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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

#931

Post by BeFlatXIII »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #888
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 .

“Literal children”, by which definition?

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

#933

Post by rsynnott »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #818
JohnFen wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the commenter said "in the US".

I guess I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that Americans who want age verification laws have some entirely different motivation than people in other countries who want age verification laws.

I mean, I think you probably have a range of motivations. In the UK, a lot of it will be control-freak-ery, always fairly popular across the political spectrum there. In the US, some part of it will be the lunatic-fringe Christians (a group who don't _really_ exist in meaningful force in most developed countries, but who are quite politically powerful in the US).

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

#934

Post by goopypoop »

crimsoneer wrote: post #91
dottjt wrote: post #48

This might be a dumb question, but is it possible for the UK government to ban VPN usage within the UK?

I mean, it's a sovereign state. The government can legislate for the sky to be purple if it wants to (though obviously that won't affect actual reality).

there are five lights

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

#935

Post by NoGravitas »

kulahan wrote: post #927
NoGravitas wrote: post #925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, the youngs in the US seem to be much less into sex and drugs than previous generations. The stuff we got up to as GenX youth are legitimately shocking to our children.

I've seen nothing to state that sexual activity is down. Unplanned pregnancies maybe, but that's not the same thing. Do you have a source for this? I could be convinced pretty easily, it just sounds wrong to me.

Look at this article - not so much for the article itself, scroll down for the CDC and NIH data it links to.

"While generalizing about tens of millions of people is always difficult, a series of studies in recent years have reported that teens since the tail end of the millennial generation trend towards being less sexually active; they launch their sex lives later and have fewer sex partners than earlier generations."

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

#936

Post by anal_reactor »

faxmeyourcode wrote: post #902

Every day preteen boys around the world are destroying their premature brains by watching stuff that should be 18+ by simply clicking a single button that says "I am over 18". They form lifelong addictions that stunt their emotional and developmental growth at the click of one button. Many of these kids are never the same after their innocence is stripped. You can blame the parents for allowing them unfettered access…

> They form lifelong addictions that stunt their emotional and developmental growth at the click of one button. Many of these kids are never the same after their innocence is stripped.

[citation needed]

> What is the solution here?

The kids who grew up on violent games and unlimited free internet porn are adults now. We're fine. I don't understand what's all the ruckus about.

Unless the real issue is that people are noticing certain societal changes that are very difficult to combat so the politicians blame porn because otherwise they'd have to admit that they have no solutions to more pressing problems. Please note how suddenly the housing crisis, vote manipulation, inequality, fucked job market, mental health crisis, genocide in Gaza, war in Ukraine, loneliness epidemic, unchecked immigration, phone addiction all became irrelevant side topics because right now we're laser focused on making sure that boys going through puberty won't see a naked titty. Truly a clown world we live in.

I went through puberty in the golden age of internet porn. After widespread high-speed internet became a thing, but before we started algorithmically monetizing every second of people's attention. I'm so happy of that. I still have my collection of porn I downloaded as a horny teenager.

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

#937

Post by cindyllm »

anal_reactor wrote: post #936
faxmeyourcode wrote: post #902

Every day preteen boys around the world are destroying their premature brains by watching stuff that should be 18+ by simply clicking a single button that says "I am over 18". They form lifelong addictions that stunt their emotional and developmental growth at the click of one button. Many of these kids are never the same after their innocence is stripped. You can blame the parents for allowing them unfettered access…

> They form lifelong addictions that stunt their emotional and developmental growth at the click of one button. Many of these kids are never the same after their innocence is stripped. [citation needed] > What is the solution here? The kids who grew up on violent games and unlimited free internet porn are adults now. We're fine. I don't understand what's all the ruckus about. Unless the real issue is that people are…

[dead]

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

#938

Post by ImJamal »

kelnos wrote: post #919
mattmaroon wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, I think not giving 10 year olds unlimited access to porn is a deep enough reason. It is a legitimate societal harm.

Ok, so don't give your kids access to porn. You can figure out a way to do that without requiring age verification for adults on all sorts of sites. More pearl-clutching "think of the children" nonsense.

If your kid has a friend how are you going to stop your kid from getting access to porn at their friend's house?

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

#939

Post by jtuple »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #806
Aurornis wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With in-person access it’s easy to do two things: 1. Verify the ID without storing it in your system. Someone just looks at it. 2. Visually confirm that the photo on the ID matches the person entering the building. Neither of these apply online. Has everyone forgotten how kids operate? They’re not clueless. They’re going to realize that they don’t need to submit their ID . They just need to submit someone’s ID. At fi…

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.

The Internet itself is the loophole in this analogy.

Minors shouldn't have unfettered + unsupervised access to the Internet, that's the solution.

The open Internet isn't a kid friendly place, isn't meant to be, and won't be no matter how many laws you pass.

Children grow up to become adults, and spend most of their lives as adults. It's important to weigh the lifetime cost of safety laws.

A child with unfettered access to the Internet at say 8 years (IMO, way too young should be 15+) is only protected for 10 years. Then goes on to spend ~60 years negatively impacted, fighting ever growing censorship and risking extortion/blackmail when data leaks. It just doesn't seem worth it in this case.

I'd much rather laws mandate special child-safe phones/laptops that could only access a subset of the Internet, rather than forcing every website/app to collect PII and inconsistently enforce age verification for all visitors for all time.

And all of this is besides the point anyway. Social media and cyberbullying are the real threats to minors online. Porn access isn't good, but it's not causing suicides and mental health crises left and right.

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

#940

Post by Braxton1980 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #818
JohnFen wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the commenter said "in the US".

I guess I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that Americans who want age verification laws have some entirely different motivation than people in other countries who want age verification laws.

Why?
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