There is a petition to repeal the Online Safety Act[0].
The initial government response can be read as “lol, no”.
VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
391–400 of 1001 posts
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#392UK and Australia are slowly going the way of China in their blocking, and the eventual end effect could be that they will get their citizens cut off from the internet.
I run a website that provides English articles to trending topics from Chinese social media. It’s kinda funny that topics discussed there are sometimes “too sensitive” for western LLMs who will straight up refuse to write about them.
Take from that what you will re: China vs western censorship
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#393It is only a matter of time before they attempt to regulate VPN usage. Here is an article written by a British MP hinting at that: https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/onli...
It definitely seems like she’s conflating two issues: access to pornography and child grooming. I don’t see why she thinks regulating VPNs would reduce the latter.
Everyone always does this. Then they conflate mention of LGBT topics with porn so they can equate it with "grooming". Not helped by the UK's anti-trans panic of the last few years (self-ID was such a mainstream idea that it was in the 2018 Tory manifesto)
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am certainly surprised by that suggestion. No one I know who has lived in France or Germany or any developed country other than the US thinks the NHS is better than the systems in those countries.
I've heard from Spanish friends living in the UK that the NHS is so bad, they fly back to Spain for medical checks and even to see the dentist. That's mind blowing.
I have heard the exact same thing. The reason given being a lack of confidence in whoever they were dealing with. For many people, first contact with the NHS is the 111 call centre which really is akin to a health lottery.
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
If most of the public are in favour of the Online Safety Act, then how is it a failure of democracy to have it? I give you the top FT comment: >I, for one, am glad that porn is being age-restricted online. It gives young people false ideas. You'll never get a plumber to come around to your house that quickly in real life.
that is a joke comment
Yes, it is. Well observed.
Didn't there used to be a explainingthejoke user on here? Whatever happened to them?
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose the most recent example are the people from Palestine Action being arrested en masse at protests.
They're not really being arrested for criticising a law though. They're arrested for supporting a group that's been banned for causing around £30 million's worth of damage to our national defences at a time of hightened national security. There's the implication that Palastinian Action are going to continue attacking us. If they just stuck to protesting they would have been fine.
And at the same time, while people burning down hotels have been arrested, other people who have been egging them on and causing "stochastic terrorism" have been left alone.
What gets classed as "support for" and "terrorism" is not evenly enforced.
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#397Earlier 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.…
IMO, the wheels fell off decades before I was born. The peak of the empire was around WW1, where the victory was immediately followed by Irish home rule, and Churchill(!) putting the UK military into austerity to save money, which is how it came to be that evacuating from Dunkirk involved a lot of civilian ships, amongst other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Year_Rule WW2 was a Pyrrhic victory. Not that Wes…
The Netherlands is politically dysfunctional and the people are egotistical assholes but at least the economy is ticking.
Without money society is just doomed.
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police... Tons of people are arrested and charged every day for thought crimes in Britain.
Paywalled. Might be better: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/parents-arre... It sounds like there was harrasment involved, but it is scant on details.
Whenever one of these stories come up, we find there is a side missing. In this case, it's a school, so for safeguarding reasons they're not going to say anything at all about the children. Quite often "arrested for saying X" turns out to be "arrested for a lengthy campaign of targeted harrasment, culminating in X"
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
This view (“the Bourgeois’, etc.) seems to imply there’s a group of very clever manipulators somewhere, overtly planning and executing this (presumably in a dark room with armchairs and cigars). But I just can’t imagine this, in the UK’s example. What I see instead is the other side of Hanlon’s razor —incompetence— coupled with a political class riven with pockets of self-interest, and very few seemingly with an inte…
Smells like coded antisemitism, in this case.
What a bizarre statement to make.
Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in
#400Earlier 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.…
IMO, the wheels fell off decades before I was born. The peak of the empire was around WW1, where the victory was immediately followed by Irish home rule, and Churchill(!) putting the UK military into austerity to save money, which is how it came to be that evacuating from Dunkirk involved a lot of civilian ships, amongst other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Year_Rule WW2 was a Pyrrhic victory. Not that Wes…
That happened a long time ago, the realization was the 70s.
Thatcher reversed the feeling by selling off the nation to rentiers and foreigners in the 80s, we rode that money in the 90s, and the wheels came off in 2008.