As sure as night follows day.

  • thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe
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    4 days ago

    Guys don’t get sucked into the misdirecting packing - this is nothing to do with keeping children safe. Better parental effort isn’t going to make this UK govt stop the initiative because it has absolutely nothing to do with child safety.

    This is about authoritarian tracking of everything a UK citizen does and says online - that’s why the careful quote is about it being ok for adults to have VPN not kids.

    You know how they do that ? They make it necessary to show ID to have a VPN so then they can track what the adults are doing on a VPN.

    The “think of the children” pearl clutching is a sham and a scam

    • Leon@pawb.social
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      4 days ago

      It’s never ever been about the children. Every time someone uses children as a meat shield for their arguments it’s because arguing against it is hard.

      “We need to execute all criminals to protect the children!l”
      “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
      “What? You’d support a rapist pedophile over an innocent child? You support pedos??”

    • tankplanker@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yup, do you have a license to use that VPN bruv?

      I have been saying this is the long term aim of this style of legislation for years.

      They knew when they implemented IPA back in 2016 that VPNs would be an ongoing problem and have been chipping away at the perception of them since then.

        • tankplanker@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Till they come after you for doing so.

          The way it will work is a public crackdown on a couple of the big providers, then a few high profile cases where unlicensed VPN usage will be a tacked on offense with additional penalties for those getting investigated.

          Its the same with the identity checks now, big porn sites and the like have them or will have them very soon, some small scale stuff does not and might get away with not implementing it. Using such small scale sites then becomes grounds for further investigation if you get swept up with it later.

          These things are never about 100% compliance, there will always be those who can work around it. However working around it will in itself become an offense and grounds for further investigation.

  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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    4 days ago

    It’d not about children, and it’s not about parents.

    When you phrase this as anything but being about control you’re playing their game.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    3 days ago

    We have a government dumb enough that they might actually try and ban VPNs. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to buy enough popcorn for this.

    I have to use six different VPNs for my job, I’d love to see them try and craft a law that bands VPNs at the same time as still allowing business to take place.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        3 days ago

        It’s pretty common.

        I have six different clients at the moment that requires me to sign into six different systems each one has to have its own VPN because they’re different companies. Oh and actually there’s a 7th VPN if I want to do anything with my schedule because I don’t work in an office

  • flamingos-cant (hopepunk arc)@feddit.uk
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    4 days ago

    Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: “Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it’s absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that’s one of my major recommendations.”

    She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs “to implement highly effective age assurances to stop underage users from accessing pornography.”

    Stop trying to enforce this at the service level, for God’s sake. What are you going to do when people switch to stuff like Tor?* ‘Online safety regulation pushes kids to that dark web’ will be a fire headline in a couple of months/years.

    * I remember seeing someone link to something here they described as ‘Tor for apps’ that I can’t find, does anyone have that at hand?

    The report also found more children are stumbling across pornography accidentally, with some of the 16 to 21-year-olds surveyed saying they had viewed it “aged six or younger”.

    I’m sorry, but this is genuinely a failure of parents. Like, I’m not normally one to trot out the ‘parents should helicopter their children’ defence against regulation of social media, but giving a bloody six year old not-monitored-enough access to the internet is on the parent.

    Also, I’d take this all a lot more seriously if parents actually used the tools already available to them:

    We actually already have measures to deal with this: back in 2011 the government worked with ISPs (internet service providers) to come up with a Code of Practice on implementing ‘parental controls’ for all new customers. In 2013 this was adopted by all the major players. So when you (an adult – because you have to be over 18 to do this) register for an internet connection, you are offered adult content filtering by default. You can tweak this, if you like, for example you can decide you’re happy for your family to access social media sites but not pornography. Or if you don’t anticipate any children using your connection, you can opt out of adult filters altogether. Research conducted in 2022, however, found that although 61% of parents were aware of these filters, only 27% actually used them. Again, sing it with me: lol.

    Back to the BBC article.

    More than half of respondents to the survey had viewed strangulation as children, prompting Dame Rachel to also ask the government to ban depictions of it.

    This is an implicit admission that age verification is ineffective. If it was, then children wouldn’t see it and then we wouldn’t need to ban it.

    • galmuth@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      It’s insane - I don’t give unrestricted internet access (certainly no social media) to my 9 year old, let alone a 6 year old!

      Parent education is needed badly!

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        3 days ago

        It’s because of the idiots that proudly announce that they “don’t do computers”. Refusing to understand even at a fundamental level the most basic parts of computing is like refusing to learn to read, it’s just not acceptable in modern life.

      • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
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        4 days ago

        Yep. But these authoritarians do not think you should have a choice. Because some parents fail. They will use the claim to control all internet.

        It is no accident that the solution is the force data sharing with the least trusted companies when it comes to data.

        Just as smart folks choosing to pay VPN as more trusted then sharing data with random porn sites scares the crap out of them.

        It’s got little to do with protecting anyone. Def not your children.

    • Denjin@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      It’s easier to police the users than it is to get social media companies to actually do the literal minimum amount of work to protect children. Plus it has the added benefit of greatly expanding the surveillance infrastructure so they can clamp down on those pesky 80 year old nuns who oppose genocide.

    • Naich@lemmings.worldOP
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      4 days ago

      The weird thing is that I’ve been ogling internet porn since the internet was invented, and I have never seen any strangulation porn ever. This sort of shit you have to hunt down. You certainly don’t “stumble across” it.

    • Kairos@lemmy.today
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      4 days ago

      Tor is U.S. jurisdiction kinda so it can’t really be blocked or regulated.

      People like me have been screaming for the past year or two that all these laws do is push children and other people onto more seedy sites.

        • Kairos@lemmy.today
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          4 days ago

          “Kinda” as in its maintained by a U.S. nonprofit EFF. The U.S. government also made it but I don’t think the current “administration” would be rational about not fucking with it.

          • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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            4 days ago

            Thats cool and all but its completely irrelevant to the operation of the Tor network. Even if the EFF was wiped out of existence, the Tor network would keep running and the code would simply be forked and development would continue…

  • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk
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    4 days ago

    All devices have parental controls which can be enabled. If watching porn is bad for a child’s mental health and parents are allowing their children to use a device they have neglected to enable those controls on, how can that be considered to be anything other than child neglect? Why put the onus on providers when even the most non tech savvy parent could spend a few hours learning to stop their kids from encountering it in the first place? This is all going to go very wrong very soon.

  • FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io
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    4 days ago

    Good luck with that, maybe parents should step the fuck up and start parenting instead of fucking up the Internet?

    • Riskable@programming.dev
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      4 days ago

      But think of all those children who lost their lives because they saw people having sex on the Internet!

      The ones that survived are scared for life! Missing limbs, eyes blinded, forever unable to work. They’ll be begging on the streets!

      Right?

    • Paddzr@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Is there any data to support this? Are parents not parenting or is gov using “for the children” 100th time as an excuse?

  • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    Can we focus one moment on why the fuck a 6 years-old kid could watch porn?

    What the hell was a 6yo kid doing with an unsupervised internet device? How about you don’t give your 6yo kid an internet device if you can’t (or don’t want to) parent them?

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        3 days ago

        Even then it’s possible to lock the iPad down. You can just disable internet access, or you can be more subtle and just block certain sites. You can put YouTube into kids mode, lock the iPad to the YouTube app and stop worrying about it.

        It requires 30 seconds of parenting and then you can go back to ignoring your child. But they can’t even be bothered to do that bare minimum of effort.

  • smegger@aussie.zone
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    4 days ago

    How about… Supervise your children’s use of technology? Don’t give them unrestricted devices? The government can’t do anything to stop a motivated intelligent kid, but parents can (to a greater degree at least)

    • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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      I’m sorry, are you suggesting I actually parent my children? Really? Have you seen them? 😂

      No no, much better to get the government to do this for me. All I care about is sourdough and designer dogs.

  • motor6044@programming.dev
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    4 days ago

    So now they’re moving to restrict even the technology minors could use.

    Since they’ll need to know the age of anyone using a VPN, that means mandatory ID checks for everyone who connects.

    What a brilliant mindset these politicians have. Welcome to the age of dictatorship, censorship, and neo-fascism.

  • AlexLost@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    When is it the parents responsibility to care and look after a child? Just admit you want to look in my closet. Just admit it and we would all feel better about it because the truth would be out there.

  • r00ty@kbin.life
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    4 days ago

    Age verification on VPNs. Hmm, collecting the ID of people that want to hide their identity. Seems about right.

  • Demigodrick@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    Honestly, country is gripped by clowns.

    Would not be at all surprised to find the commissioner has shares or a financial interest in Age Verification companies.