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UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

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Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#101

Post by teekert »

simion314 wrote: post #84
moritonal wrote: post #77

I don't get why the device changes the blame logic. If child-services knew a parent was constantly watching/leaving around adult-content near children, that'd be considered the parents fault. If a parent lets a kid watch anything they want on TV and the kid watches adult content, it's the parents fault. But if the parent gives the child a phone, and doesn't manage what apps they use or content they watch, now it's th…

Does big tech help the parents? Can I set the age of the child in the phone user account and then the browser will report the age to the websites and the nice websites will aknowledge it and deny minors to watch adult content? No big tech and browser makers did not put their hurds of developers to handle this and forced the governments to try more retarded solutions. This big OSes should have a super easy activation…

This makes the tech companies the decision makers over what is suitable content for children. But this has many problems. A big example is that some people are more open about sex than others. I'm reminded of a scene in an anime of a father in a bath with his daughters, normal in many cultures, deemed perverted by many (particularly christian US residents). Also here in the the Netherlands, a pretty open society when it comes to these things, we have parents complaining about books that show genitals to kids, even though they'll see them when they look down.

This is a hard problem, from about 0 to 18, kids go from being, well, kids, to being expected to be full adults and are expected to be able to deal with every liberty, every temptation that comes with it. There is no single best path to achieve this.

I want to educate my kids about sex, about alcohol, gambling, drugs, I want to teach them that the internet is a source of many good things, and many bad things. I'll make arrangements, determine the suitability of online materials, and will set boundaries together with my partner, thank you.

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#102

Post by sdoering »

moritonal wrote: post #77

I don't get why the device changes the blame logic. If child-services knew a parent was constantly watching/leaving around adult-content near children, that'd be considered the parents fault. If a parent lets a kid watch anything they want on TV and the kid watches adult content, it's the parents fault. But if the parent gives the child a phone, and doesn't manage what apps they use or content they watch, now it's th…

I could just as easily turn this argument around:

If my younger self, went into a store to buy a bottle of Vodka, before I came of age at 18 here in Germany, it wasn't my parents fault. It was the shop that did not check my license that was liable.

If they sold me beer before I was 16, same situation. Analogous for cigarettes. Or me trying to enter an amusement arcade (with monetary gains possible, not just pinball like things.

So why should "online stores" / "arcades" / "non kid friendly/appropriate venues" be treated differently than brick and mortar ones?

Wouldn't that be the same argument?

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#103

Post by sunshine-o »

giacomoforte wrote: post #70

Are there any remaining western countries with strong free speech protections? UK and Germany weren't ever good in this department but now worst than ever. US supposedly good but I wouldn't risk it in practice. Australia I hear is also quite bad. Canada and NZ I don't know. I expect Denmark and Sweden to have somewhat weak free speech laws too. Norway and Finland I expect to be good. France I expect to be just slight…

I really do not think European countries had "free speech" like it is understood in the US.

After WWII you mostly had state run and controlled TV and radio. And some more freedom in the written press but still most countries mandate Legal deposit [0] sometimes since the Middle Ages. Legal deposit is just the granddaddy of what we understand the Internet is in China. You could really get in trouble easily.

Then mass media were liberalized and put under the control of big corporations in the 1970-80s what gave the illusion of more freedom.

But the WWW really brought the US free speech standards to the entire developed world in the 90-2000s. This is why people under 50 understand "free speech" according to this standard.

The "you get put in jail because of a meme on Facebook" is really a return to normal after a 20 year pause on the Internet. If you don't fight for it, it will never last.

Starmer, like most leaders in the EU, has an 18% approval rating. He really can't afford free speech for its subjects.

- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#104

Post by hexbin010 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #59
hexbin010 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Councillors have a totally different role though and aren't involved in creating legislation

Yeah, also they could be male. Don't take it so literal, the point I'm making is about going and physically meeting people, not about what title/label those people have.

Yeah, fair enough, just didn't want people to waste their time with the councillors regarding national legislation

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#105

Post by chrisjj »

bjackman wrote: post #66
ed_blackburn wrote: post #58

I think we need to accept that age verification makes the internet safer. What we cannot accept is age verification's use as a mechanism to pry too far into peoples lives. When we can separate age verification from who am I, most people will be happier. What's tricky is who validates age? Your ISP? Your government? Your OS? A thirty party? Who accredits third-parties, and can you trust them? I'm convinced there's a w…

I don't think it's possible? You could imagine some sort of certificate scheme where the govt issues a thing that says to a 3rd party "we certify this person is 18 but in a way that doesn't reveal who they are". You could also implement that in a way where, even if the 3rd party reports the details of an authorisation to the govt, the govt can't say who was involved in that auth. But in the latter case, the system is…

> The answer is to leave this shit to parents.

See Australia. Many parents helped their children evade the ban.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/12/04/social-media-ban-parent...

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#106

Post by pieshop »

Amendment 92 of the bill, added by Lord Nash during it's passage through the Lords says: > “consumer” means a person acting otherwise than in the course of a business; > “relevant VPN service” means a service of providing, in the course of a business, to a consumer, a virtual private network for accessing the internet;

It's quite specific wording for a piece of legislation, just VPNs. It excludes businesses but, as written, it wouldn't include network proxies, or remote desktop protocols, or TOR, or web/mobile applications that fetch pages for you, any of which could be used to circumvent the bill. The slippery slope argument could be made that those things would have to be added for this bill to have any meaningful impact, and that would require the amendment to be written in a very non-specific way. I'm not hopeful that the Government would recognise that as overreach (ignoring that the amendment already is).

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#107

Post by chrisjj »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #99
simion314 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does big tech help the parents? Can I set the age of the child in the phone user account and then the browser will report the age to the websites and the nice websites will aknowledge it and deny minors to watch adult content? No big tech and browser makers did not put their hurds of developers to handle this and forced the governments to try more retarded solutions. This big OSes should have a super easy activation…

You can block the entire internet and whitelist specific domains. There's multiple ways of doing this, from router parental controls, specific OS tools in iOS/Android, Windows, as well as apps specific to it, and all it takes is for a parent to care enough to make a simple Google or Youtube search and learn if they don't know, and don't even know to know that they should care in the first place. The failure here is t…

> The UK unfortunately has incarcerated people for simply lifting cardboard signs saying Free Palestine.

Completely false.

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#108

Post by iamcalledrob »

uh_uh wrote: post #51
iamcalledrob wrote: post #48

Where does this end? Turtles all the way down. If VPNs require age verification, then people will shift to running a VPN on a cheap VPS. Probably via a popular single-click setup script. Or people will just get drawn to more seedy providers that do no KYC or have ulterior motives. If I was Russia, I'd consider operating a free VPN or VPS service that MITMs the traffic.

There will always be a way out if you are dedicated enough. They "just" want to make it unviable for most of the population.

I guess my point here is that the user experience of doing this "DIY" will improve as more people want to do it!

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#109

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

chrisjj wrote: post #86
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So effectively truly Private vpn providers have to have an exit from UK. I mean even if say proton says that its not meant for UK but "substantial" people use protonvpn because its private, then they would be forced for the same laws. Another point is what prevents UK govt or UK bots to sign up for Proton Vpn say themselves and the difference between bots and humans is becoming thin especially for such Private Vpn's…

It is not an interception. It is not a condition on either party. It does not require either party to have the other's ID. It is no more than a requirement on the service provider.

> It does not require either party to have the other's ID.

Sure but that's literally not my point.

It's still an interception because the govt is still decided who can communicate (essentially) or not.

You cannot communicate with a vps provider if they don't have your ID and this condition being forced as a requirement otherwise the UK govt.s gonna jail and sue into literal millions is much akin to an interception in basically everything.

Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

#110

Post by FrostViper8 »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #96
FrostViper8 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even better, they could have created a non-governmental agency to exchange tokens and urls to prevent the privacy issue of the government knowing which sites people are visiting. The privacy issue would still exist. They can tie your online activity directly to these tokens.

not with a non-governmental agency doing the exchange. All they would see are tokens going out. You would need the non-governmental agency to share the urls with the government agency for the activity to be tied directly which would undermine the entire purpose of that architecture.

> You would need the non-governmental agency to share the urls with the government agency for the activity to be tied directly which would undermine the entire purpose of that architecture.

Which would absolutely would happen. The authorities will ask the non-gov agency for the details and they will be provided.

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