Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

alecmuffett.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 499 posts

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#311

Post by rossriley »

ghm2199 wrote: post #204

Serious question: What's the gold standard in blocking certain content for an age group, without tracking ones identity? My initial thought would it would be just making it super easy for their guardians to distribute and control device content. But let the control end at that echelon of power; Not even the local councils or schools should be given the power to regulate social media for kids to this extent IMO, let a…

I'd have thought an OAuth flow to a government run ID system, to create an account you first must verify your age by redirecting to the ID provider logging in via FaceID/Fingerprint to verify it's you and then you are redirected back to the original site with a verification code.

Admittedly on paper that means the Gov system would know which sites you were approved for, not logging that would require legislation to not store these logs.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#312

Post by istjohn »

fao_ wrote: post #301
istjohn wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunn was jailed eight weeks for posting three memes: > Prosecutor George Shelley said Dunn had posted three separate images. The first one showed a group of men, Asian in appearance, at Egremont crab fair 2025, with the caption: “Coming to a town near you.” > The second also showed a group of men, Asian in appearance leaving a boat on to Whitehaven beach. This, said Mr Shelley, had the caption: “When it’s on your tur…

Based on those descriptions... it sounds like he was pretty clearly racist? From the article: > Sentencing Thompson, Judge Temperley had said of the zero tolerance approach being taken by courts: > “This offence, I’m afraid, has to be viewed in the context of the current civil unrest up and down this country. And I’ve no doubt at all that your post is connected to that wider picture. > “I don’t accept that your comme…

Yes. It's a horrible sentiment, and he should be able to air it. Free and open discourse requires me to allow you to say things I dislike in exchange for you tolerating my saying things you dislike. It isn't free speech if you're only allowed to say popular things.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#313

Post by maest »

stephen_g wrote: post #184
dave1010uk wrote: post #80

I know what you're thinking: these restrictions are easy to work around. But don't worry, we can just layer more restrictions on top. Eventually the children will be safe! The government just needs to... - require proof of age (ID) to install apps from unofficial sources on your phone or PC. Probably best to block this at both the OS and also popular VPN downloading sites like github.com and debian.org. - require pro…

You joke, but as I understand it, all internet in the UK has Government mandated 'adult content' filtering by default and you have to go through a process to prove you're over 18 to have it removed... So they are much more than halfway there already...

You understand it incorrectly

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#314

Post by Defletter »

ipaddr wrote: post #306
Defletter wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me at least (different person), the term "speech offences" has been so captured by the far-right who think publicly advocating for the burning down of buildings populated with minorities is totally fine, but calling someone racist is beyond the pale. Whereas, at least from my own experience, progressives tend to use phrases related to expression, eg, protests. And so when I hear "speech offences", my immediate th…

For you the issue is a left right issue and if the opinion matches yours it is acceptable and seen in a positive light but if it's the other side you have no tolerance. You will never have free speech just controlled speech with alternating people in power. Which I think is a worse outcome because the people in power will never allow controlled speech against them.

> For you the issue is a left right issue and if the opinion matches yours it is acceptable and seen in a positive light but if it's the other side you have no tolerance.

When you remove all content and context from what is actually being said and done, then yes, this is fairly accurate, but it's also an entirely meaningless framing. But you have fallen into the trap of thinking I only support protests that I agree with, which is the usual response for these kinds of discussions, sadly. If you want your climate-contrarian protest, by all means do so. Unironically do Straight Pride if that's what you want. I believe protest, and expression more generally, is a fundamental right. But what you're doing here is (to use a hyperbolic comparison) accusing me of hypocrisy because I'm okay with interpretive dance but not murder, even though they're both just actions. It reminds me of 2016 Reddit where slurs were "just soundwaves, bro".

We don't have American-style freedom of speech, nor should we. We have freedom of expression instead because we have very personal experience within our very recent history what unfettered hatred does to a continent. Attempting to import American-style freedom of speech will genuinely destroy this country, we are already seeing it happen.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#315

Post by Ferret7446 »

fao_ wrote: post #301
istjohn wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunn was jailed eight weeks for posting three memes: > Prosecutor George Shelley said Dunn had posted three separate images. The first one showed a group of men, Asian in appearance, at Egremont crab fair 2025, with the caption: “Coming to a town near you.” > The second also showed a group of men, Asian in appearance leaving a boat on to Whitehaven beach. This, said Mr Shelley, had the caption: “When it’s on your tur…

Based on those descriptions... it sounds like he was pretty clearly racist? From the article: > Sentencing Thompson, Judge Temperley had said of the zero tolerance approach being taken by courts: > “This offence, I’m afraid, has to be viewed in the context of the current civil unrest up and down this country. And I’ve no doubt at all that your post is connected to that wider picture. > “I don’t accept that your comme…

It's unfortunate that this seems to have been forgotten in only a few decades, but one day you may find yourself as the one who is clearly racist and despite your protests there will be no one left to defend you

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#316

Post by selcuka »

torified wrote: post #197
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to see these kinds of comments more in this thread compared to the one from yesterday. The one from yesterday was discussing how australia is banning social media for anyone under 16. Most comments were supportive because they hate social media. A few comments were discussing how it is just a way to propagate more KYC.

As an Australian it's so irritating how enthusiastic people are to give up their privacy and freedom of speech, and also force everyone to hand over personal information to private companies, on the flimsiest of pretexts from our perpetually technologically incompetent government. After the number of data breaches we've seen, they want to do this, and in the least privacy-preserving way possible. Why not set up a gov…

> Why not set up a government api where a site can get a yes/no answer about age using tokens, so the site itself gets no information but if the age is ok?

As I mentioned in yesterday's thread, an online API still allows the government to track and monitor residents, which is arguably worse. You no longer have plausible deniability when the government asks you to hand over your social media credentials because they now know that you have, or at least attempted to open, an account with that provider.

The better solution would be an offline, cryptographic "wallet" (similar to the EU Digital Identity Wallet) that only exposes the age information and nothing else, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#317

Post by TacticalCoder »

baazaa wrote: post #36

On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes (it's NOT just a single-service login across government + a linking ID across government services, which is how it was sold by the BBC). They're pretty close to completely de-anonymising the internet for UK citizens. Say they introduce an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s, then requires all social media to link…

The UK is the country with the biggest yearly outflow of millionaires in the world. And the numbers are huge: there are about the same number of millionaires in the UK and in France, about 3 million. And yet there are 20x more net millionaires outflow leaving the UK than leaving France (16 000 vs 800 net outflow).

Make of that what you will but to me the net outflow is the canary in the coalmine.

The UK is headed for a dark future.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#318

Post by selcuka »

ImJamal wrote: post #145
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to see these kinds of comments more in this thread compared to the one from yesterday. The one from yesterday was discussing how australia is banning social media for anyone under 16. Most comments were supportive because they hate social media. A few comments were discussing how it is just a way to propagate more KYC.

There is a difference between a concept (banning social media for kids) and the actual implementation (requiring ID to visit sites or whatever they are going to do).

There is a theoretical difference, but in practice they are the same thing, and we all know it [1]:

> Social media platforms have admitted verifying user ages would likely involve surrendering personal IDs, as the Albanese government forges ahead with its under-16 ban.

[1] https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/privacy-a...

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#319

Post by wasabi991011 »

984635026859846 wrote: post #281
cj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Daily Mail was close to tabloid status (or a bit above). Aren’t they banned from being a citation on Wikipedia?

[flagged]

Scientific publishing is a decentralized system, there's no specific ban in place, just that publishers will likely not accept to publish your paper.

And the reason for that is accuracy nor bias, just that Wikipedia is not a primary source. You don't generally cite any encyclopedias in scientific papers.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#320

Post by Aurornis »

xp84 wrote: post #237
rtkwe wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? Ideally this could be done without deanonymizing accounts to service providers unless the user wants to for a 'verified' account linked to their identity publically but I don't think any digital ID system has been built that way. Imagine it acting like OAuth but instead of passing back an identity token it's just verification of age, platforms would store…

You're totally right that it would be easy from a tech perspective to do that. it's a shame that: (A) most people cannot grasp how it could be that "GovSSO" can attest "This person you just sent our way just logged into GovSSO [with biometric 2FA], and they are at least 16 years old" without the receiving system having any way of knowing who that citizen is or even whether they're 16 or 99. (B) very real terrible gov…

> (A) most people cannot grasp how it could be that "GovSSO" can attest "This person you just sent our way just logged into GovSSO [with biometric 2FA], and they are at least 16 years old" without the receiving system having any way of knowing who that citizen is or even whether they're 16 or 99.

The loophole that every kid everywhere would instantly figure out is that they just need to borrow their mom’s ID, their older brother’s ID, or a pay some Internet service $1 to use their ID.

This is why the services aren’t designed to totally separate the ID from the account. If nothing actually links the ID to the account then there is no disincentive for people to share their IDs or sell their use for a small fee. Stolen IDs would get farmed for logins.

So the systems invariably get some form of connection to the ID itself. The people making these laws aren’t concerned about privacy aspects. They want maximum enforcement of their goals.

Post reply on HN