w14

> I belive that US tech firms have increasingly become valid military targets.

Not just US tech firms. So-called dual-use has been embedded into all kinds of what was previously exclusively civilian infrastructure including telecoms networks and data centres.

Of course dual-use has always been a thing up to a point, but there has been a shift in recent years to bring it right to the heart of military doctrine.

For example the UK's Strategic Defence Review 2025 and the new Defence Industrial Strategy:

"A new £11bn ‘Invest’ annual budget has also been established under the NAD. This will fund kit for our front-line forces which is affordable and grows our UK industrial base. Our new partnership with industry and a decade of consistently rising defence spending will encourage more private finance to grow our world-leading scale-up and dual-use tech companies."

"Today, much of the best innovation is found in the private sector, while the increasing prevalence of dual-use technologies has widened the net of potential suppliers that can contribute to Defence outcomes."

The way things are going it won't just be tech firms that will be considered 'legitimate targets'.

This is the problem I had with all the content removal around Covid. It never ends with that one topic we may not be unhappy to see removed.

From another comment: "Looks like some L-whateverthefuck just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software."

This is exactly what YT did with Covid related content.

Here in the UK, Ofcom held their second day-long livestreamed seminar on their implementation of the Online Safety Act on Wednesday this week. This time it was about keeping children "safe", including with "effective age assurance".

Ofcom refused to give any specific guidance on how platforms should implement the regime they want to see. They said this is on the basis that if they give specific advice, it may restrict their ability to take enforcement action later.

So it's up to the platforms to interpret the extremely complex and vaguely defined requirements and impose a regime which Ofcom will find acceptable. It was clear from the Q&A that some pretty big platforms are really struggling with it.

The inevitable outcome is that platforms will err on the side of caution, bearing in mind the potential penalties.

Many will say, this is good, children should be protected. The second part of that is true. But the way this is being done won't protect children in my opinion. It will result in many more topic areas falling below the censorship threshold.

Indeed, but of equal stature in my opinion is that they people on the receiving end of the miscarriage of justice are continuing to be abused by the so-called compensation process.

During the inquiry, the statement was made, can't remember by whom, that value for taxpayer money had to be respected.

I think its past that point, and I would like to know why the instigators of the miscarriage aren't at risk of losing their personal assets to (at least partly) cover the cost. Maybe we have to wait for the inquiry report for that, but in the meantime it is pretty clear that 'value for taxpayer money' means, at least to some degree, kicking the can down the road until as many of the claimants are dead as possible.

- Ofcom sets out more than 40 practical steps that services must take to keep children safer - Sites and apps must introduce robust age-checks to prevent children seeing harmful content such as suicide, self-harm and pornography - Harmful material must be filtered out or downranked in recommended content

Possibly because they have moved the front camera and the charging no longer works with the old pen.

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