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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

#721

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.…

Yeah totally agree - whether it’s Keir or Boris or whoever in charge, the one thing I want to scream at them is “turn the ‘net off! Turn it off!” People are simply too stupid to handle social media. If I was in charge of authoritarian Britain the first thing I’d do would be to flip the serious switches in the big network cabinet down at GCHQ.

As if the authoritarian state doesn’t prefer its subject distracted and entertained by Netflix, Reddit, TikTok instead of reading books and meeting in coffee shops to discuss anarchist literature and Uncle Ted’s manifesto. The Internet has proven to be the ultimate sedative for the masses.

Sorry to say, gizajob, you would make a terrible dictator.

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

#722
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The U.K. is pretty middle of the road as far as “surveillance” Just, no. 5-eyes is the most heinous human-rights-destroying apparatus under the sun, and it wouldn't be happening if it weren't for the British desire to undermine cultures they have deemed inferior.

It's called 5-eyes because it's not just the UK.

It wouldn't be oppressive at massive scale, violating the human rights of billions of people, if the UK hadn't roped its lackeys into its co-criminal behaviour ..

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

#723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^ This is such a great example of the deranged elitist groupthink that dominates the UK’s national discourse. Holding the door open for fake asylum seekers costing billions while his fellow countrymen are laid off, and pointing the finger at MPs taking a few million between them.

What the hell is your definition of "elitist"?

In the U.K. it means taking all your thinking cues from the intellectual elite that orbit Oxford and Cambridge. The sort of people that typically end up as BBC presenters and professors. Viewing yourself as a member of a distinct group of intellectuals that “get it”.

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

#724

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The best VPN is to host your own. I used Digital Ocean. They have preconfigured droplet images for OpenVPN access server. The droplet even serves a client pre-configured with the connection settings. It took me all of 10 minutes to set up.

Oh god. I should have said "other than self-hosted". I swear to god I thought about it but forgot and added only Mullvad. I can't edit it now. And thank you for saying this but I have tried. Both on DigitalOcean and on a VPS bought from a deal on LET - didn't do it for me. It was a pain unless I left it literally untouched, un-updated, un-upgraded forever and ever. I know, I know - I must have done something wrong or…

Setup wireguard on VPS is very easy, you can put it on docker if you scare to screw up something. LLM is perfect for this task.

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

#725
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds more like a task for NextDNS than a VPN, tbh. Or are you worried about no TLS?

I have tried NextDNS and I think I should try it again but the last few experiences ended in a lot of sites breaking. Maybe this time I will try someone from country who has written a tutorial about it. But a VPN would have been more appropriate for this task and if ever I needed to use a different IP from a different country (that would be rare and mostly to access websites for a short period) I could just do it eas…

For me, it doesn't break anything with their filters. Using it on both phone and PC and I don't manage to hit the free limit for the month. (unless I forget to close the GOG launcher, which for some reason is pinging all the time and blows through the monthly usage limit in a week)

Mullvad, however, leads to Captcha City and is straight up blocked on a couple of sites, namely McGearHub and, for a time, Runescape. Btw, if you have a friend using it, you can likely mooch off their sub. I share mine with 2 other people since the device limit is 5, and I only have my phone and PC on it.

I'm guessing the captcha city situation might be better with more "casual" VPNs but I doubt it makes much of a difference once you have a bunch of people on the same IP.

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

#726

To any Brit citizens, do you feel like the general populace won't fight back about their freedom being taken, or do you think that this will continue until a semi-autocracy result? Is it a topic of conversation in the general population, or is it just a shrug of acceptance?

I think a decent amount of people don't even realize what is happening. For example, lots of people still don't know about the iCloud backdoor that's trying to be implemented by the government.

Those who know are annoyed but not enough that it will cause change; I don't think most believe it will get worse either.

Unfortunately the default will be people going on the App Store, getting the first app that has 'VPN' in the title, download, and forget. Completely failing to address a systemic issue.

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

#727
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

For rules introduced by Conservatives?

1. Conservatives and Labour have an equally disastrous role in the current mess and have mostly overplayed their differences. 2. Particularly in the UK, the law is one thing. The application another. In practice, Keir Starmer, just yesterday, was claiming that there was no censorship in the UK, they were "just safeguarding children from suicide" (by censoring videos of protesters outside the Britannia hotel in Canary Wharf :o) )

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

#728

It baffles me that some people vote for socialists and are then surprised to have soviet-style laws.

The Online Safety Bill was introduced by the previous Conservative government.

The application of that law has nothing to do with online safety. Soviet-style politics are very good at taking a law ("we need to protect children from suicide websites") to turn it into something completely different ("... so we need to censor footage of protesters outside of the Britannia hotel").

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

#729

I’m sure it’s only the adults using VPNs so don’t worry, this is still a fantastic law that is definitely helping children not watch porn and absolutely not just a massive attack on civil liberties in disguise.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the only people who _couldn't_ get around this were legal adults.

Yep that was my point really

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

#730
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about illegal sites? I don't think many people object to blacklisting known sources of child pornography etc. The fact is you now have to verify your identity (name and photo id) in the UK to access an adult subreddit.

What kind of photo ID does the UK have? I didn't think there was any kind of national ID if you didn't drive?

We don't have national photo ID, but you do need it in order to vote, rent, buy a house, or have a bank account; several of those processes include mandatory immigration status checks too.

It's a stupid equilibrium.

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