Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Deja vu!

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Members of a certain age may remember the wonderful Floella Benjamin from the BBC children's programme 'Play School'.

Floella is now a member of the House of Lords for the Liberal Democrats. In an interview that I saw yesterday, she explained that she has always fought for the rights of and protection for the most vulnerable and discriminated against in society. She went on to say that she believes that children are our most vulnerable citizens because they don't have a voice and that this is why she is putting her support behind the Online Safety Bill, particularly with regards to preventing children from accessing online pornography.

---------- Post added at 07:12 ---------- Previous post was at 06:47 ----------

Yesterday's Radio 4 programme 'You & Yours' contained a report about the growing problem of facebook and Instagram accounts being taken over by scammers:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016xqv

Many of these are owned by small businesses. Once they have taken control, they try to blackmail the true account holders because they know that these sites are essential to their business, but even those that do pay don't get their accounts back.

Instead, the friends/followers of the accounts are scammed for money in the name of the true account holder.

Reporting this to Meta, who own these sites, has proved fruitless. People are ignored, sent into a permanent reporting loop or asked to provide evidence of ownership. One man supplied them with a copy of his passport and a solicitors letter to verify his identity as requested and they still failed to act, meaning that more and more of his friends were being sucked into the scam in his name.

A Conservative MP, Kevin Hollingway from the Treasury Select Committee, said that the Online Safety Bill will not only be about dealing with harm, including financial harm, but about preventing it from happening in the first place and that it is hoped that the threat of substantial fines and personal liability for the owners/directors of websites will provide an incentive to focus their attention to prevent or deal with such incidents properly in the first place.

As it stands, complainants feel angry, frustrated and stalled because they have nobody else to turn to to resolve matters.

Private legal action is also being considered to force Meta to compensate users for their inaction.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

The Online Safety Bill will also now be used to combat the malicious spreading of misinformation:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016xvj

I imagine that this will be in relation to things like covid, interfering with our elections & referendums etc.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Who decides what's misinformation and what isn't?

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

You mean the "government to control everything yo say and do on the internet" bill.

Its clear it has little to do with safety and everything to do with controlling and censoring your entire use of the net.

Big brother is watching you.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

That’ll be the wokes, of course, who will have the power to cancel you without trial.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

It’s SUPERWOKE!

"the wokes"? You’ve been sniffing the wacky baccy again, haven’t you?

(or at least, drinking the Express/Mail/Telegraph Kool-Aid).

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

:clap::clap:So true

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

We know who they are…. :grind:

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

It will be Ofcom who ultimately decide, but I imagine (and hope) that they do it after consultation with the Government and expert advisors.

This part of the bill will need to be handled with tact & sensitivity. For example, there were a lot of people who genuinely believed that covid was a conspiracy or that 5G masts were involved with it.

Some of these people were so convinced that medical staff were involved and actually killing people that they were going into hospitals shouting and insulting hard pressed staff.

Whilst I understand that people must be stopped from posting/sharing potentially harmful nonsense to influence others, imagine the accusations of censorship and possible civil disobedience that would have arisen if the Government had of made it an offence to post/share this material on the internet at the height of the pandemic.

We don't want a similar situation to Russia where people are punished for daring to suggest that Russia is at war with Ukraine.

I accept that this part of the bill may be problematic.

---------- Post added at 17:55 ---------- Previous post was at 17:48 ----------

That's rather unfair as there are lots of provisions to deal with paedophiles, scammers, trolls, protecting minors from accessing porn.etc.

Nothing will change for the vast majority of people who use the internet in a responsible manner.

Unless it's something serious, I imagine that people/companies will initially receive a warning to give them chance to change their behaviour. They won't immediately be thrown into prison or be fined to such an extent that they lose their house or something!

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Who are "they"?

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

I don’t think they’re qualified.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

So it wasnt ok to censor then, but its ok now :confused:

Thats where this is heading.
Ban anything that someone disagrees with.

Its not unfair at all.
We already have laws to deal with paedophiles & scammers.
Who decides who or what a troll is ?

Why should the nanny state "protect" yet again - thats the job of parents.
The major ISPs already provide tools to do it (and you can buy software as well).
Not to mention, these minors are usually looking for it, they dont "accidently" come across it, thats quite hard to do these days, especially for the tech savy generation.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Speaking as a retired secondary school teacher I can attest that the first thing teenagers did in computer lessons was to type in porn in the search engine of choice.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

You can say that again!

---------- Post added at 08:12 ---------- Previous post was at 08:09 ----------

I don't know how you can be so sure about that. Seemingly innocent comments these days get people cancelled. This cure is worse than the disease!