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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

#821

Post by endymion-light »

snickerbockers wrote: post #544
JFingleton wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought a police state would demand identification at every street corner (perhaps I'm wrong?) and any minor breaking of the law being dealt with severe justice. The UK has always been against a "state ID" unlike a lot of European countries, so I'm not completely convinced the description of "police state" is accurate. In fact I think it's the opposite given people can freely break the law despite cameras be…

>The UK is basically an end-of-days advanced state: bureaucracy taken to the extreme, with a heavy dose of nanny-state "mind the gap" messaging. Reminds me the latter three dune novels. Frank Herbert had this idea he was exploring about how the inevitable end-state of society is this sort of stalemate between opposing bureaucratic factions which have become optimized towards preventing their own destruction to the po…

> opposing bureaucratic factions which have become optimized towards preventing their own destruction to the point that they aren't capable of doing anything other than prolonging their own existence

This is the best 1 sentence explanation of how it feels like to live in the UK. Every institution feels more catered towards preventing it's end than to a goal.

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

#822

Post by JohnFen »

cedws wrote: post #811
fedeb95 wrote: post #797

Until you really restrict the net, it's just a matter of building new software that can't be the target of those laws by design. If you restrict the net, there's no inter-net.

The idea of a "New Internet" from the comedy series Silicon Valley seems like a more attractive and interesting idea every day. I daydream about some kind of overlay network, without censorship and surveillance, where only people 'in the know' participate.

> I daydream about some kind of overlay network, without censorship and surveillance, where only people 'in the know' participate.

These have been getting build for years now, and the rate is increasing. The open, public web is on its last legs and is being replaced by a multitude of private networks.

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

#823

Post by tsoukase »

graemep wrote: post #228
williamdclt wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here That's really not my experience. In fact, almost everyone is surprised when I suggest that despite its many problems, the NHS does better for the people than most modern countries' health systems.

I am certainly surprised by that suggestion. No one I know who has lived in France or Germany or any developed country other than the US thinks the NHS is better than the systems in those countries.

I have heard some scary things about NHS from friends. Some mothers of Greek origin preferred to give birth back in Greece. I don't know if cultural differences played any role. A humble N=4-5 from a doctor

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

#824

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

qualeed wrote: post #817
reliabilityguy wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what’s preventing the UK to ban the websites/VPN services that don’t comply at the ISP level? This is what Russia is (semi-successfully) doing.

That's a forever lasting game of whack-a-mole. You either need to firewall the nation (which I imagine would be pretty unpopular) or it's just a waste of resources.

Many areas of law enforcement are whack-a-mole. There's no online gambling regulation so strict that it will stop unlicensed sites from existing entirely; that doesn't mean the rules are pointless or resources dedicated to enforcing them are wasted.

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

#825

Post by syngrog66 »

b112 wrote: post #805
palmfacehn wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree with the "Christian Nationalist" characterization. https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2025/07/29/nigel-farage-taki... >"Nigel Farage ‘on the side of predators’ with Online Safety Act criticism, says Labour" Is the UK's Labour Party now Christian Nationalist? The end goal here is digital ID and censorship. Compare this to the perennial efforts for encryption backdoors. If there is a characterization th…

The elephant in the room, is 'foreign actor'. All of our platforms are inundated by an overwhelming amount of well crafted, targeted (specific per person) campaigns of disinformation by foreign actors. China, Russia, Iran, and others cannot even remotely hope to stand against the West. Yet if you cannot stand against your adversary, you must weaken them. You promote infighting. You take minor issues which can be coop…

I agree with much (if not necessarily all) of what you said, esp about foreign actors and adversarial propaganda and disinfo (APD.)

I worked on the latter problem space precisely for the US State Department. Its challenging, esp at scale, and esp if the folks trying to fight back are not given a free enough of a hand to do whats needed.

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

#827

Post by [deleted] »

isaacremuant wrote: post #767
Veliladon wrote: post #765

This is one of the times where law is outrunning technology. Apple and Google are both working on anonymous attestation but they're pulling the trigger before it's ready. But that's not what laws like these are about. In the US at least these laws are driven by Christian Nationalists are setting up a situation where PII of porn users is able to be leaked. That's what they're counting on. They also want to have politi…

Screw anonymous attestation. We don't need to be controlled at every frigging second by people who are time and time again proven to be corrupt and working for their own interests. *Oh, I just received this thousands in gifts but it doesn't affect my decisions". The only thing to do is denounce every bit of bullshit and not try and "find a way to make it work". Just stand for freedom for once instead of bending the k…

[deleted]

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

#828

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Ensorceled wrote: post #778
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #770

We require people to verify their age in person to access pornography, it doesn't seem like that far a stretch to require it online. You can't even by a ticket to an R-rated movie without age verification. That seems reasonable to me. I see I'm in the minority here. I understand the slippery slope argument but if we succumb to that then nothing could be done anywhere ever. I understand this could be abused, but it's…

It's up to the people who WANT age verification to ensure that it can't be abused rather than up to US to prevent it from being abused after the fact. Invoking the "slippery slope" fallacy when the country with the greatest military in the world is abusing public records to grab people off the street and out of court rooms is an interesting choice.

I don't follow the argument. Why isn't it up to the people who want strict privacy to ensure that it can't be abused by porn providers?

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

#829

Post by palmfacehn »

wbl wrote: post #809
b112 wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elephant in the room, is 'foreign actor'. All of our platforms are inundated by an overwhelming amount of well crafted, targeted (specific per person) campaigns of disinformation by foreign actors. China, Russia, Iran, and others cannot even remotely hope to stand against the West. Yet if you cannot stand against your adversary, you must weaken them. You promote infighting. You take minor issues which can be coop…

Well the politicians could make that argument but haven't.

"We need our social media companies to verify everybody, says fmr. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXqTMwN4MtY

At the time she was the Neocon Presidential candidate.

I've always found it difficult to believe that voters are capable of critically consuming information and voting for wars, regulations or confiscatory taxes, and simultaneously are incapable of thinking critically about propaganda. Under this model, the fact that some deceptive sources may be foreign is largely a red herring. The entire premise of Democracy rests upon the presumption that voters are capable of making informed decisions in an adversarial information landscape.

I don't see the desire to control Internet speech as a novel phenomenon. The rationalizations have evolved over the years. The proliferation of AI, Russian sponsored podcasters and Wumaos are iterations of an appeal to special circumstances.

If the West truly believes that authoritarians like the CCP are immoral and should be opposed, it stands to reason that they shouldn't be seeking to emulate the CCP's methods. That's the surface level, ideologically consistent view.

Beneath that, there is a rabbit hole of fringe theory. Like the above poster, I provide this information to better explain possible motives, without endorsement. In the conspiracy sphere, the PRC is regarded as a trial lab for social engineering schemes. The allegation is that concepts are ironed out there first. Examples would include: social credit scores, digital ID, Internet censorship and the confluence of all three. Whether these theories are true or false, it wouldn't be unreasonable to be wary of these outcomes.

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

#830

Post by JohnFen »

benrutter wrote: post #789
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #770

We require people to verify their age in person to access pornography, it doesn't seem like that far a stretch to require it online. You can't even by a ticket to an R-rated movie without age verification. That seems reasonable to me. I see I'm in the minority here. I understand the slippery slope argument but if we succumb to that then nothing could be done anywhere ever. I understand this could be abused, but it's…

I know all the other comments are massively disagreeing, but I'm relieved to find I'm not completely alone. It's not even that I think this is a good idea, but it does seem a fairly standard extension of existing laws. Potentially I'm missing something? Everyone else seems to be enraged by this.

> Potentially I'm missing something?

The problem is the surveillance and tracking, not the age verification itself.

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