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

alecmuffett.com

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

#41

Post by idle_zealot »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #20
Beestie wrote: post #18

So lemme guess - in order to prove one's age, one needs to obtain a digital ID and use said ID to gain access to the internet thereby creating a perfect system to monitor one's internet activity. Gotta hand it to them - "protecting the children" is a pretty good pretext.

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.

It's way easier to justify banning social media entirely than banning it for under-sixteens. Paradoxically it infringes on freedom less, as it bans a type of business model for being too harmful rather than restricting people's rights to view and share information.

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

#42

Post by to11mtm »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #20
Beestie wrote: post #18

So lemme guess - in order to prove one's age, one needs to obtain a digital ID and use said ID to gain access to the internet thereby creating a perfect system to monitor one's internet activity. Gotta hand it to them - "protecting the children" is a pretty good pretext.

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.

I think the separation is in how 'algorithmic engagement' in social media is at least as dangerous as stuff that even the US still has banned in other forms of media [0].

Especially because it's gotten so bad. At first it was just 'making things popular in your network more visible'. But now it's to where when I use something like Facebook there is more 'algorithm spam' than anything actually happening with my friends. It's become something where the primary purpose is 'driving views' rather than communicating. [1]

A VPN is a bit different; it's a tool, and I will note one that depending on the specific definition has legitimate (or at least morally/ethically legitimate) uses.

[0] - e.x. unless it has been reversed in the last decade or two, in the US you still can't cut from a kid's cartoon right into a commercial for a toy/game related to said cartoon. I mean FFS that was a rule that got put in before 'attention hacking' was even a term.

[1] - TBH I'd love if we could get back to Myspace or maybe even early Facebook type social media. There's a lot of excitement lost when an algorithm feeds you shit versus a friend sharing it, and it was a lot less noise...

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

#43

Post by gorgoiler »

outside1234 wrote: post #3

Is there actually a massive problem that they are trying to solve with this?

Yes: somewhat cynically, they want their democratically elected affiliate party to remain in government (or they just enjoy popular support themselves) and so when the majority of people think protectin the childrun is good, you should demonstrate your purity spiraling by proposing and going along with anything that supports such an aim. You’d want to vote for that, right? I mean, the kids, right?!

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

#45

Post by iamacyborg »

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…

> Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences

I think you’ve been spending too much time on Twitter

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

#46

Post by Barrin92 »

int32_64 wrote: post #26

It's so organic and grass roots and good for democracy™ that every single Western country suddenly decided that eliminating privacy online in lockstep was the top priority despite none of the ruling parties running on it as a platform or with any meaningful referendums from the voting public. But to what end?

>It's so organic and grass roots

It is though. This is one of the few surveillance issues actually driven by grassroots organisations like (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout) in particular when it comes to adult content who have been at this globally for well over a decade.

There's no shadowy cabal trying to age-restrict porn or social media, this is more like a modern day Carrie Nation. Puritanism always comes from the bottom up

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

#47

Post by jasonfarnon »

mschuster91 wrote: post #34
xoa wrote: post #24

Blacklists are an inherently terrible, rights infringing approach to this sort of issue vs whitelists. It would be a lot better if the internet by default was simply considered 18+ (or 16+ or whatever a country wants). Instead, the tld system could be easily used to have age based domains where anyone who wanted one had to meet some set of requirements for content standards, accountability and content vetting, didn't…

> But at the same time parental concern is real ... only to the degree it hasn't been manufactured by tabloid media and Russian propaganda warfare, that is. With every little news about local shootings, robberies, rapes, beatings, thefts, whatever not just making national, but in the worst case international headlines, one might think that Western countries are unsafe hellholes of the likes of actually legitimately f…

"Parents should relax and ... "

"everyone should just adopt my values and then all these political problems would just disappear. voila!"

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

#48

Post by stronglikedan »

outside1234 wrote: post #3

Is there actually a massive problem that they are trying to solve with this?

Yes, they don't have enough power yet, and all governments currently have the same problem so I expect to see much more of this nonsense.

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

#49

Post by mschuster91 »

lijok wrote: post #37
mschuster91 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But at the same time parental concern is real ... only to the degree it hasn't been manufactured by tabloid media and Russian propaganda warfare, that is. With every little news about local shootings, robberies, rapes, beatings, thefts, whatever not just making national, but in the worst case international headlines, one might think that Western countries are unsafe hellholes of the likes of actually legitimately f…

You've clearly never been on Discord

Maybe go after Discord then for doing nothing meaningful against abusive, should we not?

And if that means that Discord has to shut down... well, okay, if that's the price? An organisation that doesn't care about the impact on its host society is nothing more than a parasite or cancer and should be treated as such.

(Besides: if you're aiming at stuff like groups of kids bullying other kids into suicide or self harm - guess what: that existed in times where there was no Internet. It just wasn't widely reported, other than maybe holding a vigil for a classmate who had "passed away")

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

#50

Post by fidotron »

The way this, and various other proposals/actions in other countries, are all popping up at the same time, seemingly independently though obviously not, has to be one of the biggest warning signs of trouble in my lifetime. Not helped by various European states deciding they want national service again all of a sudden.

Our governments have turned into the very thing they claimed to be opposing for decades. It's disgraceful.

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