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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

#321
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're se…

> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling) > just mentioning increased immigration One of these seems like the solution to the other. > as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.…

> One of these seems like the solution to the other.

If the per capita spending is exceeding per capita taxation, increased immigration does not solve the problem. More people requires more spending.

> The UK has always been an empire in decline

I find this fatalistic attitude to be very unhelpful in determining good policy decisions. If you start with the assumption that the empire is in decline then it doesn’t seem as bad to add policies that contribute to decline, as long as you get some short-term win out of it.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought linking all the main things not working in the actual world to the alienation caused by too much digital consumption to be wrong/not really making sense. However, gradually, I am getting closer and closer to that conclusion... In your case, what brought you to the stance "Too much social media is what ails the whole world"? What do you think we could do to solve it?

Get people hooked on local solutions and local social networks that exist "IRL."

Ok, but how could we do that? Especially since thing like eg. work is moving little by little but more and more towards remote...

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

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a small minority of immigrants to the UK come through the skilled visa pathway, even if the health & social care visa numbers were added. See figure 1.3a - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisor... Note that to the best of my knowledge, these numbers don't include the Afghan resettlement scheme which would further lower the proportion of employment driven visas.

what about nurses and cleaners

I always find funny how the new, supposedly progressive, arguments in favor of mass immigration run so close to the ones given against when slavery was abolished, that society can only exist with cheap,exploitative, labor.

Who indeed will pick the cotton.

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

#324

Just a reminder “Brexit” happened just a few years ago. Suddenly no British man can be more than 3 months in another European country before being “banned”. You can’t even move to Switzerland and setup a company. Yes technically it’s possible but I was told my a Swiss accountant “just don’t bother trying unless you can get a European passport - if you can” This is from personal experience. As odd as it sounds Brexit…

I uh, surely you knew about visas before this?

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

#325
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're se…

> mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up Skilled immigration or the Channel crossing?

I don't think anyone objects to what the UK had 20 years ago - genuinely skilled immigration (in American terms, closer to O-1 than H1B).

Unfortunately due to the Boris Wave, we got mass, unskilled legal migration.

The channel crossings are a rounding error compared to that (but should be stopped as well).

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

#326
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to offer “residential endpoints” at scale with sufficient bandwidth for anything other than simple browsing of text websites. As shown by the very effective Netflix strategy of blocking VPN addresses, it’s been very hard to slip through for a good four or five years now.

As someone totally uninformed, are you saying that all those YouTube ads about e.g. Private Internet Access (et al), which specifically cite getting around geo restrictions in the ad copy , are BS? Which sounds like a silly question ("of course the marketing is BS") but why even bother marketing if the core value proposition of your billed-monthly service doesn't work? Seems like a waste of money since you'll at most…

Streaming services don't have any incentive to ban traffic from non-residential addresses right now. But they might with enough legislative pressure.

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

#327

Destroy cultural integrity, national identity, create a low-trust society, become more authoritarian to manage low-trust society, import more immigrants at an exponential rate while house costs rise along with unemployment. The list keeps going. This is why far-right is surging on the polls. The country has completely lost all sense.

UK needs immigrants to increase stagnating productivity. this has been the case for decades and it's why no government has done, or will do anything serious to curb it.

Yes, but only total GDP goes up. GDP per person goes down.

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

#328

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…

In a word, division. The UK is so divided that people are too busy pointing the finger at each other to realise the root cause of the deterioration of our quality of life is entirely generations of mismanagement of the public purse. Instead of questioning how MPs are entitled to a pay rise while your average person gets made redundant, people are questioning why people fleeing persecution should ‘be paid for with my…

I recommend you go, but I bet good money you'll see that the UKs problems aren't remotely unique.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling) > just mentioning increased immigration One of these seems like the solution to the other. > as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.…

I always thought linking all the main things not working in the actual world to the alienation caused by too much digital consumption to be wrong/not really making sense. However, gradually, I am getting closer and closer to that conclusion... In your case, what brought you to the stance "Too much social media is what ails the whole world"? What do you think we could do to solve it?

If you go back in history you can find examples of people making the same claims about too much television. Prior to that, too much radio. Prior to that, too much newspaper consumption.

A common thread is that when people complain about too much media consumption, they’re always talking about other people consuming other media. Few people believe their own consumption to be a societal level problem. Almost nobody believes that their sources of media are the bad ones. It’s always about other sources that other people are consuming.

This is why age verification has the most support of these topics: Adults see it as targeted specifically at a group that isn’t them (young people) whose media they dislike the most.

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