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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

#881

Post by nemomarx »

exasperaited wrote: post #866
nemomarx wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At minimum they should have tried for a digital attestation and not "send pictures of your official identity documents to every site" approach.

Well, they didn't take that approach. Read the actual guidance. They in no way require "send pictures of your official identity documents to every site". There are a bunch of ways (some advisable, some not) where an existing entity that knows you are an adult can extend just that -- we know they are an adult. Credit card providers know all their customers are adults, for example -- because you have to be an adult to…

Sure, but if they don't already know they have to ask to see ID or try the video estimation stuff, right?

That's a lot more data leakage than some central authentication for it, and PII going to more places. And it's very optimistic to assume implementations will be good faith and secure.

I'm not sure I would call the USC a mark of quality right now anyway.

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

#882

Post by nkohari »

pc86 wrote: post #820
isaacremuant wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The UK is an increasingly authoritarian nightmare. The US should start a refugee program for UK citizens who understand what freedom actually means and want to live in a free country again.

> The US should start a refugee program for UK citizens who understand what freedom actually means and want to live in a free country again.

I ask this in all seriousness: have you been paying attention to what's happening recently in the US?

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

#883

Post by thinkingtoilet »

exodust wrote: post #848
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Just like kids would hang out outside a 7-11 and ask someone older to buy them a Playboy. Or pay a homeless person to buy them beer. Should we remove the age limit on alcohol purchases because kids aren't clueless? That's not a rhetorical question. Should we remove all laws that can be abused? Your argument falls apart very quickly.

Your analogy needs modifying. If we remove the laws, a child could walk into the store and buy beer with their pocket money, no questions asked. This isn't the same as them browsing the internet no questions asked. The child is not paying for their devices or internet access. Their parents are paying and providing the needed equipment. In a way, it's like giving keys to after hours access to the local mall, where all…

So because a kid could go stand outside a store and ask someone to get them porn, we should not allow kids outside. We should not give them the "keys" to go to the outside world.

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

#884

Post by pc86 »

louthy wrote: post #842
pc86 wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is an increasingly authoritarian nightmare. The US should start a refugee program for UK citizens who understand what freedom actually means and want to live in a free country again.

> The UK is an increasingly authoritarian nightmare. The US should start a refugee program for UK Hilarious, you literally have a president shutting down free speech by getting a talkshow taken off the air so that the owning media company can pass its merger regulations; he’s also threatening to sue or actually suing other media organisations, universities, newspapers,... And on top of all that has built a private mi…

WALLOFTEXT notwithstanding, doing bad things for good reasons is not in and of itself any better than doing bad things for bad reasons.

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

#885

Post by Ensorceled »

benrutter wrote: post #843
Ensorceled wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you're not alone: studies show that a median of 31% of the worlds population support authoritarianism(1) (1) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes...

Hmm, assuming you're not just being imflamatory, I definitely wouldn't identify as supporting authoritatianism. Perhaps that's not for me to say, we live in a world where environmental protesters are often labelleed authoritarian, and people who I'd have thought would identify as facists call themselves libertarian. I think the bit that I don't understand yet, is: - Most people are not arguing that all pornography sh…

Not just being inflammatory, but most people who have a "if the government says they need to protect the children, I'm happy to give up a bunch of rights and privacy" reaction tend to be in the "ok with authoritarianism" group.

Also, we are up in arms about the introduction of government tracking is 1) it's not JUST government tracking, the age restricted sites will also get your PII and 2) most people get concerned when governments start getting involved in things regarded as private, like sex, porn, etc. 3) What will require verification is unclear "age restricted content" is pretty open.

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

#886

Post by vidarh »

ndriscoll wrote: post #865
captainbland wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking the law was passed under the conservatives, albeit in collaboration with Labour (it's bi-partisan). But I would agree that the drive is more authoritarian and it just uses moralistic arguments to shame people into siding with it. The law could mandate that retail device OSs ship with a turnkey child safe mode complete with app and extensive site whitelists and run an educational campaign on the subj…

Requiring device side child safe modes would be far further reaching and likely mean your cannot run your own software anymore. Requiring providers of adult content to check id is much more limited in scope.

Not if it is enabled by the buyer, which I took to be the point.

Mobile phone subscriptions in the UK go the other way: By default they filter some content. If you tell the phone company to turn it off, they do. It's less invasive than this law because you don't need to tell them why you want it turned off, but still more draconian than if we could turn on a child safe mode that e.g. then required a pin or something to disable.

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

#887

Post by ryukafalz »

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…

I don't particularly want to be required to have an Apple or Google device (and to accept their EULAs) to use social media either! If we're going to do age verification (and if we must, doing it in a privacy-preserving way would be best), can't we make it an open standard?

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

#888

Post by cooper_ganglia »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #752

I've posted this before: We shouldn't need Age Verification checks for adults in the first place. Create a better, standardized, open-source parental control tool that is installed by default on all types of device that can connect to the web. The internet aspect of the parental control should be a "Per Whitelist" system rather than Blacklisting. The parents should be the ones to decide which domains are Whitelisted…

  > Also, I'm for teenagers (not little children) having access to pornography.
Anyone who supports literal children of any age viewing pornography needs their hard drives checked immediately.

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

#890

Post by reliabilityguy »

pc86 wrote: post #833
reliabilityguy wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that your argument is more about the way the verification is implemented and not about the idea of verification by itself.

The idea that you should verify your legal identity to load a website is reprehensible and not something that should be treated seriously. It should be ridiculed like the authoritarian nonsense it is.

Maybe, maybe not. It should be debated, and all the pros and cons should be considered.

But age verification as a concept is a completely separate issue from the implementation of the verification system itself.

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