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Comment by toomanybeersies | Hacker News Reader

Why does the UK seem to take 1984 as a guide book, rather than a cautionary tale?

As much as I applaud efforts to stop extremism, censorship in this form is concerning. Who is the arbiter of what counts as extremism? Obviously any website urging people to join Daesh should be blocked by their standard, but what about websites promoting the PLO, or the PKK? How about websites about the Rohingya? The Burmese government certainly seems to think they are terrorists.

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> Why does the UK seem to take 1984 as a guide book, rather than a cautionary tale?

Answering a rhetorical question here, but the UK is an unreconstructed colonial government left over from the Empire. In some ways it hasn't really adapted to the independence of Ireland, despite that being nearly 100 years ago. Instead it runs a system designed for control of "distant savages" from London on an absurdly reduced scale, like someone trying to use Kubernetes for their "hello world".

Three of the four home nations have colonial office structures. There's a reason there's no Secretary of State for England.

Even within England, places like Stoke-on-Trent and Great Yarmouth get treated as if they were in remote inaccessible jungle because you can't get there on an Oyster card.

Brexit is where we find out which of the bits of the British constitution are load-bearing.

(The PLO are not a proscribed organisation, but Hamas and the PKK are: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... )

It sounds from the BBC piece that this was trained specifically for Daesh content (part of the reason they don't want to say what the features they look for are), and as you say that is uncontroversially extremist content

It's trained specifically for Daesh content right up until the moment it's trained for other content as well.

Isn't that the difference between conservative and liberal politics? With the conservative Tories in power this is right up their alley.

Disclaimer: Am Swedish so have absolutely no idea

There's no difference. Look to Facebook and Google in the types of speech that they're working to suppress and how they want to go about it: It's the same thing from the liberal side.

Neither "side"'s stereotype actually wants free speech. That's turning into more of a centrist thing, simply by attrition via tribalism of the "two sides" (which itself is a false dichotomy).

I'm not British, so I'm not fully well versed in UK politics, but as far as I can tell, this has been driven by both Labour and the Tories.

Remember, it was under a Labour PM that the UK invaded Iraq. Civil liberties were steadily eroded through a series of anti-terrorism laws during Blair's tenure.

Of course, things might be different now that Corbyn is running the Labour party, but it's difficult to undo what has been done. Once power has been gained, the holder is usually very reluctant to let it go.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Acts

You don’t remember Labour’s ID cards and biometric database? Or their expansion of the surveillance state?

Labour were never "liberal", though; this is why trying to map everything onto the "conservative/liberal" dichotomy is a mistake.

Old Labour were characterised by a weak state and strong unions; New Labour were characterised by a strong redistributive state that was safe enough for middle-class voters; it remains to be seen what Momentum Labour actually do, if anything.

Yes and no. I don’t think the slate gets wiped clean when a new leader is installed. If the Tories are still carrying the legacy of Thatcher then Labour must held to the same standard with Bliar.

The problem is that people keep trying to map non-American political systems onto the American political spectrum. Tory vs Labour is a completely different horse race to Republican vs Democrat in the USA. Same goes for most other country's political systems.

That's the go-to narrative, so not surprising.

But a series of Home Secretaries have been hard at work to erode online liberty, from both the major parties.

I give you Jack "Boot" Straw :

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/jul/31/internet....

This is an entirely predictable consequence of Theresa May being PM. She is just continuing the trajectory that she set when she was Home Sec. Troubling stuff.

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