Summary
Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, all websites hosting pornography, including social media platforms, must implement “robust” age verification methods, such as photo ID or credit card checks, for UK users by July.
Regulator Ofcom claims this is to prevent children from accessing explicit content, as research shows many are exposed as young as nine.
Critics, including privacy groups and porn sites, warn the measures could drive users to less-regulated parts of the internet, raising safety and privacy concerns.
Remember when the Snowden revelations came out?
Not only it showed that the UK was even more intrusive in their surveillance of their own citiziens than the US, but after those revelations, whilst the US walked back on some of the surveillance, the Government of the UK simply retroactivelly legalized all of it, the editor at The Guardian who published the Snowden revelations got kicked out and the entire British Press went quiet about it since then.
The chances of this being genuinelly about protecting children rather than about facilitating the identification of British internet users by the GCHQ, are pretty much zero.
Personally I lived in the UK back when the Snowden revelations came out, so switched to being behind an always on VPN and since then never lost that habit. (And yeah, it’s of course not a foolproof mechanism, but it sure makes it way harder to be caught in the broad trawling done by the surveillance apparatus, plus it’s also pretty useful for “sailing the high seas”)
My problem with all this nonsense is that it doesn’t actually solve the problem, while causing many more. You’d need to fundamentally rethink the basic design of the technology if you were to actually prevent children from accessing sexual material with it. That’s something they don’t want to do, however, presumably because they’re addicted to the power it offers them to spy on everyone, and exploit the population for profit.
We’re in this mess right now because the one absolute truth preempting every other decision made by those who wield power is that the solution must first increase their power. Literally everything else is an afterthought.
I agree, the country is delving deeper into authoritarianism by each second. The children and minors is just another exploitable class to them.
Oh it does.
Kids have access to phones and data. No matter how good my DNS is, means fuck all if my son can use his data (if he was old enough to have phone) and browse, under UK, he can’t easily access the most common porn sites without verifying.
As open and pro porn internet social bubble might be. I’m not okay with my son gaining access to it easily and too early.
At times, I wish there were more adults and parents online to counter the sea of basically male teenagers pushing what they think isright. And I know I’ll get a “I’m a parent of 3, porn is healthy for them!” Type of response… And that’s irrelevant. We all are raising a human being and we all have different morals and ideas. There’s zero chance I’ll consciously allow a loophole before he turns 12.
Your personal morals should not be the basis of laws that invade the privacy of every last person in the country, including your sons. Don’t you think that educating your son on sex, porn and reasonable usage (depending on age) would be an approach that would foster an atmosphere of trust and responsibility in the relationship between you and your child, making a law unnecessary? The way you seem to handle it just a) makes most kids curios and b) will make kids just hide their behaviour (and they will be seeing stuff, since most kids gain access in one way or another, and they share proudly for clout). Don’t forget that the best liars come from very strict homes.
Would this be an appropriate cultural moment to pimp FUTO ID or something similar for (I think?) legitimate human online verification?
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Does this mean Brits need to through their bank to get a wank?
What is it with western countries thinking they can bureaucracy their way through any issue.
This won’t stop anything. Won’t even slow it down. Just teach people how to navigate the net better.
Remember to apply this to 4chan, UK.
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uses vpn, lies about age and manages to access porn site, despite claims otherwise
Mission failed successfully
Majority of people are like that Hank Hill meme about jpegs, they don’t know what the hell a VPN is.
I’m sure nobody will instantly search “how to bypass porn check UK”
Its estimated that this will stop underage people accessing porn for at least 30 seconds while they download tor browser
Right? You can’t stop the porn and these barriers is only to create an artificial market.
But whatever. The more people become anonymous on the internet, the better.
I kinda of wonder if this is a way to try putting the sites out of business. In the US they just don’t bother working in the various states with laws like this.
In the case of Texas and places like that, age verification laws are about being able to call anything they want (like LGBT+ content) “pornographic.” Texas doesn’t care if it works.
Interestingly, Pornhub actually stayed in my state, Louisiana, because — according to their Supreme Court lawyers, yesterday — we have digital IDs and it was apparently trivial to do the checks via some sort of API. Texans would have to upload a photo of their driver’s license or something and there’s major privacy issues.
Also, Louisiana’s law didn’t work. Pornhub, which wants to be mainstream, does ID checks but sketchier sites in other countries don’t. It probably just caused more teens to get malware or be exposed to truly objectionable content (like CSAM).
Honestly I never understood this. I grew up with the internet so I’ve always had access to porn from a young age (If anything it was even easier back than). And pretty much everyone that’s 35 years or younger did as well and I’d say generally we all turned out fine. At least not any worse off than any other generation. And honestly the only negative side effect it had on me was having unrealistic expectations the first time I actually had sex.
Every once in a while I hear boomers waxing poetic about the wholesome days of old nudie mags.
Well, I happen know the boomer’s own parents were plenty outraged by them, actually. And, have you ever read one of those? The copy is pretty damn disrespectful about the women appearing therein, as were the men running the show.
It makes a lot more sense when you look at it in context, particularly in regards to trans and all LGBTQ+ people. These transphobic governments consider simply existing as trans to be pornographic, so they are trying to block access to educational information on us, while also compiling a list of anyone who does. It’s the exact same shit America is trying to do with KOSA
Okay chief. How bout you verify the ID’S of UK politicians who visit Asia for kids?
