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Pet Hates

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Welcome to the all new Pet Hates topic for 2025 and onwards. After 631 pages and over 12500 posts, we have decided to create a shiny new topic for you to indulge in your ranting needs! We're aware that many posts here will be rather passionate, but please note that we are a PG forum, so do remember to keep the topics of discussion relatively family friendly, and not to use profanity in your messages.

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Thameslink Rail said:
I'm going to start off with the new Online Safety act, I agree with the intentions behind it but it is so badly written.
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I think we can fully agree there @Thameslink Rail!

I spoke about this in the UK Politics thread a couple of weeks back, but my issues with it are two fold.

My first is that I feel it is an overly blunt instrument and treats the whole internet as though it is Facebook/Twitter/Instagram. As I’m sure the wonderful TS team can attest to this evening having had to jump through numerous hoops to keep the site compliant, it generates needless work for many smaller sites, and compliance is creating obstacles for smaller communities at best and possibly even shutting sites down at worst. Not to mention that the ham-fisted implementation of the law is stopping kids from accessing things like support forums to provide help and support with certain issues, and censoring material like parliamentary debates on Palestine and videos from Gaza… if we want 16 year olds to vote, surely they need to be able to view politics in action, no?

My second is that I feel it introduces considerable concerns around privacy. Age verification is commonly justified under the pretence of “you’re verified for beer, so why shouldn’t you be verified for adult content online?”… but this argument misses a key nuance, in my view. That nuance is that the internet never forgets. If you flash your driving license at a staff member in person to buy beer or a cigarette, or gain entry into a nightclub, they’ve likely forgotten the encounter 5 seconds later and you maintain relative anonymity. But the online world doesn’t forget that easily. When you upload your ID and face to an adult site to get verification, that will be stored in some kind of database, and chances are that will in some way be linked to your usage habits. When you consider that adult sites will now have considerable databases containing ID information and/or pictures and facial scans linked to potentially very private adult site viewing habits… that’s a data breach waiting to happen, in my opinion. What cyber criminal wouldn’t love that database? The ransomware and sextortion attacks practically create themselves… and with the added layer of generative AI, there’s even now the option for them to create scarily convincing deepfake photos and videos of people engaging with these sites.

Yes, you could argue that everything you do on the internet is tracked to some extent, and was even before the advent of the OSA, but I think having personally identifiable information explicitly linked to incredibly private adult site viewing habits in a database is quite a different kettle of fish to having cookies track what you buy on Amazon.

The intent to make the internet safer for kids is noble, don’t get me wrong… but I don’t think the OSA is the answer. I think the solution should lie more in parental controls, something specific to children and teenagers, or perhaps something that specifically targets larger sites and/or truly harmful content, rather than a draconian law that arguably makes the internet worse for everyone. Although to be honest, I’m not sure I’d call myself a supporter of overly authoritarian internet law in general, as I myself have gained a lot from the internet and online communities over the years and I wouldn’t want to take that away from future generations.
 
Age verificatiors. There should be a single Gov age verificators linked to your ID. I've just had to fight with discord to try get it to approve me being over 18, it still won't let me. I've now submitted a manual request, with no stated timeframe of how long it will take. Also these automated systems are completely inaccessible to anybody with a visual impairment or I assume somebody with no use of there arms.
 
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I shall now try and better my language, do not want the the little darlings knowing how to swear.

It begs the question. Did alot of adults skip being young ? I often see on local Facebook groups giving it the "kids these days." I.often think, you lived in this area when you was younger. Recently we have had outrage over

Smashed bus stops
Smashed play grounds
Shoplifting
Swearing
Hanging around
Riding bikes dangerously
Being cheeky to elders

That stuff (I self edited) went on when I was a kid. Difference is, not one person had Facebook to grass them up.
 
I do wonder about the swearing thing… won’t kids have heard worse at school than they’d typically hear on a forum like this?

I doubt these types of places are where kids learn swear words… I know I certainly heard far worse around me at school than I ever did here as a teenager!

I’m not saying it’s right that kids are exposed to swearing, but I do wonder whether we really need to censor some quite innocuous words on a forum like this one.

The only thing I could think of is that this forum, by virtue of its subject matter, is perhaps deemed more likely than some to attract younger children?
 
Swear filters are fairly easy to set up ( as I understand it) and prevent getting into trouble under the new law for silly reasons. It's low hanging fruit.

It's possible to be absolutely vile to people without swearing once - this can't easily be filtered without a real person reviewing so I can totally understand using a swear filter to remove that low level high frequency moderation activity allowing the mods to focus on the more troubling stuff when it's reported.
 
JAperson said:
There should be a single Gov age verificators linked to your ID.
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Because that's not open to abuse and asking for a whole bunch more of civil liberty and privacy infringements.
Matt N said:
The only thing I could think of is that this forum, by virtue of its subject matter, is perhaps deemed more likely than some to attract younger children?
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TowersStreet Talk is defined as a "user-to-user" (U2U) service and falls squarely within the scope of the OSA. Crucially, due to the subject matter and TST's own community guidelines that acknowledge a "broad range of ages," the forum is almost certain to be classified as a service "likely to be accessed by children". This classification triggers the Act's most stringent and resource intensive duties.

The OSA moves away from the previous, largely reactive model of "notice and takedown," where a service's liability was primarily triggered after being notified of illegal content. Instead the OSA establishes a proactive "duty of care". This means that online services, like TST, are now legally responsible for anticipating, assessing and mitigating the risks of harm to their users before incidents occur.

The obligations for the mods involve a fundamental operational shift. They will have had to conduct mandatory, detailed Illegal Content and Children's Risk Assessments to identify and document potential harms on the platform. As a result of these assessments, they must implement proportionate safety measures. These can include establishing robust content moderation systems, ensuring the swift removal of illegal content, and, most significantly, integrating "highly effective" age assurance technologies to prevent children from encountering the most harmful material. The Act also mandated a complete overhaul of the forum's Terms of Service and the establishment of a formal, transparent complaints and appeals procedure... Which I'm sure @Craig and co will just love.

This shift transforms the legal status of a forum hoster / moderator. Previously the role was largely defined by community norms and the platform's own TOS. Under the OSA, the mods become a legally accountable manager with a statutory duty to protect users. This duty is not abstract. It is enforceable by a powerful regulator with the ability to levy severe penalties, including personal criminal liability for senior managers in cases of serious failure. The role of running a forum like TowersStreet is no longer just about fostering discussion. It is about actively managing legal risk and demonstrating compliance to a regulator.

I do feel like a bit of a Cassandra type Goose, with my previous concerns about how the act will shape TST in futures to come, but hopefully you're all now starting to see what I was getting at.
 
What's all this painting St. George's Cross onto mini-roundabouts nonsense. Since when was vandalism considered "patriotism"?
 
JAperson said:
Age verificatiors. There should be a single Gov age verificators linked to your ID.
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GooseOnTheLoose said:
Because that's not open to abuse and asking for a whole bunch more of civil liberty and privacy infringements.
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Well Labour have plans, starting with the BritCard: Labour MPs back proposal for universal digital identity card. This will be the 3rd attempt at such a thing.
Once in place it can be easily expanded to include everything including age checks.

TDLR: Mandatory smartphone app/wallet for everyone who is allowed to live/work in UK.
 
rob666 said:
...and if you do not possess such a device?
Microchip in the back of the neck perhaps.
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No idea, I don't own a smartphone either & don't want one. Still amazed they can find the estimated £400m (so more like £800m+) for the creation.

For those who remember, there was an attempt by David Cameron Government to introduce online age checks for Adult material. This failed due to the EU, the government didn't do all the required EU paper work. The plan was, you could go to your local corner shop and buy an Age ID (prove your age in the same way as buying alcohol) and then register your device online to say your old enough. It had a name we all called it, but the Online Safety Act means I can't say what it was.....
 
rob666 said:
...and if you do not possess such a device?
Microchip in the back of the neck perhaps.
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You just carry some form of ID. Most of the world, including most democratic countries have ID cards without a problem. If it makes society more efficient I think it's a good thing. It's hardly like the Gov doesn't have all this info anyway, I mean how would HMRC even work without having everybody's info.
 
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