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I got scared reading this headline, and then realized this is the UK only. I really hope other countries don't copy the UK's draconian and Orwellian technology

I got scared reading this headline, and then realized this is the UK only. I really hope other countries don't copy the UK's draconian and Orwellian technology practices. Anonymity is a cyberspace birthright. I really don't want my dearest thoughts attached to my legal name forever. With enough digging you could probably unearth my real name, but policy like this just makes it trivial to do. The cyberspace ideal is to make it hard for people to know the person behind a piece of text online. The friction of unearthing a real identity needs to be enshrined in Internet Law. Make law enforcement do the extra work of unmasking identities. We can't make it easy for them.

Mindwipe 5y ago
The (insane) UK trade industry body for Age Verification providers believes every site on the internet should be forced to only carry content suitable for under 13s, or should block all access from VPNs in case anyone from the UK is using them. They also came out with the absolutely golden statement this week that it's not too bad that this would put vulnerable people in authoritarian countries at risk, because all we had to do was collapse the governments of Russia, China, much of Africa, Poland, Iran, sizable chunks of the Middle East etc etc. Problem solved!
- mjevans 5y ago
  Why can't sites suitable FOR children opt in to saying they are, and then really prosecuting any website that makes this claim but is false? Then use already built in platform controls to restrict accounts to these 'safe' sites. Just assume everything is unsafe by default, and also free and unrated by default.
dazc 5y ago
Your amazon account is likely already attached to your identity and I'm sure your google account and ip data could very easilly be used to pin point who you are. I'm not really disagreeing with you, in principal, just pointing out that this ship has already sailed for must of us.
- logifail 5y ago
  > Your amazon account is likely already attached to your identity [..] One Amazon account? I'm sure I must have had at least a couple of dozen. One free Prime trial on each one... <cough> I hope we're not assuming that each real-life identity only has access to one email address...

Mindwipe 5y ago

The (insane) UK trade industry body for Age Verification providers believes every site on the internet should be forced to only carry content suitable for under 13s, or should block all access from VPNs in case anyone from the UK is using them. They also came out with the absolutely golden statement this week that it's not too bad that this would put vulnerable people in authoritarian countries at risk, because all we had to do was collapse the governments of Russia, China, much of Africa, Poland, Iran, sizable chunks of the Middle East etc etc. Problem solved!

mjevans 5y ago
Why can't sites suitable FOR children opt in to saying they are, and then really prosecuting any website that makes this claim but is false? Then use already built in platform controls to restrict accounts to these 'safe' sites. Just assume everything is unsafe by default, and also free and unrated by default.

dazc 5y ago

Your amazon account is likely already attached to your identity and I'm sure your google account and ip data could very easilly be used to pin point who you are. I'm not really disagreeing with you, in principal, just pointing out that this ship has already sailed for must of us.

logifail 5y ago
> Your amazon account is likely already attached to your identity [..] One Amazon account? I'm sure I must have had at least a couple of dozen. One free Prime trial on each one... <cough> I hope we're not assuming that each real-life identity only has access to one email address...