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Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

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Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#61

Post by constantcrying »

breppp wrote: post #34
constantcrying wrote: post #22

So much of the Internet is broken if you don't have a VPN (and much of it is broken if you do). But the consequence of circumventing laws through VPNs will inevitably be bans on VPNs for individuals. By the way, the people who are writing these laws aren't clueless 60 year olds who need help operating their phones. The EU politicians pushing through chat control understand what they are doing. The idea of a global in…

laws are not the issue as much as foreign totalitarian entities have a strong ability to influence local voters in adverse ways. This is such a threat to democracy that ironically the only solution is to crack down on democracy

This is such an insane stance. The proposal of chat control is surveillance of most private communication.

Blaming Russia is such a tiresome stance. Russian propaganda is so bad and so hilariously ineffective that it penetrates only small bubbles inside political parties, even after years of propaganda.

Also the current German government includes the historically most notorious Russian shill party.

The laws are absolutely the issue and if you are tearing down democracy to "preserve democracy", you just see democracy as a useful propaganda tool, for the sake of your own power.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#62

Post by hodgesrm »

aprilnya wrote: post #47

> As of Monday morning, half of the top ten free apps in Apple's app download charts in the UK appeared to be for VPN services. > Proton VPN, an app offered by Swiss privacy tech firm Proton, told the BBC it had seen a 1800% spike in UK daily sign-ups over the weekend after age check rules took effect on Friday. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn72ydj70g5o

Marketing network security products is usually hard. Not any more. The practical effect of these so-called protection laws is to break shit across the entire Internet.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#63

Post by kneel25 »

latexr wrote: post #54
kneel25 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people immediately have this thought, outlawing VPNs achieves virtually nothing in the UK. An adult bypassing an age check is irrelevant; underage users are at least mature enough to know what a VPN is - not the main target of the act. And there's virtually no real anonymity; hiding from your ISP doesn't make you untraceable. So why would they even consider it?

It’s naive to believe the goal of these laws is truly to protect children and that it has anything to do with age. That’s just the justification which gets them in the door.

What is the goal then? Why do they care that you're bypassing it? I wouldn't deny using children in messaging isn't a deliberate focus to strengthen the case, but I don't think they're lying that it's about reducing access to harmful material, and I don't disagree with that goal or the way they've implemented it. It would be a weak case not to use statistics they find in the younger internet users because that's where it's causing the most unacceptable harm.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#64

Post by breppp »

constantcrying wrote: post #61
breppp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

laws are not the issue as much as foreign totalitarian entities have a strong ability to influence local voters in adverse ways. This is such a threat to democracy that ironically the only solution is to crack down on democracy

This is such an insane stance. The proposal of chat control is surveillance of most private communication. Blaming Russia is such a tiresome stance. Russian propaganda is so bad and so hilariously ineffective that it penetrates only small bubbles inside political parties, even after years of propaganda. Also the current German government includes the historically most notorious Russian shill party. The laws are absol…

It's not only Russia, it's also China and Iran. It's very easy today to control social media conversation by participating as both sides and creating hate. It's actually possible to remotely organize demonstrations, create entire movements from afar

If steering far off (based on Iran's MO in Israel for example) with a little bit of bitcoin and time you can hire someone to do anything for you in a foreign country. This includes graffiti, burning cars, moving weapons and finally assasinations.

Because democracies are so dependent on voters opinions, and organizations that have a vested interest in the failure of a state now have influence, this can be catastrophic (brexit, covid vaccines, race wars)

Can't say I support cracking down on free speech, but IMO that's exactly what we're going to see, especially in Europe where Defensive Democracy is already in place

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#65

Post by _kb »

nomilk wrote: post #39

I got a VPN in preparation for Australia's (even more draconian) "age verification" laws (those take effect in 4 days). But what I'd really love (startup idea!?) is an app that let's you map websites to countries and it handles tunnelling that domain's traffic through the selected country's VPN. For example, I'd like to view Reddit, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram and social media apps from a US IP (to avoid Australi…

Setting this up through your router / network infra is one possible path.

Another AU citizen here. I've been beefing up our home in prep for these laws too.

You can use policy based routing to send traffic through a few VPN egress points depending on either domain, or IP based country lookup. Most providers will let you keep simultaneous connections up. This then applies to all devices so streaming apps works well (e.g. for my partner to access her home country's public broadcaster) and any complexity remains hidden from others you live with. From there, a wireguard tunnel for personal devices back through home means you can keep these same paths active when mobile.

I'm looking forward to the level of networking and systems knowledge these laws will encourage across future generations.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#66

Post by hodgesrm »

latexr wrote: post #12

> How many other people have done the same? For your own personal sake, you may be selfishly wishing it’s as few people as possible. Eventually they’ll outlaw VPNs too and by then you’ll have little recourse. You can’t hide behind them forever, deeper change is needed.

> For your own personal sake, you may be selfishly wishing it’s as few people as possible. Eventually they’ll outlaw VPNs too and by then you’ll have little recourse. You can’t hide behind them forever, deeper change is needed.

It does not work that way in functioning democracies. This is like blithely raising people's electric bills in the name of preventing global warming. Noble aspirations but brain dead implementation that completely undermines the original goal. And fuels, one might add, the rise of political parties that just want to burn everything down.

Personally I went from more or less ignorant of these laws to completely outraged in the time it took to eat a couple of sausages.

Why don't we humans think this stuff through? Surely we can do better.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#67

Post by pirates »

notsatan wrote: post #60
grumblepeet wrote: post #2

I did despite being quite resistant to the idea at first. Eventually I didn't have a choice, as many things I wanted to read were suddenly hidden. I am paranoid however and worry that the VPN maker is tracking me, but there is only so much I can be paranoid about in the day.

Why not get a remote server and tunnel your connection through it -- Tailscale, or Cloudflare, or even raw WireGuard if that's what you prefer. You'll basically have your own private VPN

This is what I do, except into the UK so I can watch geo-blocked sports. Pure wireguard, nothing fancy. But that also means if anything were to go wrong or stop working I can just tear it down and set it up somewhere else.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#68

Post by latexr »

kneel25 wrote: post #63
latexr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s naive to believe the goal of these laws is truly to protect children and that it has anything to do with age. That’s just the justification which gets them in the door.

What is the goal then? Why do they care that you're bypassing it? I wouldn't deny using children in messaging isn't a deliberate focus to strengthen the case, but I don't think they're lying that it's about reducing access to harmful material, and I don't disagree with that goal or the way they've implemented it. It would be a weak case not to use statistics they find in the younger internet users because that's wher…

> What is the goal then? Why do they care that you're bypassing it?

Mass surveillance, population control, and the destruction of services they disapprove of. Pornhub’s traffic went down by 80% when they implemented the mandatory age verification checks in some state. So they simply blocked them because it wasn’t worth it. Later, someone (I don’t have the ability to track down the source right now) was caught admitting one of the goals of the law is to drive those sites out of business.

I recommend reading about authoritarian regimes in Europe (it was not just Germany) and how they controlled discourse, and what people had accessed to. Some of their decisions have repercussions which are felt to this day. In Spain, foreign media is dubbed while in Portugal it is subbed. Both are due to their respective dictators.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#69

Post by lonelyasacloud »

Yes.

It wasn't an unintended consequence.

The goal of the legislation was to "stop children from accessing age inappropriate content" on the internet.

Ahead of the legislation it was known that there would be a significant proportion of individuals who would switch to using VPN's because without platform based verification it would be a pita for users (more logins, random age verification services, and some sites just deciding to block).

However, VPN's, come with their own minimum age 18 T&C's, as do the means of payment for those services (credit and debit).

So from the pov of "stop children from accessing age inappropriate content" similar result

Not perfect, but empirically this seems to be working well enough e.g. "New data shows no rise in children’s VPN use after the introduction of online age checks" (https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/research/data-shows-no-r...), i.e. the VPN traffic is largely adults.

As to other unintended consequences, such as making it more difficult for the authorities to snoop on their citizens, I doubt this effectively makes any difference whatsoever.

Re: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

#70

Post by kneel25 »

latexr wrote: post #68
kneel25 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the goal then? Why do they care that you're bypassing it? I wouldn't deny using children in messaging isn't a deliberate focus to strengthen the case, but I don't think they're lying that it's about reducing access to harmful material, and I don't disagree with that goal or the way they've implemented it. It would be a weak case not to use statistics they find in the younger internet users because that's wher…

> What is the goal then? Why do they care that you're bypassing it? Mass surveillance, population control, and the destruction of services they disapprove of. Pornhub’s traffic went down by 80% when they implemented the mandatory age verification checks in some state. So they simply blocked them because it wasn’t worth it. Later, someone (I don’t have the ability to track down the source right now) was caught admitti…

There is no surveillance because it's third-parties responsible for the verification and no knowledge of the content or identity is passed between them beyond yes/no. Population control, sure, but that's not inherently wrong or unreasonable for reducing harmful internet usage. Pornhub's traffic are temporarily lazy users looking for a quick fix. Them being able to serve up step-sister roleplay slop in two clicks isn't something I care about protecting. I doubt they said that comment about Pornhub specifically, maybe, but I can believe driving certain sites out of business being part of the intention, barely moderated suicide discussion forums filled with teenagers for one.

I will read about that, but I quite quickly realised talking about this in person it's one of the few things I feel this strongly about, and even I'm not sure why I agree so entirely. I think I look at it a bit like climate activists interacting with deniers. Say what you want about future risks and criticisms, but there is no time, the situation is extremely fucked right now, particularly with children, and something needed doing asap.

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