: "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich"
Law is always subject to interpretation and as imperfect as it sounds it is better than no law at all. And I'm not talking about hate speech specifically. Using this as a tool to silence opposition is possible and made easy in countries that do not value and nurture independence of institutions and have rampant corruption, often countries with authoritarian leadership.
UK is not exempt of criticism, it would be unhealthy not to, but comparing Russia/Putin with UK/Starmer makes it evident that you are more concerned by pushing a political agenda that by facts and reason.
That comparison is not only highly inaccurate, it’s also harmful in that it distracts from the real problem at hand.
Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win.
I personally don’t think UK’s age verification thing is a good idea. I like Germany‘s idea of mandating PC and smartphone manufacturers to put simple parental controls in thar parents, not the central government, can enable for their kids.
I love Australia‘s banning of Social media for kids. Let’s see where that leads. I don’t live there but am very excited for rhe outcome of that experiment.
We can’t just sit here and simplify everything to black and white while Russian troll farms polarise our societies. We bear some responsibility here to have a nuanced debate about these things.
The same Starmer who's cancelled local elections? Who's not looked at the polls and thought maybe it's time to go, because the demos clearly don't want me? The same Starmer who said no rise in NI in the manifesto, only to increase NI? The same Starmer who raised the threshold of votes required for an MP from within the Labour party to challenge his leadership?
He's no proper democrat. People are already talking about the rhetoric being used around war with Russia as laying the foundations for removing a 2029 general election.
> The same Starmer who raised the threshold of votes required for an MP from within the Labour party to challenge his leadership?
From 10% of the MPs to 20% of the MPs. As challengers would have to, you know, get more MPs than him to win, the only thing going from 10% to 20% is to have less pointless drama.
> People are already talking about the rhetoric being used around war with Russia as laying the foundations for removing a 2029 general election.
First I've heard of that. Would be exceptionally dumb for a UK politician to do on purpose for the same reason that it would be correct to cancel elections in the event of such a war: the UK is not even remotely close to being ready to battle Russia. UK armed forces are just about big enough to keep the nuclear weapons safe, not much more besides that.
It only becomes false to say they've been cancelled if they happen. They're planning on postponing them again, and if that continues to happen indefinitely, they've been cancelled.
Starmer doesn't just have negative approval ratings. His are through the floor. The last voting intention poll from YouGov (which has been relatively favourable for Labour) would have given them just 69 seats - fewer than the Lib Dems currently have.
2. "Postponed" is entirely normal within British politics. For most of my life, even the timing of general elections were at the whim of the government.
3. Given how Starmer polls, the delay is almost certainly going to make things un-favourable for him. Also unfavourable for Labour, unless they kick him out first.
Not that it would matter much if your conspiracy theory held water, given that one of the many constitutional problems the UK has is that local councils have negligible power (options are tied all over the place) and therefore local elections are functionally little more than opinion polls done in a voting booth.
"My conspiracy theory" is a set of facts that you and the source you cited (whose so-called "fact check" was mostly attempting to put into context) find really inconvenient. Fact 1: Starmer and his party are polling badly. Fact 2: Starmer and his party delayed several local elections, many of which were in constituencies where they currently hold power and won't afterward. This is not a good set of facts, regardless of how little those elections matter.
Your conspiracy theory is that Starmer got anything out of delaying, which you overstated as "cancelled", a thing commonly delayed in British politics.
I literally agreed with you in my original post (i.e. before you replied to me, unless you're both accounts) that he's not popular.
Banning children from accessing things proven to be harmful to children does not a dictator make. Or else you'd be rallying just as hard to allow children to drink alcohol.
> Or else you'd be rallying just as hard to allow children to drink alcohol
Why? I don't have a threshold at 127 in my luminance channel.
Just a reminder - what children are allowed or not is not any government's business, it's parents' one. Which requires tearing their asses off from sofas and their eyes from screens and actually talk to their children and be in the know of their circles and activities.
I'm glad you agree that if a child happens to be born to parents who aren't very good at parenting, they deserve to suffer. Basically if a child's parents smoke around them and give them lung cancer, all we should do is yell at them and moan on the internet, not actually do anything (via the government) to prevent it.
Nothing you've said contradicts that you think the government should not forbid children from buying alcohol.
Social media appears to be more harmful to a child than low quantities of alcohol, but less harmful than lung cancer.
I recommend you studying some history, especially that of Germany since 1920 till 1945, to help yourself part with the illusion that the government's overreaching care has anything to do with actual care, and to finally grok the essense of the saying:
> Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win.
Someone who is a citizen of the UK who has no connection to Iran or Russia is legitimately much more concerned with the ways in which Starmer governs the UK, than in whether Putin or Khamenei "win". I don't even disagree with you that Putin and Khamenei are ruthless dictators, and certainly plenty of people in Russia or Iran or countries in the Russian or Iranians sphere of influence have plenty of good reasons to politically oppose both those dictators. But a democratically-elected official can wield the power of the state against you and harm your interests just as much as a dictator can, and people in the UK who oppose Starmer and his party shouldn't let up in that opposition just because it makes Starmer seem closer to Putin or Khamenei than Starmer's supporters would like.
> a democratically-elected official can wield the power of the state against you and harm your interests just as much as a dictator can
Really? Can they? Because in a functioning democracy you generally have recourse to courts, tertiary adjudication of various forms, a (relatively) free press that you can try and interest in taking up your story, etc. In a brutal dictatorship you're likely to have none of those, and to go missing in the night if you try and suggest that you should.
It's absolutely right to oppose politicians you disagree with - that's what political engagement is all about! But beyond a certain level, hyperbole (and the general sense of "they're all the same") simply does serve to undermine not just democracy, but any rationale for political engagement vs. simple rioting.
No, external influence is an attack on democracy’s ability to form consensus. No hate speech required to drive a wedge between constituents and make people focus on the wrong things.
No there is a thing call the law, those are passed by elected people and applied by a judicial system that is not the executive branch. Hope that helps.
Few things in Europe compare to the size of NYC. A potentially comparable project would be the Elizabeth line in London. Took from 1948 to 2008 to agree on a plan and then 15 years to execute it.
The bill in favour of the Elizabeth Line was only put to parliament in 2005, receiving royal assent in 2008. Construction work began in 2009, faced some delays during COVID, but was completed in 2022 (total construction time: 13 years)
Construction on New York's Tunnel #3 began in 1970. It was 28 years before any part of it was operational. A second section came online 15 years later (2013). The final stage isn't expected to be completed until 2032, a full 62 years after construction began. I'm unaware of any comparable tunnel project which has progressed at this slow of a pace.
The Thames Tideway Tunnel might be a better comparator.
It's similar in scope to this recently-completed second phase of NYC Tunnel #3, albeit carrying sewage rather than fresh water: 25 km long, 7.2 m in diameter in London vs 29 km long, 4.9 m diameter in NYC. Flow volumes are likely similar (a sewage tunnel will rarely run full).
Anglosphere construction costs are through the roof in general, same problem is happening in the UK and Canada that isn't happening to places like Spain or Japan, comparing a project to Anglosphere norms is like comparing your cooking to English food
> If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power.
I think this is why the thing judges hate the most is people admitting when the law gives them an unfair advantage.
A rule that unjustly benefits someone is fine as long as they don't break kayfabe. Big Brother loves you, that's why you can't install apps on your phone, it's to protect you from harm. The incidental monopolization, censorship and surveillance are all totally unintentional and not really even happening. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
Whereas, declare that you're shamelessly exploiting a loophole? Orange jumpsuit.
I agree, but that's the uncharitable interpretation. The charitable one is that intent matters. Those in power being threatened tends to strongly correlate with societal instability and a distinct lack of public safety. I may not always agree with the status quo but I don't want to live in Somalia either.
There is an action you can take that does two things. One, it makes it marginally more expensive to commit fraud. Two, it makes it significantly more expensive for your existing customers to patronize a competitor. If you do it, which of these things was it your intent to do?
The answer doesn't change based on whether you announce it. You can fully intend to thwart competition without admitting it. And, of course, if the only way you get punished is if you admit it, what you really have is not a law against intending to do it but a law against saying it out loud. Which is poison, because then people knowingly do it without admitting it and you develop a culture where cheating is widespread and rewarded as long as the cheaters combine it with lying.
Whereas if the law is concerned with knowledge but not "intent" then you'd have a law against thwarting competition and it only matters what anyone would expect to be the result rather than your self-proclaimed unverifiable purpose.
But then it's harder to let powerful people get away with things by pretending they didn't intend the thing that everybody knew would be the result. Which is kind of the point.
FWIW, laws aren't merely abstract tools of oppression, they're what binds groups larger than ~100 people into societies. And the true fabric laws are made of, is one of mutually-recursive belief, everyone's expectation that everyone else expects they're subject to them. Threaten that belief, the system stops working. The system stops working, everyone starves, or worse.
The way you're supposed to do that is by having laws that are actually reasonable and uniformly applied.
Having laws that tilt the playing field and then punishing anyone who admits the emperor has no clothes is just censorship. People still figure it out. Only then they get rewarded for knowing about it and not saying anything, which causes the corruption to spread instead of being opposed, until the rot reaches the foundation. And that's what causes "everyone starves, or worse."
> And that's what causes "everyone starves, or worse."
I disagree. What you've described is certainly bad for much of society, but it represents a change from full participatory democracy to narrower and ultimately aristocratic governance. Many nations moved away from aristocracy and embraced democracy, but the difference in failure mode between "good for the people" and "good for the nation" does nevertheless exist (even when you can avoid the other problem democracy has, that "good for the people" and "popular" are also sometimes different).
When nobody can even "get rewarded for knowing about it and not saying anything", then you get all the examples of groupthink failure. Usually even this is limited to lots of people, rather than everyone, starving, but given the human response to mass starvation is to leave the area, I think this should count as "everyone starves" even if it's not literally everyone.
When everyone knows the rules are optional, or when they think facts and opinions are indistinguishable, then things like speed limits, red lights, which side of the road you're supposed to be on, purchasing goods and services rather than stealing them, all these things become mere suggestions. This is found in anarchies, or a prelude to/consequence of a civil war. There can be colossal losses, large scale displacement of the population to avoid starvation, though I think it would be fair to categorise this as "everyone starves" even if not literally for the same reason as the previous case.
> it represents a change from full participatory democracy to narrower and ultimately aristocratic governance.
I don't think that's the relevant distinction. "Benevolent dictatorship" is still one of the most efficient forms of governance, if you actually have a benevolent dictator.
The real problem is perverse incentives. If you have a situation where 0.1% of people can get 100 times as many resources as the median person through some minimal-overhead transfer mechanism, that's maybe not ideal, but it's a lot better than the thing where 0.1% of people can get 100 times as many resources as the median person by imposing a 90% efficiency cost. In the first case you lost ~10% of your resources so someone else could have 100 times as much, but in the second case you lost >90% of your resources only so that someone else could have 10 times as much as they'd have had to begin with, because now the pie is only 1/10th as big.
But the latter is what happens when corruption is tolerated but not acknowledged, because then someone can't just come out and say "I'm taking this because I can get away with it and if you don't like it then change the law" and instead has to make fanciful excuses for inefficiently blocking off alternative paths in order to herd everyone through their toll booth, at which point they not only get away with it but destroy massive amounts of value in the process.
> Laws legitimise and stabilise those in power. If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power.
Not quite that simple.
If enough people stop believing in the law, the society breaks apart, and you have people shooting each other in the streets trying to loot supermarkets and extend their lives for a week or two, before inevitably dying of starvation.
This is serious stuff. Society and civilization are purely abstract, intersubjective constructs. They exist only as long as enough people believe in them -- but then, it's still not that simple. Actually, they exist if enough people believe that enough other people believe in them.
Money, laws, employment, contracts, corporations, even marriages - are mutually recursive beliefs achieving stability as independent abstractions. But they're not independent - they're vulnerable to breaking if large group of people suddenly start to doubt in them.
Not sure why this is downvoted. For a critical tool like DB cloning, I‘d very much appreciate if it was hand written. Simply because it means it’s also hand reviewed at least once (by definition).
We wouldn’t have called it reviewed in the old world, but in the AI coding world we’re now in it makes me realise that yes, it is a form of reviewing.
I use Claude a lot btw. But I wouldn’t trust it on mission critical stuff.
It's being downvoted because the commenter is asking for something that is already in the readme. Furthermore, it's ironic that the person raising such an issue is performing the same mistake as they are calling out - neglecting to read something they didn't write.
It‘s at the very bottom of the readme, below the MIT license mention. Yes, it’s there, but very much in the fineprint. I think the easier thing to spot is the CLAUDE.md in the code (and in particular how comprehensive it is).
Again, I love Claude, I use it a ton, but a topic like database cloning requires a certain rigour in my opinion. This repo does not seem to have it. If I had hired a consultant to build a tool like this and would receive this amount of vibe coding, I’d feel deceived. I wouldn’t trust it on my critical data.
App migrations that may fail and need a rollback have the problem that you may not be allowed to wipe any transactions so you may want to be putting data to a parallel world that didn't migrate.
> App migrations that may fail and need a rollback have the problem that you may not be allowed to wipe any transactions so you may want to be putting data to a parallel world that didn't migrate.
This is why migrations are supposed to be backwards compatible
> Eh, DB branching is mostly only necessary for testing - locally
For local DB's, when I break them, I stop the Docker image and wipe the volume mounts, then restart + apply the "migrations" folder (minus whatever new broken migration caused the issue).
Surprised by the negative comments here. Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store. Now a government fines them for it and some people are upset?
It is a nationalistic thing. When foreign governments fine "American" companies, they get all up in arms, while constantly asking the US Government to provide better consumer protections and promote competition.
This position commonly ignores that these fines are against these companies position within the market for which they're fined. Meaning that the EU will look at the EU profits and fine relative to those, so they aren't fining the "American" side/profits of the company but rather their "EU" (or Italian in this case) balance sheet.
The EU moved to fining on the basis of global revenues a long time ago to avoid companies using accounting to hide local revenues and avoid fines.
Then again, it could be seen as a tit for tat move regarding how the US applied its laws extraterritorialy using the dollar as a medium so it's bit harsh to complain about the EU when the US started the whole thing.
This whole procedure started after Meta (that meta) reported apple to the authority, it's not even an investigation that was started by the authority of its own volition
> When foreign governments fine "American" companies, they get all up in arms
Which is ironic, because Apple is more aligned with China than the US:
Apple CEO Tim Cook "secretly" signed an agreement worth more than $275 billion with Chinese officials, promising that Apple would help to develop China's economy and technological capabilities - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/07/apple-ceo-tim-cook-secr...
You confidently state that EU fines relative to global revenue, but you are wrong.
The case linked above is an Italian competition authority, so I'm any case, no EU level calculation.
There are various legal bases applicable at EU level (competition, GDPR, ...) so depending on the case which rules are applied varies. But in general these guidelines apply, which explicitly state the basis as follows:
> In determining the basic amount of the fine to be imposed, the Commission will take the value of the undertaking's sales of goods or services to which the infringement directly or indirectly relates in the relevant geographic area within the EEA. It will normally take the sales made by the undertaking during the last full business year of its participation in the infringement (hereafter ‘value of sales’).
E.g. most recent EU cases as per their press website note that they applied these guidelines:
You shouldn't be surprised. Almost every single story involving the EU and Apple that I've seen over the past few years was full of low effort responses and generic rants about the EU by people who clearly haven't read past the title, especially when it comes to fines.
Take your pick: "EU is fining us to finance itself", "EU can't innovate", "I can't believe that EU is fining Apple for [gross misunderstanding of the situation]"
I think people would sympathize more if it was something like "Apple makes choosing a different default browser or email client unnecessarily cumbersome" --
instead of "Apple makes you double-opt-in to sharing your private data with even more advertisers"
But that's not the story here. I hate ads as much as anyone, but this action is a matter of market competition, not privacy. They're completely different fights and intelligent people ought to be able to distinguish between the two. Anti-competitive behavior by Google, Apple, Meta, etc. is what got us into this mess with tracking and privacy violations in the first place.
It's the market for privacy violations. I'd go so far as to say that improving competitiveness in this market probably makes the world worse, by making privacy violations more profitable. If they had fined them for not allowing sideloading, or not allowing third-party payments, it would be a different story. Those are markets I want to see grow and thrive.
They received a complaint, they investigated and issued a fine. You're asking them to selectively enforce laws based on their subjective opinion of some industry, which would be highly illegal.
The entire advertising industry needs to die and I'll support every fight in pursuit of that goal, but this isn't about that. You don't dismantle an industry by picking a winner and letting them get away with crime.
And yes, there needs to be an EU-wide action over all of those other issues you mentioned too but that has nothing to do with this particular case.
Can you do me a favor and familiarize yourself with the executive summary document instead of just replying "nuh uh" out of ignorance? See paragraphs 5, 10, and 12 in particular.
They broke competition law. The fact that did so in the advertising industry as opposed to any other is irrelevant to this case.
When Apple introduced these changes, rates for Apple Search Ads tripled.
Because Apple Search Ads are offered by the same company that sold you the device, they are legally not a “third party” service. Apple still tracks your installs, your revenue, your retention period, etc, and uses it for Apple Search Ads. Developers can see these metrics for their own apps.
> Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store.
There is a strong population on HN that dislikes walled gardens. In my experience there are also plenty of people who disagree. There's also a large population that doesn't like EU tech regulations.
The ratio between different parts of the HN population can change significantly depending of stuff like time of day and headline draw. I don't find it particularly surprising, it isn't like HN is a monolith with internally consistent views across the entire population.
Ok, but can you give me an example of even ONE specific commenter who has made inconsistent comments on this topic in different threads?
“HN” is lots of different people with lots of different opinions. Different threads select for different commentators. This is not unusual (nor has it been the other thousand times people have commented on the inconsistency of HN).
Why does it matter what others on HN think? Either you find a comment insightful, read it, upvote and move on. Or it isn't, or maybe it's outright wrong, and you try to correct it. Or you found some question in your head, so you ask that.
Not once have I wondered what "HN at large thinks" because it simply doesn't matter. What HN-the-collective thinks about things-in-general just isn't interesting, people's individual thoughts and opinions though, is so much more valuable to read and interesting.
Polls would be just as inconsistent as the comments. Individual contributors would be consistent, but different polls would select for different contributors.
I don’t think it’s surprising. The ideal setup for many people here is an OS that gives them control over what they run and over their data.
An App Store that restrict us from running the application we want is bad. An App Store that prevents applications from tracking us is good. The former restricts our freedom, the latter restricts the freedom of developers who want to take advantage of our data.
It wasnt until recently that we could even have emulators to play old video games we grew up with, instead of having to buy "clones" one by one for $5/piece. The only thing that was protecting was Apple's profits
As the platform owner, they explicitly reserve the right to do this - see also Meta, Google, Amazon, etc.
Apple collects data, but they usually keep it for their own use, that's the difference.
Third parties trying to do the same level of collection and also share it with partners is the issue. As such, the platform owner putting constraints on them by applying rules related to privacy shouldn't surprise anyone.
Have you ever read a comment in favour of Apple Store ads? Every time the topic is discussed here the opinion is very negative.
What I said it’s that I don’t find it surprising that people generally dislike the App Store but that they also aren’t against limiting tracking from apps.
This one's getting negative reception because the optics are crap. I've ranted plenty about Apple, but ATT is a great thing and I don't see how it's “abusing market position”. Like, just don't track people across the web and then you don't need to show the ATT pop-up?
It's almost like the stories on HN always attract more nay-sayers/detractors/negative nancies than positive ones, so if you just go by "general vibe of the comment section by submission theme", it'll always look like HN has split personality disorder, while in reality HN is composed of a wide range of diverse individuals :)
Not true at all. I support small artists and it's the only way they make money. Ticket sales and merch make up the vast majority of artist revenue for artists who arent in the top 1%. Most musicians don't make money if they aren't touring or selling merch somehow.
there's also the invaluable aspect of networking that touring allows. bit of a tangent, but it's very important for musicians to network.
The exception are musicians who do production stuff. Think movie/tv scores, commercials, etc. I actually know a handful of artists who used to tour quite a lot but eventually settled down to do production stuff. So they transitioned from touring to make money to production. Touring all year with no healthcare catches up to people.
I know a number of musicians that tour nightclubs, small venues, and festivals.
They make a living; not a luxurious one, but they do OK. They just enjoy making music, and feel that it's worth it. Many of them never even record their music.
Wow. Now you need to pay even more as a developer in order to be distributed on the App Store. These ads are yet another fee on top of the revenue share that Apple takes. It's obscene.
Let's hope alternative App Stores take off. I have very low hopes but hope dies last.
I’d argue it’s not as simple as that. A city like Lisbon with a sudden influx of expats risks moving to a very unhealthy economic environment.
Expats come, locals are pushed out, existing business is replaced by business catering towards expats. But an economy built on being a trendy expat location is not sustainable. Expats will leave to a new place eventually, and then the city is dead. This dynamic is accelerated by the fact that locals are forced out when expacts come, but the city was attractive in the first place because of how charming locals made it.
If you run the city - and imagine it’s a company, and you’re the CEO - you can see that your city is falling for a hype train that will eventually kill it. The smart thing is to not let that hype train happen.
Because expat purchase power is a mutliple of your locals, you need to find other levers. Every company would do the same thing.
I did that when I was retraining Stable Audio for fun and it really turned out to be trivial enough to pull of as a little evening side project.
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