[captain_coffee]

So wait - would this be something like... you trying to send a dickpic via WhateverMessenger, the content would be scanned first and you would be presented with a message along the lines of "This message cannot be sent as it violates our T&Cs"?

[like_any_other]

More likely it would just silently not be sent, and potentially a week later you get a visit from the cops. Censors hate drawing attention to their actions, that is why you never see a "this message censored on government request" as sender or recipient.

This is where someone conflates it with anti-spam and acts confused, because showing such a notice for every spam message would make a service unusable. As if spam is equivalent, as if users cannot be given the choice to opt in/out of however much anti-spam and other filtering that they want as recipients, and as if "This was censored" messages cannot be collapsed/shown per category, e.g. "Messages blocked: 12 spam, 4 unwanted sexual content, 5 misinformation/lacking context, 7 hate/harmful content". As a rule, when someone raises an objection that can be resolved with less than 60 seconds of thought, they are not being genuine.

But more importantly, it would make it illegal to provide any kind of messaging software without government approval, which is only given by letting government-designated censorship and surveillance services act as middle-men. And then the law can be more or less strictly applied, depending how much the government dislikes the general sentiment that is spread on your network, regardless of its legality, thus controlling discourse.

I am not speculating here - this is what the UK government has admitted they want:

First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. - https://archive.md/2025.08.13-190800/https://www.thetimes.co...

[imdsm]

scanned locally or externally? that's what i care about

[Phemist]

Don't buy into the framing. No scanning at all is what I care about.

[like_any_other]

Don't buy into that framing either. Optional scanning - if a user wants to, they are free to download government spyware onto their phone/computer and do all the scanning they want, local or otherwise. No new laws needed.

[rdm_blackhole]

I agree. If someone is happy for a government worker/algorithm to snoop through everything they send to anyone, feel free to opt in, just don't force us to participate.

[tremon]

But that someone is forcing all their contacts into the snooping scheme unless they never communicate with anyone.

[rdm_blackhole]

That is why I said for them and their family.

If you use app A and that app is scanned for "malicious" content then I will message you on app B where there is no such scanning. If you don't want to use app B then I guess we can't be friends.

I mean at some point you need to make some choices.

But the beauty is that if anyone wants to talk through app A exclusively and their contacts are happy to respond on the same platform, then they can do that.

The rest of us can use app B.

[Natfan]

if it provably isn't networked and is ephemeral with no logging, then i potentially don't have an issue with it

[like_any_other]

You have no issue with censorship, as long as there's no surveillance to go with it?

[doublerabbit]

Externally. When is anything ever scanned internally.

[ChrisRR]

Preferably not scanned at all