Does UK's Online Safety Act cover misinformation? Well, that depends

Re: It doesn't matter

And you think a reasonable reaction is to firebomb and attack completely unrelated mosques and muslim-owned stores?

Protests, perhaps even riots are one thing, but targeted attacks against a specific ethnic/religious group is something else completely. And no matter how you feel about it, the fact remains that the government shouldn't focus on legislation regarding misinformation spread, but instead focus on the core issues at hand: immigration policy and racism.

Re: It doesn't matter

Same after Harold Shippman kill 100s of people. I burned down a couple of hospitals to teach the NHS a lesson

Re: It doesn't matter

He killed 3 girls and wounded several other people. This person had been referred to Prevent THREE times.

So what you're saying is that following the Dunblane shootings, the reasonable thing would have been to firebomb the local Scout hut where the perpetrator had been a leader?¹

Whether or not the perpetrator was British or foreign, his acts did not justify setting fire to unrelated mosques, or hotels housing asylum seekers.

Let's not condone thug life. Misinformation is clearly a problem on social media. But it's really the tip of the iceberg. The problem is the manner in which the mainstream media have normalised "always on", rolling news in which they're happy to fart out any old nonsense because "something's happening and News 24 needs something to say, even if we don't know the facts yet". Characters like Tice and Farage ("just tossing some questions out there") have fully teed into this kneejerk, reactionary news cycle and and created a tinderbox culture. Back in the day, if the Southport killings hadn't been reported until the 6 o'clock news, or the next days newspapers, the reporting would have been more sober - but what we get is people shoehorning their pet conspiracy theories into a situation whilst the bodies are still lying in the street. It's grim.

I distinctly remember the Norwegian shootings by Breivik and how these sober "experts" were on the sofas of rolling news channels talking about the problems with Islamic extremism, and then it became apparent it wasn't an Islamic group, so they started talking about terror cells, was it militant greens? Then it became apparent it was a lone-wolf neo-Nazi and they all carried on talking guff like that's all they'd ever thought and yes, right-wing extremism is such an issue - never mind that half an hour ago they were confidently talking about radical Islam. How about you all shut the f- up until you know what the story is that you're trying to report?

Bo Burnham nailed it with "Welcome to the Internet".

Could I interest you in everything?

All of the time

The problem is that half the population are below average, and a fair proportion of them are fuckwits, which is why - prior to being regulated out of existence - predatory credit businesses like Brighthouse, Amigo Loans and Wonga.com were all incredibly profitable. And some proportion of them are highly susceptible to being confidently told that the foreigner wants your cookie by the person who is eating your cookie in front of you.

1. Albeit booted out well before the shootings for being a dreadful leader who had kids getting hypothermia on his camps. But let's not have facts get in the way. There was some connection, thus GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION! Also probably a child molestor, but the Scouts booted him out for being unsafe. And don't get me started on those so-called "paediatricians". Hiding in plain sight!

Re: Speed?

What to do with accredited posters on de facto Kremlin's payroll peddling disinformation? …… elsergiovolador

A valid question to be asked of the BBC and all mainstream media channels too, elsergiovolador.

Re: Speed?

>They have all necessary tools to throttle low reputation sources when fast-growing content matches sensitive keywords.

Facebook do, your local community / hobby / charity phpBB board doesn't

So either take the risk that your sewing circle all go to jail if somebody posts 4chan material, or close it down and just switch to Facebook groups.

Re: Speed?

We have always had laws restricting publishing information even if it's true.

Classified, commercial, medical, minors etc.

Being 'true' doesn't automatically mean public

Re: Speed, that's the truth.

"the legal truth", as opposed to PRAVDA which means official truth. I'm sure there is a grain of truth in there somewhere.

Re: Speed?

We have in Scotland laws designed to prevent us from saying things which the Supreme Court has now confirmed to be the legal truth.

I presume you're talking about the trans ruling. This did not impose any "truth" as such. It simply defined - in a very limited and specific way - how one specific Act of Parliament treated single-sex spaces.

As you say, the "truth" is hard to define, because in this case the "legal" truth does not match the medical truth, with the BMA condemning the ruling and pointing out that even ignoring transgender issues, there are tens of thousands of Intersex individuals in the UK (enough to have their own MP!) who may have three or more chromosomes, whose genetic makeup doesn't match the genitalia they have, or whose genitalia may even be... "mixed". But according to the Supreme Court there are only two biological sexes - men and women! This of course is a very narrow ruling and does imply in the broader sense that "the only two sexes are men and women". Merely the application of a poorly-drafted law.

Doctors have branded the Supreme Court transgender ruling as “scientifically illiterate”.

The doctors claimed a binary divide between sex and gender “has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender-diverse people”, according to a motion seen by The Times.

That Supreme Court ruling is unlikely to last long because it's impractical, and is liable to be a phyrric victory for the activisis currently celebrating. Nobody is going to actually enforce what toilet people use, and if they're foolish enough to do so, then the first time a small business gets sued for discrimination for telling a particularly masculine (cis) woman or fem (cis) man to "use the other toilet", we'll suddenly find businesses saying "Sod this, there's the toilet for standing up, there's the toilet for sitting down. No more single-sex spaces".

This will probably start sooner rather than later because the Supreme Court hedged their opinion by saying that Trans women could not use women-only spaces, but were still in themselves protected from discrimination and must be provided with facilities - how many firms can just find space for a third set of toilets?

And you just need a UK government that is prepared to go to a trade war with the USA about that

Re: Feel good

When measuring a policy it is good to look at it through the lens of not what current government is going to do with it, but what the next evil government can do with it.

Surely this can be used to do many nefarious things if PM of the day likes to leave a moustache patch and pretends he wants to order five beers with his right hand stretched out during his morning bathroom routine.

Different group of people who rioted though - over a known violent criminal…same ones who cry DEI every time they don’t get their way

Re: But most misinformation comes from the government.

Disgusting. What is the judge on? [ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86pp6wq1xno ]

If they want to be able to get away with that, they should be renamed "GB Opinions" and be removed from the "News" section of the EPG.

Sickening response from Frangopoulos about his definition of "free speech". If a left-wing equivalent of GB News existed, spouting equivalent lies, he would (rightly so) be up in arms.

Re: But most misinformation comes from the government.

And rightly so - the BBC have been getting away with their left wing bias for over a decade so why allow just them

Re: "Misinformation"? ah, the burning of the kebab shop story..

Maybe its because I have known way too many journalists over the decades, some you would have even seen on the telly, and I even married one, that whenever someone quotes some news story my first response is to dig it up and check just how reliable the story is. Or if it is even true to being with.

So a search on the term "Stockport riots kebab shop fire" turns up two recent news stories. One is from 2024. One from the year before. The second story was about a Pro-Palestinian group attacked a kebab shop because the owner refused to abide by some boycott. Plenty of video of that attack. The first story was about a suspicious fire in the middle of the night at a kebab shop in Manchester. Which was treated as potential arson as some inflammable liquid was found on an outside door.

See that proves I was right you might say. Not so quick. As there was no follow up story on the night-time fire incident, I checked, that means that the fire investigator could find no actual proof of a deliberate arson as the cause of the fire. You can be 100% certain there would have been a high profile follow up story in the media if any evidence had ben found. Given the context.

So dont believe everything to see in the media. Especially some high profile politically charged story that reinforces your political opinions. Because it is most like untrue (by omission) or at best only partially true. Leaving out key facts.

Because thats how the media has always worked. And why the whole concept of "misinformation" is quite simply laughable. So you read both sides (and those in the middle) and try to make an informed judgment as best you can.

A daily reader of both the Telegraph and the Guardian (and Sunday Times) for many decades. Who still laments the loss of the old Observer and the pre 2014 Guardian. Once a joy to read.

Re: Minitrue

Do you feel comfortable with that legislation being in the hands of MAGA or Reform or are you hoping they will never gain power ever again?

Even seemingly innocuous overreach can be dangerous in their hands: DOGE was made possible by a lazy legislative fix passed under Obama to speed the roll out of ACA. Yes, that doesn't preclude MAGA/others passing their own bad legislation but DOGE would be much more toothless or have been held up if those systems hadn't been in place.

Re: Ridiculous!

You thought Labour were your best option?

Next time - do some research!