That would unironically be a good way of dealing with this. However it would probably be seen as just as hostile.
I'm very against banning websites, however social media as a whole is doing detrimental harm to children and adults alike so I would not shed a tear as long as we also ban meta/tiktok/YouTube shorts.
> however social media as a whole is doing detrimental harm to children and adults alike so I would not shed a tear as long as we also ban meta/tiktok/YouTube shorts.
You would then have to ban the VPNs as usage will just accelerate if that happens.
The result would be no better than what happened to TikTok when that went offline in the US.
Yes, since you have to provide proof of age to watch porn now most people have a VPN. I'm not sure I advocate blocking it, just it would not particularly bother me incrementally at this point, but it would be unfair to single X out as if Meta are perfectly fine.
As with extremist governments and legislators elsewhere in the world, this is largely messaging for the home base rather than foreign consumption.
It's driven by both electoral realities (the US political map and system now favour extreme views), and a level of impunity regarding consequences elsewhere (both within and outside the US).
A lot happened. Trump and his ilk being in power has uniquely facilitated an extended "masks off" period so the rest of the globe has repeated refutations of the US's previous reputation as sometimes belligerent but mostly benevolent. That large swaths of the population could repeatedly openly support the corruption, the vulgarity, the cruelty, and the lawlessness of the administration revealed an unmoored civic/political process at best and underlying cultural and institutional rot at worst. In short, the US has revealed itself to have already declined to a point where it's no longer wise to allow it global hegemony. A dying Republican party, willing to do anything and everything required to remain politically relevant managed to dismantle 70 years of carefully executed foreign policy and unseat us as the global hegemon.
From the inside, I feel the cultural rot runs deep, political tension is high even among family, and the institutional inertia will prevent us from making the necessary political reform (end gerrymandering, end legalized bribery, reform our voting system to eliminate the 2 party system) before violent internal conflict occurs.
When a was a teenager, not so long ago really, everyone wanted to move the US and saw them as a global cultural power. The only people who truly disliked them were a minority anti capitalists, most people had positive views about Americans.
Now wherever I look at, from far left to far right, virtually no one fully support the BS they're currently pushing, even the usual bootlicking lapdogs are staying silent. In recent German polls about which countries are considered partners the US is barely ahead of Russia.
Many people vote for them out of protest against the establishment.
Also the typical AfD Voter doesn't like Trump or the US. Especially after they threatened some small port in Eastern Germany with sanctions over North Stream 2 (not that they liked them much before, but that fell on a very fertile soil)
AfD gets 30% of votes, the turnout isn't even 80% so even if we consider 100% of them are brain dead putin balls garglers, which isn't even remotely true, that's 14m people out of ~60m people legally allowed to vote.
These numbers look pretty similar to Trump's voter base in 2024. He got 49% of the vote from the 60% of the population that can vote, so about 30% of all possible votes.
Much like Musk, any "organism" that reaches a certain level of power and influence becomes decadent and eventually gets to the point where it stops caring what others think, even for appearances.
Enough people were not enjoying the results of the country's global power that an increasingly irrelevant political party was able to convert generalized angst into effective anti-establishment (anything status quo, doesn't matter what) populist platform. The unreasonable people are enjoying that the correct people are being hurt and that we are belligerently projecting what global power we have left, while "reasonable" people are having every Trumpian move sanewashed through the media they choose to consume. Everyone else (more than half, I suppose) is anywhere from concerned to terrified.
Don't reward this type of post with your attention. This is messaging from 1 (of 453) Congressional reps to the president and voters. It is not realistic policy.
If Starmer is successful in banning @X in Britain, I will move forward with legislation that is currently being drafted to sanction not only Starmer, but Britain as a whole.
Official account for FL-13 Rep. Anna Paulina Luna | Serving on
@GOPOversight
&
@HouseForeignGOP
| Wife-Mom-USAF Veteran
I find it bizarre that x isn't already blocked in Britain given that it's full of porn, and seemingly doesn't do any of the required proof of age checks required by every other porn website under current UK legislation.
We don't actually really have the ability to hard block stuff. ISPs can be subject to court orders individually but the costs of implementation are bourne by the third-party or government so they don't like doing it. Best case you get the top 5 ISPs to block it because they already have the infrastructure in place, the smaller ones don't though.
Funny enough, based on my observation, X (formerly know as Twitter) is more likely to ban/shadowban normal users who has weak engagements than algorithm-optimized bots.
A lot of bots are posting pornographic content or selling illegal items on that platform. And since many of the bots are "verified", it is harder to filter them out completely. The whole thing is a mess at this point.
Explains why hundreds of Mastodon servers immediately vanished (or they would be fined under the OSA) and have relocated to Japan, where it is already infested with CP with zero moderation.
EDIT: Unfortunately, some here continue to deny this and it's widely known that Mastodon (and the top servers) have been infested with CP and it is still big in Japan [0][1] for years.
Excluding the default instance, the top 3 Mastodon servers (Pawoo, baragg (d_o_t) net, and mstdn (d-o-t) jp) are the biggest and have tons of CSAM.
Note that the recent controversy is about Grok, not Twitter. The UK wants to ban generative image models without censorship.
Grok has had censorship functions before. But someone found a week or so ago they can ask Grok to redraw clothes as bikinis. Not sure if this was a real SNAFU, not intentional.
As I'm from - and in - the UK, let's have a look at this shall we? Both the tweet and the one to which it's responding...
> There are always technical bugs during the early phases of new technology, especially AI, and those issues are typically addressed quickly.
But this is precisely the point - they haven't been addressed quickly, they've been excused and generally ignored/used to troll. I believe they've now been moved behind a paywall, which is certainly one way to communicate how you feel about CSAM material.
> Let’s be clear: this is not about technical compliance. This is a political war against @elonmusk and free speech—nothing more.
Hardly - X has acted without any real consequence here for ages, despite turning into an absolute cesspit. MPs, Ministers, government departments - many are still using it despite everything. That aside, that a different country has slightly different views on free speech than (part of) your own country is not, in any way, a crime. Most nations have some speech which is restricted, at least in some circumstances, the US is no exception to this.
Now, onto the "inspiration"...
> The UK jails people for calling rapists "pigs."
Does it? Show me. Show me the case where that has happened. Our legal rulings are public.
> ...various other unhinged lunacy until...
> Starmer is just punishing a platform that won't bend the knee.
Do these people have the concept of irony surgically extracted? Everything Trump does is generally about punishing people that won't bend the knee/pay him/hand over a chunk of their Kingdom. "Country actually enforces own law" shouldn't really be a headline, but I guess for these people it is now...
("Rogers called [Thierry] Breton – who served as the European Commissioner for the internal market from 2019-2024 – “a mastermind” of the [Digital Services Act]")
That was, like this, a direct conflict between Elon Musk and EU regulators over illegal content, which resulted in Musk effecting US foreign policy, and sanctioning a top EU official.
That's the problem with social media. Other than their inertia they have nothing to apparently sell. Other than at their scale the user data isn't particularly valuable to private or government interests either.
We live in an era plagued by the zombified dreams of the 90s.
yet they won’t do anything on 1A grounds when “x” censors or shadow bans Americans without anything resembling good cause
other than maybe you looked at some eceleb cancer funny and got mass reported
or “voted for the wrong person.” The definition of which apparently changes on the whims of advertisers, empaneled government boards behind closed doors, or whoever buys the company—
(who, themselves might have the freedom to switch and vocally support different parties from one election to the next. But not you.)
curious.
I wish Luna and her colleagues would be as ardent about defending the 1A rights of Americans using these platforms in America, as she is about… anyone, anywhere in the world except for Americans.
So they can draft and or pass a bill cracking down on and sanctioning a whole entire government for suppressing speech of non Americans.
Twice! For Brazil and UK!
But they won’t draft or pass a bill that touches Meta or X or their ilk for suppressing legal, respectfully posited, non-obscene , non-violent speech of Americans. Speech where the only issue is that it displeases Toyota or Apple or Debbie Schultz or Allison Fauci … or whomever.
They’re not protecting UK citizens or anyone. They’re protecting the platforms and their income streams. That’s why they won’t ever do that.
I’m trying to be nice here but the nicest word I have for the United States Congress rn is “useless.”
Bizarre that the US legislature is going to bat for the right of a corporation to sell illegal content in a foreign country.
The UK should call their bluff on this one, appeasement isn't going to work forever.
It's what corporate capture looks like. She's either peacocking for corporate donors or trying to court musks/MAGA's favor.
Also, there's a difference between 1 rep effectively shitposting on social media and the US government actually doing something.
Regardless I agree, it's not a good look
Luna is hardcore MAGA so she's definitely throwing out red meat.
It's more bizarre that Apple and Google are allowing X/Grok apps that generate non-consensual AI images in their App stores.
That's not bizarre. Nobody in their right mind should assume that Google or Apple are capable (let alone willing) of holding themselves accountable.
They are subject to the same bullying and will do exactly as they're told. They are not moral stalwarts.
Maybe Britain will introduce a ban unless X sells 80% of its UK operations to UK investors. nudge nudge wink wink
That would unironically be a good way of dealing with this. However it would probably be seen as just as hostile.
I'm very against banning websites, however social media as a whole is doing detrimental harm to children and adults alike so I would not shed a tear as long as we also ban meta/tiktok/YouTube shorts.
> however social media as a whole is doing detrimental harm to children and adults alike so I would not shed a tear as long as we also ban meta/tiktok/YouTube shorts.
You would then have to ban the VPNs as usage will just accelerate if that happens.
The result would be no better than what happened to TikTok when that went offline in the US.
Yes, since you have to provide proof of age to watch porn now most people have a VPN. I'm not sure I advocate blocking it, just it would not particularly bother me incrementally at this point, but it would be unfair to single X out as if Meta are perfectly fine.
What even is there on twitter these days except neo-nazi hatemongering and LLM generated child porn?
Russian and Israeli bots pretending to be Americans mostly, and brain dead americans who didn't yet realize they're interacting with bots
Oh, and people who want to be famous political pundits, but aren't yet famous political pundits.
[dead]
What's up with americans? Why do they want to be hated by everyone all of a sudden?
As with extremist governments and legislators elsewhere in the world, this is largely messaging for the home base rather than foreign consumption.
It's driven by both electoral realities (the US political map and system now favour extreme views), and a level of impunity regarding consequences elsewhere (both within and outside the US).
A lot happened. Trump and his ilk being in power has uniquely facilitated an extended "masks off" period so the rest of the globe has repeated refutations of the US's previous reputation as sometimes belligerent but mostly benevolent. That large swaths of the population could repeatedly openly support the corruption, the vulgarity, the cruelty, and the lawlessness of the administration revealed an unmoored civic/political process at best and underlying cultural and institutional rot at worst. In short, the US has revealed itself to have already declined to a point where it's no longer wise to allow it global hegemony. A dying Republican party, willing to do anything and everything required to remain politically relevant managed to dismantle 70 years of carefully executed foreign policy and unseat us as the global hegemon.
From the inside, I feel the cultural rot runs deep, political tension is high even among family, and the institutional inertia will prevent us from making the necessary political reform (end gerrymandering, end legalized bribery, reform our voting system to eliminate the 2 party system) before violent internal conflict occurs.
All of a sudden??
When a was a teenager, not so long ago really, everyone wanted to move the US and saw them as a global cultural power. The only people who truly disliked them were a minority anti capitalists, most people had positive views about Americans.
Now wherever I look at, from far left to far right, virtually no one fully support the BS they're currently pushing, even the usual bootlicking lapdogs are staying silent. In recent German polls about which countries are considered partners the US is barely ahead of Russia.
> In recent German polls about which countries are considered partners the US is barely ahead of Russia.
Interesting. I thought AfD is ahead in the polls and very pro-Russian, how do I reconcile these observations?
Many people vote for them out of protest against the establishment.
Also the typical AfD Voter doesn't like Trump or the US. Especially after they threatened some small port in Eastern Germany with sanctions over North Stream 2 (not that they liked them much before, but that fell on a very fertile soil)
AfD gets 30% of votes, the turnout isn't even 80% so even if we consider 100% of them are brain dead putin balls garglers, which isn't even remotely true, that's 14m people out of ~60m people legally allowed to vote.
These numbers look pretty similar to Trump's voter base in 2024. He got 49% of the vote from the 60% of the population that can vote, so about 30% of all possible votes.
Because they no longer have the power to be the good, omnipotent uncle.
Much like Musk, any "organism" that reaches a certain level of power and influence becomes decadent and eventually gets to the point where it stops caring what others think, even for appearances.
Enough people were not enjoying the results of the country's global power that an increasingly irrelevant political party was able to convert generalized angst into effective anti-establishment (anything status quo, doesn't matter what) populist platform. The unreasonable people are enjoying that the correct people are being hurt and that we are belligerently projecting what global power we have left, while "reasonable" people are having every Trumpian move sanewashed through the media they choose to consume. Everyone else (more than half, I suppose) is anywhere from concerned to terrified.
Don't reward this type of post with your attention. This is messaging from 1 (of 453) Congressional reps to the president and voters. It is not realistic policy.
> "It is not realistic policy."
Literally already happened, two weeks ago (Thierry Breton / Digital Services Act).
If Starmer is successful in banning @X in Britain, I will move forward with legislation that is currently being drafted to sanction not only Starmer, but Britain as a whole.
Official account for FL-13 Rep. Anna Paulina Luna | Serving on @GOPOversight & @HouseForeignGOP | Wife-Mom-USAF Veteran
> legislation that is currently being drafted to sanction not only Starmer
What legislation? The US needed none in previous cases e.g. https://europeannewsroom.com/us-bans-visa-for-breton-he-cens...
https://xcancel.com/RepLuna/status/2009460496668426449#m
I find it bizarre that x isn't already blocked in Britain given that it's full of porn, and seemingly doesn't do any of the required proof of age checks required by every other porn website under current UK legislation.
We don't actually really have the ability to hard block stuff. ISPs can be subject to court orders individually but the costs of implementation are bourne by the third-party or government so they don't like doing it. Best case you get the top 5 ISPs to block it because they already have the infrastructure in place, the smaller ones don't though.
The UK has blocked porn sites on ISP level for 15 years now, no court order needed AFAIK.
Covering order/notice is required yes. Many ISPs who don't have one and the government don't bother as they'd be paying implementation costs.
Funny enough, based on my observation, X (formerly know as Twitter) is more likely to ban/shadowban normal users who has weak engagements than algorithm-optimized bots.
A lot of bots are posting pornographic content or selling illegal items on that platform. And since many of the bots are "verified", it is harder to filter them out completely. The whole thing is a mess at this point.
How does verified hamper filtering?
X has implemented age checks and content filtering in the UK (or so I was told by a friend)
Proof or didn't happen
Explains why hundreds of Mastodon servers immediately vanished (or they would be fined under the OSA) and have relocated to Japan, where it is already infested with CP with zero moderation.
EDIT: Unfortunately, some here continue to deny this and it's widely known that Mastodon (and the top servers) have been infested with CP and it is still big in Japan [0][1] for years.
Excluding the default instance, the top 3 Mastodon servers (Pawoo, baragg (d_o_t) net, and mstdn (d-o-t) jp) are the biggest and have tons of CSAM.
The common denial, Exhibit A. [2]
[0] https://ethanzuckerman.com/2017/08/18/mastodon-is-big-in-jap...
[1] https://htxt.co.za/2023/07/child-abuse-material-is-thriving-...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554198
[dead]
America sanctioning the UK is the only thing I can imagine that would make the UK even consider rejoining the EU.
Ah, yes, the famously very effective sanctions against Brazilian judges. I'm sure it will work again.
/sarcasm
Snow Crash looks more and more realistic every year.
So true!
Alt link: <https://xcancel.com/RepLuna/status/2009460496668426449>
Can someone explain why the hate and asymmetry in play?
Does US trying to apply the golden rule of the golden rules: "Who has the gold writes the rule"?
Note that the recent controversy is about Grok, not Twitter. The UK wants to ban generative image models without censorship.
Grok has had censorship functions before. But someone found a week or so ago they can ask Grok to redraw clothes as bikinis. Not sure if this was a real SNAFU, not intentional.
> Note that the recent controversy is about Grok, not Twitter.
You heard the prime minister yesterday. He was abundantly clear that X needs to act, and needs to act now. It is time for X to grip this issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/09/no-10-con...
So what?
There are always technical bugs during the early phases of new technology, especially AI
Hmm. Not convinced this illegal undressing is a technical bug.
As I'm from - and in - the UK, let's have a look at this shall we? Both the tweet and the one to which it's responding...
> There are always technical bugs during the early phases of new technology, especially AI, and those issues are typically addressed quickly.
But this is precisely the point - they haven't been addressed quickly, they've been excused and generally ignored/used to troll. I believe they've now been moved behind a paywall, which is certainly one way to communicate how you feel about CSAM material.
> Let’s be clear: this is not about technical compliance. This is a political war against @elonmusk and free speech—nothing more.
Hardly - X has acted without any real consequence here for ages, despite turning into an absolute cesspit. MPs, Ministers, government departments - many are still using it despite everything. That aside, that a different country has slightly different views on free speech than (part of) your own country is not, in any way, a crime. Most nations have some speech which is restricted, at least in some circumstances, the US is no exception to this.
Now, onto the "inspiration"...
> The UK jails people for calling rapists "pigs."
Does it? Show me. Show me the case where that has happened. Our legal rulings are public.
> ...various other unhinged lunacy until...
> Starmer is just punishing a platform that won't bend the knee.
Do these people have the concept of irony surgically extracted? Everything Trump does is generally about punishing people that won't bend the knee/pay him/hand over a chunk of their Kingdom. "Country actually enforces own law" shouldn't really be a headline, but I guess for these people it is now...
Related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374248 ("Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US (theguardian.com)"; 16 days ago, 39 comments)
("Rogers called [Thierry] Breton – who served as the European Commissioner for the internal market from 2019-2024 – “a mastermind” of the [Digital Services Act]")
That was, like this, a direct conflict between Elon Musk and EU regulators over illegal content, which resulted in Musk effecting US foreign policy, and sanctioning a top EU official.
This is why we need to bust up monopolies.
That's the problem with social media. Other than their inertia they have nothing to apparently sell. Other than at their scale the user data isn't particularly valuable to private or government interests either.
We live in an era plagued by the zombified dreams of the 90s.
yet they won’t do anything on 1A grounds when “x” censors or shadow bans Americans without anything resembling good cause
other than maybe you looked at some eceleb cancer funny and got mass reported
or “voted for the wrong person.” The definition of which apparently changes on the whims of advertisers, empaneled government boards behind closed doors, or whoever buys the company—
(who, themselves might have the freedom to switch and vocally support different parties from one election to the next. But not you.)
curious.
I wish Luna and her colleagues would be as ardent about defending the 1A rights of Americans using these platforms in America, as she is about… anyone, anywhere in the world except for Americans.
So they can draft and or pass a bill cracking down on and sanctioning a whole entire government for suppressing speech of non Americans.
Twice! For Brazil and UK!
But they won’t draft or pass a bill that touches Meta or X or their ilk for suppressing legal, respectfully posited, non-obscene , non-violent speech of Americans. Speech where the only issue is that it displeases Toyota or Apple or Debbie Schultz or Allison Fauci … or whomever.
They’re not protecting UK citizens or anyone. They’re protecting the platforms and their income streams. That’s why they won’t ever do that.
I’m trying to be nice here but the nicest word I have for the United States Congress rn is “useless.”
Does the US congress not have a better hill to die on?
republicans are pro-CSAM now?
always have been
i thought the term was "pedophile"
correction: Republicans are pro-pedophile
There is a big difference in UK. One is illegal; the other not.
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