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VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

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Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#51

Post by exodust »

portaouflop wrote: post #42
alwa wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “West Yorkshire Police denied any involvement in blocking the footage. X declined to comment, but its AI chatbot, Grok, indicated the clip had been restricted under the Online Safety Act due to violent content.” I’m not involved with X or with its chatbot. Is its chatbot ordinarily an authoritative source for facts about assumptions like this one, that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video? It…

Of course LLMs are a rubbish source for facts, one should always verify. Not possible in this case so I would assume it just made it up

In this case, Grok is stating the obvious. I'm not sure how you can arrive at any other conclusion. The clip is inaccessible to some users in the UK on the day the act comes online, replaced with a message about local laws and age verification.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#53

Post by derelicta »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #27

Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically…

The Bourgeois love to divide the working class, typical divide and conquer. Indigenous worker vs imported worker, men vs women, queer vs straight, old vs young, car user vs bicycle rider. This is important because it weakens existing solidarities and prevent the emergence of class consciousness. It's part of their modus operandi and has been for centuries, only now they master it thanks to algorithms and machine learning. This increased surveillance also happens to be extremely useful at taming future strikes and protests, or rat out future pro-workers groups

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#54

Post by xdfgh1112 »

winrid wrote: post #35
itake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems to be working in China. While many Chinese use VPN software, many don't bother with the friction and are fine just using rednote and friends.

VPNs barely work in China IME. NordVPN didn't work, for example, and my self hosted VPN would often get disconnected.

They work but you have to put in some effort to find the right ones.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#56

Post by rtpg »

winrid wrote: post #35
itake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems to be working in China. While many Chinese use VPN software, many don't bother with the friction and are fine just using rednote and friends.

VPNs barely work in China IME. NordVPN didn't work, for example, and my self hosted VPN would often get disconnected.

Maybe it's changed recently, but I knew a lot of locals just using the VPN stuff to use the outside internet (though, like a couple other countries, they have a big enough homegrown market to where for most people not having fb or whatever is a no-op)

My experiences in the country using VPN stuff was pretty interesting though... it _really_ felt like depending on where you were physically in the country that you were going through completely different censorship pipes. And things like Apple push notifications would just get through no problem so you could at least receive stuff via push from banned apps.

I wonder what kind of detailed explanations of the mechanics there are, because I don't have a mental model of it that works beyond "censors just tell each regional office of national operaors to do stuff and they all do it slightly differently"

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#57

Post by xdfgh1112 »

sixothree wrote: post #9

I went on a weekend vacation with three guys. I was asked what I thought a good VPN was. They all have VPNs on their phones apparently. Here I am thinking they are technologically adept, maybe a little bit security conscious. Or maybe misled by advertisements. It wasn't until after I got home I realized it was because of adult content.

Until like a week ago there was no age checking system for porn and no reason to use a VPN really. Although your friends could have been into some very strange stuff.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#58

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

derelicta wrote: post #46
userbinator wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jinping is probably a better comparison.

Xi is fairly popular in China tho, unlike this "labour" govt.

Do they regularly poll British political parties for popularity in China?

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#59

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

ChrisKnott wrote: post #31
thdhhghgbhy wrote: post #28

The new online safety rules are already being used to shut down government criticism. How it works is their new elite protection squad, if someone is deigned an influential critic of government policy, trawls through your social media posts until they find something against the laws. A lot of government critique is coming from the working class here now, who have virtually no political representation in the UK. As yo…

Do you have any examples of people being arrested for criticising a law? Most of the time these dystopian descriptions of the UK turn out to be completely overblown nonsense when you look into them properly.

Yup, along the same lines as the “sharia no go zones” and “get stabbed six ways to Sunday every time you go outside” myths

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#60

Post by exodust »

alwa wrote: post #36
gg82 wrote: post #33

The safety rules are also being used to block content about protests in the UK. How convenient for them. https://freespeechunion.org/protest-footage-blocked-as-onlin...

> “West Yorkshire Police denied any involvement in blocking the footage. X declined to comment, but its AI chatbot, Grok, indicated the clip had been restricted under the Online Safety Act due to violent content.” I’m not involved with X or with its chatbot. Is its chatbot ordinarily an authoritative source for facts about assumptions like this one, that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video? It…

> that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video?

You've misquoted the chatbot, which is a new one.

The video wasn't "taken down" and Grok never said that. It was blocked for some users in the UK due to the new authoritarian age verification laws which everyone should be concerned about if access to newsworthy content requires "papers please".

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