The Chinafication of the internet continues as the UK proposes blocking any service that hosts "illegal" or "harmful" material

Last year the US Congress passed SESTA/FOSTA, an "anti-sex-trafficking bill" that has resulted in the shuttering of all the services formerly used by sex workers to vet their johns, massively increasing the personal physical risk borne by sex-workers and reinvigorating the dying pimping industry, as sex workers seek out protectors.

Not incidentally, SESTA/FOSTA has led to an overall hair-trigger on the part of platform operators, who -- facing massive liability for allowing a single prostitution ad through -- have simply shut down the places where sexuality is discussed (even Craigslist shut down adult-oriented message section).

Then, last month, the EU passed the Copyright Directive with Article 13 intact, forcing platforms to filter user speech -- including images, sounds, videos and every other copyrightable media, down to Minecraft mods -- for "copyright infringement," at a massive cost that will destroy small and independent forums for communication. The system has no checks and balances, allowing anyone to claim copyright over anything to see it censored Europe-wide -- it doesn't even allow platforms to ignore future claims from known hoaxters or censors.

Then, in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks, Australia -- already a world leader in shitty internet policy -- passed a law requiring platforms to remove "extremist" or "violent" content within an hour. Getting it wrong means fines of up to 10% of global gross revenue.

And now, the British Parliament, in a bid to cement its status as the decade's most dysfunctional of all legislatures, is considering legislation that would create a Chinese-style internet censorship ministry that would instruct the country's ISPs and online services about which subjects are and are not permissible, and force them to monitor all user communication in order to prevent any "illegal content" from appearing online. Read the rest