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VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

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Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#651
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, it's all about a permanent Digital ID and the end of any independent forums. It's the first essential steps before you get to great firewalls and social credit scores. Remember, Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas already have similar laws in place in the US, so even a nation with better speech and gun laws is still not immune from the slow descent into technocracy.

At least in the US the Supreme Court ruled that these sorts of laws are only kosher because they target porn, which is afforded a lower degree of legal protection (albeit not no protection at all). Trying to restrict access to protected political speech or the like the way the UK and Australia did would likely be a very different court case.

Given the rulings of the current SCOTUS, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's trivial to go after left-leaning political speech and impossible to go after right-leaning speech.

They are already suppressing left-leaning speech by defunding CPB, and ahve openly said their reasons for doing so for are politically motivated.

There's a 0% chance this move gets struct down by SCOTUS.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or write to your MP. They care slightly more about that.

I've done this for so many issues in the past and not once have I had anything more than an automated reply. Often those replies then go on and reference a totally different bill that I'm voicing an opinion on. This isn't all just one MP either, I've lived in many different areas of the UK in recent years and most of them have flipped parties at some point or another. Maybe this is the "Westminster Bubble" the journo…

I've written to mine several times and usually I get a stock reply vaguely relating to the subject, but occasionally I've got actual replies. Once I sent a message about ordnance survey open data and they sent a clearly custom reply and forwarded my message to someone else.

In any case, my sister used to work in an MP's office and even when you get auto replies they tally it, and weight it quite heavily as a representation of constituents' views (unless it's a template letter in which case it goes straight in the bin).

It definitely has more effect than signing a petition - most of them are super dumb (lower taxes!) and as far as I know not a single one has actually changed the government's position. It's just too easy to sign them and too many dumb people do it.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#653
post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a browser header field would be sufficient, could be easily integrated into the OS and browser, and would let developers handle this issue in a few hours worth of effort. ID verification is such an invasive measure and prone to the exact same failures as the simplest solutions.

I like this solution, integrated with whatever existing parental controls are in the OS. That would empower parents to keep their kids from accidentally or casually accessing porn. Of course, an intelligent and determined teenager will probably find a way around it, which is also good; then they've learned a bit about computers.

I'm going to bet most kids will get around it by registering accounts with the IDs that they've taken pictures of, which belong to adults, then sharing the accounts widely.

Grandma isn't likely to have an account on one of these sites (unless one of your cousins beat you to it).

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling) > just mentioning increased immigration One of these seems like the solution to the other. > as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.…

> Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe I only have to look as far as my own wallet to see the effects. I'm being taxed to the eyeballs while there is a glass ceiling preventing me taking any more pay home without a major jump which just isn't coming due to stupid tax rules keeping the working class from bumping into the middle class. I se…

I left in 2010 and the consensus is very much the same among my friends, or at least some of them anyway.

I’m no longer eligible to have an opinion UK or local conversations. “how would you know”, “the city’s changed a lot since you left”, “why are people who chose to leave so interested in X”, statements specific to ex-pats.

For those from outside the UK, ex-pat (expatriate) as a singular term is almost always derogatory regardless of context or publisher.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#655
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're se…

> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling) > just mentioning increased immigration One of these seems like the solution to the other. > as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.…

Qualified immigration is indeed a net economy boost. But that isn‘t what‘s happening.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#656

Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically…

> I wonder why the UK specifically is taking action - is the issue bigger there, or are they just more aware of and willing to act on it. Other countries are moving in the same direction. The EU has repeatedly tried to push things like on device scanning or banning encryption. > Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's co…

The EU is also increasingly against free speech. It turns out banning hate speech was a slippery slope to government overreach after all. Huh.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#657
post #108

Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically…

You are approaching this from a uniquely U.S. perspective. The U.K. is pretty middle of the road as far as “surveillance” and while this may offend the freedom-at-all-costs sensibilities, it’s a fairly milquetoast change. Visiting the Heineken website in the U.S. requires that you assert you are over the age of 21. Texas has instituted I.D. verification for pornography. Regardless of how you feel about this law, it i…

This is objectively untrue when compared to other western countries. You have people arrested for posting memes on their mums Facebook page.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#658

The VPN trick potentially won’t last long. We’ve seen it go stale already in the world of intellectual property rights. For at least the last ten years Netflix et al have been well aware of which AS numbers / IP netblocks correspond to people sat at home in front of the TV, and which correspond to servers in a rack somewhere (including those hosting VPN endpoints.) One tweak to the rules and all of a sudden not only…

Netflix in fact works better on a VPN for me . Maybe they made it that way.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The country has completely lost all sense. This is why far-right is surging on the polls. Fixed that for you.

I don't think your modification really changes anything from the original comment.

OP implies that increased far-right polling is one element of the country losing all sense.

this response implies that the country has lost ass sense and thus far-right polling has increased as an attempt to get back to sense.

Re: VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

#660

Destroy cultural integrity, national identity, create a low-trust society, become more authoritarian to manage low-trust society, import more immigrants at an exponential rate while house costs rise along with unemployment. The list keeps going. This is why far-right is surging on the polls. The country has completely lost all sense.

UK needs immigrants to increase stagnating productivity. this has been the case for decades and it's why no government has done, or will do anything serious to curb it.

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