From the article:
>First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act.
From the source (emphasis mine):
> On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children _(which were dealt with by other parts of the Act)_. Rather, the aim of Category 1 was to capture services that have a significant influence over public discourse. The submission offered, as a possible option, requesting information from Ofcom as to _how content recommender systems function on different types of service_.
The quote leaves out "which were dealt with by other parts of the Act" and the fact that the subject was specifically "Category 1 duties" not the Act in its entirety. It also doesn't mention that the subject was on content recommender systems.
_Again_ this is not a judgment on the Act itself, but providing the full context, which does change the message.
0: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v_Secret...
Meanwhile, Brits just look on at this narrative wondering what the hell they're talking about. Look, I'm against this legislation too, but if you actually live in the UK or even just consume mainstream British media, you'd soon realise that this narrative that's being pushed is a distortion that doesn't match day to day reality.
Each time i come there it's worse than previous trip, and your whole infrastructure feels oppressive. Constant reminders to be vigilant because something bad might happen(train and metro jingles come to mind) - implying a terrorist attack. Constant reminders that you're watched by cameras, while crime itself is rampant.
I come from Eastern Europe, yet visiting UK genuinely feels like visiting oppressive police state.
I am aware about your history(first The Troubles, then terrorist scare of 2000s, now domestic problems) but this is NOT the normal state for modern western country. Most likely perspective of Brits who have been living through this since ww2 is heavily culturally skewed, rather than then outside observer's one.
The Ariana Grande concert bombing was only five years ago. You can see a list of those in the 2020's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
The whole highest order issue in the whole west is that there is not only effectively zero responsibility, zero accountability, but also zero consequences.
The easiest to understand example of this may be how corporations can commit all manner of what are effectively crimes (i.e., it is what you would be charged with) and they not only do not have any effective consequences, the consequences usually instill the lesson that it is extremely profitable to commit the crimes and just pay the meaningless fine as a cost of business.
In most cases corporations even just account for it as an expense and add it to the cost and price they charge. So, for example, all the EU fines they so concisely levied over the last years against American tech companies like Microsoft and Google; they had been charging the various European governments and companies for a reserve to pay such expected fines.
It always baffles me that people do not understand the basic premise that organizations of people are not their own entities, especially when you don’t punish the individuals that make them up in the same way that individuals that are not in corporations are. Is quite literally a kind of new stratified system. Joe if ACME Corp can commit financial crimes and get away with it, but you can’t. He can even commit homicide through negligence with impunity, while you are thrown in jail for decades.
It really should be the other way around, if a corporation commits crimes, if you did or should have known about the crimes, you are collectively also held criminally liable just like a getaway driver of a bank robbery is.
Somehow we have not evolved past the point that the most powerful and responsible are the least accountable and have the least consequences for their actions.
>>effectively facilitated by the British government through its actions and policies.
Nothing justifies blowing up teenage girls you deluded psychopath.
This is why there is zero accountability in the West. Because as soon as we say "hey, policy had some hand in this", people like yourself come out of the woodwork with language such as this to shut the conversation down.
Believe it or not, Terrorism IS a policy issue. If you have bad policy, then you are partially responsible when terrorism happens!
Even natural disasters are a policy issue. For example, here in Texas we had a flood where a lot of people, including young girls, drowned.
This is the type of thing that gets affected when you, say, cut budgets for weather and climate surveillance services. But when you point this out, braindead republicans will say "wowww so you're politicizing the death of little girls? Shame on you!"
But it is political, because everything is political, because politics is literally how modern humans structure their society. It's not team sports. If you cut money for thing X, things that rely on thing X will die, and that includes humans.
The reason people want to shut this coversation down over and over again is because they don't want to be accountable. They voted for something, knowing deep down it's bad and it's gonna lead to some people dying, and they feel immense shame for this. So, they would prefer to simply pretend the issue does not exist, then to have some accountability.
You see, they vote for policies for their direct consequences, but then they don't want to be responsible for those consequences either. That's not possible, those two don't compute together.