211–220 of 400 posts
This will be interesting to follow. I dont see how this can be fully enforced. Maybe for iOS and other platform where app distribution is highly restricted, but on linux, windows and even macOS i can use mullvad, sending cash in an envelope without ever revealing my identity.
I'm very much in favour of blocking children from social media - it's an absolutely vile cesspit of cognitive addiction, bullying and social (and potential sexual) abuse. But none of it requires a mass-surveillance network to be put in place. Just for one example; it would be trivial for Apple and Google to put age estimation on my phone, verify it on opening the web browser and provide a zero-knowledge proof of age…
Perfect is impossible, but if its stigmatised then the network effects stop being so punitive to children who have reasonable parents.
it's the 10-80-10 rule: 10% of kids will still access social media, 10% will never... but 80% can be swayed.
Good thing Brexit happened to prevent government overreach.
If you ban IPsec ESP people will start using WireGuard on random ports. If you ban WireGuard using DPI people will start using SSL VPNs. If you ban SSL you ban the entire internet.
If they ban bog standard VPNs and find out they're still being used, they'll punish the VPN companies.
If the VPN companies create workarounds and avoid the punishment, they'll punish the payment processors.
If the VPN companies start using esoteric workarounds and taking cryptocurrency for payment, then they've mostly won -- most people aren't going to deal with that shit.
All the while, they'll still go after the social media/etc companies for allowing circumvention of age-gating. So the social media companies will crack down on our ability to visit their sites with any sort of privacy.
My point: laws are all imperfect but can still have a huge effect. Pointing out work arounds doesn't change that.
For context, I'm really disturbed by the recent move to punish people seeking privacy instead of the social media companies that are enabling this social media shit. They know who the companies are, since that's who they're going to punish for not age gating. But they'd (I'm talking about US based age-gating pushes as well) rather fuck with our privacy and make our PII more susceptible to data breaches than tell the social media companies to eat shit.
FWIW you can age-gate VPNs the same way you can age-gate anything else that is paid for: just don't let people who haven't got credit cards (not debit cards) sign up. Or you can simply let free plans only terminate inside their own country. I noticed recently that TunnelBear has done this with their free plans — the "fastest" endpoint, which is the only one that is free, is now a UK endpoint. It still meets the secur…
So every adult citizen is forced to open a credit line?
Most UK citizens do have a credit card anyway (though I in fact do not). It's more than three quarters.
It's not even the only way someone offering a service for what is after all a subscription product could achieve adult verification through existing banking-based mechanisms, because there are also bank mechanisms for making payments through a direct debit, which again you have to be an adult to do in the UK, and everyone can.
KYC processes also work though they are annoying and a VPN provider is inherently not going to want to do it.
But they are going to want to take money and there are these two mechanisms that come with adulthood verification attached.
Apple could do more on this with Wallet — they could let you pay with a virtual debit card that can only be in your wallet if you've passed their adult verification. Would need some card industry support. I am not sure why I can't just associate adulthood with my debit card; that would be a good fix.
Uk kids about to discover the power of Hetzner Linux vps + vnc.
And then UK residents are going to discover the "power" of government which will require age verification for renting a VPS or VDS or any other kind of cloud infrastructure, tied directly to your passport/ID, because "many families are desperate for this to happen and I listen particularly to bereaved families that say the longer we delay this, the more children are put at risk". /j or /s P.S. by the way, is it possi…
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It would have to alter the voice of anyone on it to make them sound ridiculous.
For yanks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%931994_British_broa...
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0119/1217560-section-31-b...
In Russia, they claimed that new measures to block websites are necessary to protect the children online. Of course, they immediately used these new capabilities to block opposition websites and sources critical of the government. Now, seeing many European governments tirelessly push for these new measures to protect the children , I'm pretty sure that the children are finally going to be safe online.
It is really disheartening to see the sentiment around privacy erode like this. Fifteen or even ten years ago this would have been unanimously and vehemently opposed, but now it is somehow up for debate?
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> It's not possible to prevent a person (of any age) from reaching a specific website if they are determined enough. Full stop. right, and that reveals the absurdity of this "age gate", doesn't it? because I am sure giving every UK national their very own unicorn would also poll very well but that doesn't mean that's what a functional democracy should be prioritizing just because a majority of the public supports bec…
That's because it's not about age gating, it's about identifying the internet users.