Off Topic And Now for Something Completely Different

The Online Safety Act came into effect today. All adult content on the internet accessed by a UK-based ISP will require age verification either through a credit card or a digital ID. The simple workaround is to use a VPN set to another country which would bypass the checks. 4chan has already decided not to comply with the UK’s legislation and age verification due to privacy concerns and have voluntarily blocked users with UK ISPs from accessing the site. 4chan also blacklists most VPNs due to bots and spam.

I think this will lead to more people in the UK learning about and using VPNs which will inevitably make the Act fairly useless in its intended aim of ‘protecting children from harmful content’. Once that becomes clear, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the government introduces legislation to regulate VPNs or force backdoor access to user logs, putting the UK in good company with countries like Iran and Belarus.

 

VPN blockers are usually implemented voluntarily by companies for their own interest. The government mandating that all sites covered by the Online Safety Act have to implement VPN blockers is another thing entirely and would require an amendment to the existing act. If passed, the UK would get a reputation as a pariah state when it comes to online tech.

The Online Safety Act was created by a bunch of tech-illiterate Boomer MPs anyway. Civil servants know all too well that it’s a load of bollocks.

 

That's OK, a scan of your licence is available online

 

What's the World coming to when you've got to book in and identify yourself before you polish your rocket?

Online Safety Act...Pahhhhh!

 

Bring back Hofbrahaus

 

the uk has some really weird dictator stuff especially with online things

 

I'm a 38 year old Indian dude from Leicester on reddit.

 

That's a really poor take on genocide. After 7/11 the British government didn't bomb the **** out of Leeds and impose a siege to starve women and children.

I ****ing hate Hezbollah they are murdering terrorists. However, the answer to their appalling acts of terrorism is not genocide at a level not seen in EMEA since.......the 1940s

I've done 4 active tours in war zones (plus more in conflict zones) for the British Army and I'm proud to say I never once killed a civilian trying to get a meal for their family.

If you have any compassion in your soul at all you need to see that whatever bad **** their leaders have done (and its a lot), kids starving to death is sickening.

 

It does. It’s non-partisan too. Every party loves to moralise about something and ban it.

 

well said. It’s horrific the world is watching on & doing **** all…
It’s kinda ironic the Jews the victims of the concentration camps to creating their own.
The UN or whoever needs to act

 

I train older teenagers and early twenties athletics and håndball, of both genders, and as a by-product, often end up as a problem-solver/advisor/father-figure/therapist... Whatever word I can think of that doesn't sound pretentious - it's normally an adult figure who isn't a family member, but in a position to help or gently advise.

I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that online pornography has ****ed up much of that generation more than any drug, alcohol, politics etc. I've heard from boys/men just out their teens who can't have sex without taking Viagra, those who can't work out if they're gay or straight because they need their mates in the room with them when they have sex with their girlfriend, girls who are expected to take part in group sex and rape/violence fantasies, girls with rectal damage needing surgery, straight youths needing transexual pornography to get off and much much more.

It's completely off the scale ****ed and across all strata of society.. it's poisoning kids from the day they get access to the internet. I know I'm massively in the minority, but the sooner that crap is banned and successfully prohibited (if it ever is) the better.

 

You won’t find me defending pornography. I find it depraved for the same reasons you do. However, the internet is too big, bigger than any country in the world, and one country attempting to regulate access to it is just limiting. Some video game subreddits have already been judged as ‘adult content’ requiring age verification. Seems like overkill. Successive British governments like banning things haphazardly instead of addressing root problems.

And people wonder why Turkish barbers are selling counterfeit cigarettes on the cheap. They do it because the demand is there.

The ‘protect the children’ line parroted by all stripes of politicians is just guff. The trot it out to justify all sorts of bollocks. None of the major parties will suggest parents need to do better because parents are the biggest voting demographic in the country so it’s easier to pass the blame elsewhere like schools, the internet etc.

 

Fair points - I don't know enough about regulation/control of the internet to know how it would or could work. I was always a libertarian and pro-freedom, although not a prolific user, until I started to hear about the psychological damage being caused about ten years ago and also that a high percentage of the women involved are abuse victims themselves, and it's somewhat repugnant to get off on the destroyed boundaries of damaged, violated ppl.

Perhaps it's too late to turn back time now and ban/wipe it, but then it's more work for parents/teachers to try and explain the downsides of usage in the limited time that kids have before they're independent. I know this is an unfashionable and minority view, so try to limit the preaching, ha.

 

I’m more concerned about threats to privacy and data from this act than anything else. Porn is the big headline from the act but the age verification and ID checks for other things like social media is more sinister. For one, a lot of the age verification and ID checks on ‘adult’ sites are being done by third-party software, many of them were started up only in the last few months. It’s a GDPR nightmare waiting to happen. Millions of people’s photo IDs and credit card information being held up to three years by shady third-party software that don’t have longstanding, credible reputations.

 

WTF!!

 

This is brilliant, well done to both boys.

 

How do you get down it? Either very slowly or very quickly...