News Forum - Whole new world of censorship pain on its way to Thailand

[Thaiger]

A whole new world of censorship pain is on its way to Thailand, with the latest act by the thought police becoming law on Christmas Day. Online platforms must the abide by a new regulation to deal quickly with complaints about content deemed to be in violation of the Computer Crimes Act. A new regulation issued by Digital Economy and Society (DES) Minister Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn establishes procedures for the notification and removal of illegal information. According to Prachatai, this prohibits public posting of anything dodgy, and includes any and all information made available over a public digital network. Among other […]

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[HolyCowCm]

If what is said is really in this new law, then this becomes an open season field day of attack allowing anyone to go for the jugular as it is left up to interpretation leaqving the ones who are labelled not compliant to prove they didn't under heavy costs. Very sad and very dangerous. Sounds like a win win for the regime.

[Soidog]

I don’t know the full legal arguments for this new legislation. Suffice to say it looks like another big hammer to hit those lower down the picking order. Another way to gag the population in these times of social media. The big social media companies have a role to play in this. They should pressure the government to either clarify or rescind the law. Simply block the country from accessing FB, Twitter, Instagram etc. 

[Rookiescot]

Its not pornography its performance art. 

[Pinetree]

Good luck trying to enforce this.  Others much more competent have tried and all have failed. 

[Chatogaster]

 

Many, many, many other parties - small and big - are watching too. 

Content-wise, this article needs roughly 5KB to provide its information. However, just for opening this article, the best browser I tested hardly fared better with default settings than the worst one. That worst one allowed a whopping exchange of 21 MB (= 419,900% of 5KB!) using 1500+ network connections, mostly with 3rd parties who are eager to know who I am/what my profile is, what I might be tricked into buying, what I might be interested in in reading on Twitter, what I might like to watch on YouTube, and ultimately, how I could be tricked into stopping thinking independently and thus become a reliable, exploitable resource.

If the possibility of that actual information extraction process isn't bad enough: it happens before, during and after accepting the "gracious" offer of Thaiger (provided by OptinMonster, an organization that promises to remold pesky visitors into nice customers) to "let me manage how my personal data is used". 

My answer is simple: "don't". Unfortunately it's also an undesirable answer and it 's not surprising that to give it requires 9 clicks (which legally could very well be completely ignored, and probably are). If you make a mistake and want to undo it: it takes 113 clicks (and a lot of scrolling!) to retract information accidentally provided (more accurately: to obtain a semblance of having achieved a retraction).

Commercially, that eagerness for information makes sense. Blaming Thaiger specifically for their contribution to the danger of the "big brother is watching you"-phenomenon would be unfair. But just going with the flow and being opportunistic like the rest doesn't make it right either. I can only hope that more people start thinking about the kind of world our current heading might lead us to.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Chatogaster
silly typos (that didn't matter except to me).

[HolyCowCm]

3 hours ago, Soidog said:

I don’t know the full legal arguments for this new legislation. Suffice to say it looks like another big hammer to hit those lower down the picking order. Another way to gag the population in these times of social media. The big social media companies have a role to play in this. They should pressure the government to either clarify or rescind the law. Simply block the country from accessing FB, Twitter, Instagram etc. 

it will be interesting to see how many average Thai citizens get caught up in this dangerous venomous web trap. Just the national security or sedition clause is like potentially stepping on a land mine. 

[ChrisS]

Bit more control for the Junta. Anything they don't like will be a crime.