A small website operator can keep child pornography off their platform with ease. Facebook have a mountain to climb — regardless of their resources.
Prove it. I’m asking for specifics, not hand waving.
Last month.
“ We’ve heard concerns from some smaller services that the new rules will be too burdensome for them. Some of them believe they don’t have the resources to dedicate to assessing risk on their platforms, and to making sure they have measures in place to help them comply with the rules. As a result, some smaller services feel they might need to shut down completely.
So, we wanted to reassure those smaller services that this is unlikely to be the case“
“If organisations have carried out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and determined, with good reason, that the risks they face are low, they will only be expected to have basic but important measures to remove illegal content when they become aware of it. These include:
easy-to-find, understandable terms and conditions; a complaints tool that allows users to report illegal or harmful material when they see it, backed up by a process to deal with those complaints; the ability to review content and take it down quickly if they have reason to believe it is illegal; and a specific individual responsible for compliance, who we can contact if we need to.”
Your turn. Where are these compliance costs?
>they will only be expected to have basic but important measures to remove illegal content when they become aware of it. These include:
>easy-to-find, understandable terms and conditions; a complaints tool that allows users to report illegal or harmful material when they see it, backed up by a process to deal with those complaints; the ability to review content and take it down quickly if they have reason to believe it is illegal; and a specific individual responsible for compliance, who we can contact if we need to.”
Having someone dedicated to contact with this authority is also a burden on hobbyist projects.
To your point even your extract from the link there are compliance costs.
>So, we wanted to reassure those smaller services that this is *unlikely* to be the case
Your source admits there are extra costs that will likely cause some small services to have to shutdown if the costs are to burdensome for them, they are just saying that they hope the costs are small enough that it doesn't put most small services in that position.
Even in your quote it explicitly lists extra costs. i.e. the cost of a compliant compliance tool. Obviously the government isn't going to implement it or spend the time moderating reports or abuse of reports. Which means the cost of extra hours moderating and setting it up are on the service provider.
"Must have an individual responsible for compliance". So either employ someone to take this risk or take on the risk and responsibility yourself and the associated due diligence costs (lawyers in the UK are only free if you're already losing hours of your life to the court system).
These costs will definetly push some people over the line to not wanting to host such services. Especially when the wording is so wide that you need to moderate out insults in your forum.
Jesus Christ! Your comment would probably be flagged as foreign propaganda to soft peddle broken UK policies, that is if the US had such rules. My comment should be flagged because that could be an insulting insinuation or the expletive at the start of this paragraph could be stirring up religious hatred by being needlessly blasphemous. And a moderator has to read the entire post to get to the non compliant part.
Governments can abuse their power to silence speech it doesn't like. Governments can use agitators to develop pretext for legal action. Governments can make examples out of small-time defendants to send chilling effects. Governments can have prosecutors who may not be evil, but merely overzealous and harmful.
At the end, it is about a default to freedom of speech and content online (short of objectively illegal content) or a default to self-censorship and closing the gates on open forums.
But if it's so simple, volunteer. Take on the criminal penalties yourself and perform the reviews.
Create a forum for supporters of (unfavourable person)? Sorry, your online complaints process isn't good enough, prison for you.
For example, the site must have an "illegal content risk assessment" and a "children’s risk assessment". And the children's risk assessment is a four-dimensional matrix of age groups, types on content, ways of using the service and types of harm. And it's got to be updated before making any "significant" change to any aspect of a service’s design or operation. It also makes it mandatory to have terms of service, and to apply them consistently. The site must have a content reporting procedure, a complaints procedure, and maintain written records.
Now obviously the operator of a bicycling forum might say "eh, let's ignore all that, they probably don't mean us"
But if you read the law and interpret its words literally, a bicycling forum is a user-to-user service, and a public forum is almost certain to be read by children from time to time.
Also, those filters are obviously imperfect. Remember the man who got his Google account terminated because he took a photo of his son's rash to send to his doctor? Pedo alert, pedo alert, a child is naked in a photo. My parents must be pedos too, they took a photo of me sitting in the bath when I was a toddler. Call the police.
Facebook can actually train AI to detect CSAM, and is probably already doing so in cooperation with NCMEC and similar organisations/authorities across the world.
Your average small website? No chance. Obtaining training material actively is seriously illegal everywhere, and keeping material that others upload is just as bad in most jurisdictions.
The big guys get the toys, the small guys have to worry all the goddamn time if some pedos are going to use their forum or whatnot.
The plan for April is to remove the need for police to obtain a warrant to search peoples homes - that bad.
I'd say "there will be blood on the streets", but there already is...
This video pretty much sums up what the UK is now. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zzstEpSeuwU
This is analogous to s18 PACE post-arrest powers, grafted onto s17 PACE.
The alternative is that we continue to require police to try and get a fast-time warrant while plotted up outside a premises; this is not a quick process, I've done it and it took nearly two hours.
>there will be blood on the streets
Oh, dry up.
After making secure communications a crime.
And you think a state like that cares about the formalities? lol..
They just doing what every other monarchy and dictatorship has done in a desperate bid to hold onto power while the state collapses due to inept leadership.
You brought up warrants, they counterpointed the warrants.
> And you think a state like that cares about the formalities? lol..
The warrant is a formality, isn't it? I'm pretty sure you're arguing against your own point now.
Or in other words, the proper legal authorities are parliament and the law itself. Sometimes the law needs interpreting and judgment calls, which where warrants come in. This law removes the need for interpretation in one narrow and clearly defined case. If before judges were expected to issue warrants on the kind of evidence that this law requires, then now codifying that expectation and removing what has now become nothing but a bureaucratic delay doesn't reduce liberty.
This seems to be limited to stolen geo-tagged items: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/25/police-new-p...
I would agree that this law is a slippery slope, but at the same time we should not omit important facts.
And that is before you get into the court system, which if you need a quick primer, just look at the treatment of Julian Assange - and thats a "best case" for someone with millions of global supporters.
Uk police have targets to hit, they can't hit those targets going after real criminals, so they predominantly target people nieve enough to think they want to help them.
Of course they had to make running public forums a crime.
How small was your school year?! What does Elizabeth (presumably the 2nd) dying have to do with anything?
Lets just say her replacements brother is Andrew, and his best mate was Jimmey Saville. Should tell you all you need to know about her replacement with less chance of me ending up like David Kelly.
Heads of state do matter, regardless of how much propaganda they push that they only matter in other countries. These laws are not something the labour voters asked for.
Appointed by the head of state. Meets the head of state regularly to be told what to do (wednesdays iirc).
Think about what it has taken for you to say what you just said despite those facts.
We are also talking about what is still the richest, most most powerful family on the planet. You think Elon musk is rich for owning Tesla and Twitter, these guys still own for example, England, Wales, Canada and Australia.
Where are you finding this utter rubbish!
The Prime Minister is chosen by Members of Parliament. The monarchs role in 'appointing' them is purely ceremonial.
Honestly, you sound like a somebody spouting 'Freeman on the Land' crap.
its called crown land
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/27/queen-secret...
Secondly, the British monarchy have absolutely nothing to do with politics and have remained impartial for nearly 100 years.
The UK government has always been right wing compared to most of the rest of western Europe. It sucks, but it is what it is. But the way you’re talking is as if the UK has suddenly gone to hell when the reality is just that this is just more of the same.
If anything, the biggest footgun the UK has done was leaving the EU, and that was something the dumb British public voted for. We did it to ourselves.
Quite why you are choosing to believe and regurgitate such "alterative facts" to fit in with your world view is something you need to address. For all our sakes.
What do you think she was doing?
I don't see our moderators needing to do any more work than they're already doing, and have been doing for years, to be honest.
So we'll see how the dice land.
For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.
[*] Unless you are a multibillion $ company with an army of moderators, compliance people, lawyers.