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The VPN panic is only getting started
- NaomiLehman 11mo agohow are kids paying for VPNs? /s we really are living in a dumb timeline
- cebert 11mo agoIt’s for the kids…
- alwa 11mo agohttps://archive.is/PJapz https://archive.is/PJapz
- rmunn 11mo agoLawmakers making laws about technical matters don't realize that they don't understand those technical matters well enough to make intelligent laws about them. Shocking! Unprecedented! Film at 11!
- intalentive 11mo agoIt’s hard to control the narrative when people can say what they want on the internet, anonymously, without being punished for it.
- therein 11mo agoWhy do you want people punished for saying things? I guess maybe this was sarcasm. If so, carry on good sir.
- cebert 11mo ago> Why do you want people punished for saying things? I am not the OP, but I interpreted them as suggesting this serves as a good form of censorship while advertised as improving child safety.
- denkmoon 11mo agoRather, they are saying governments want to control the narrative and anonymous speech impedes that.
- Defletter 11mo agoNot OP but while I don't seek "punishment", I do seek accountability. I know that might seem like a flowery synonym at best, or an amorphous piece of jargon at worst, but if we are to treat online spaces as public forums, we need to structure these spaces like public forums, which means having consequences for abject lies. The "but who decides" response is a thought-terminating cliche that we need to collectively move past. Until we stop letting the perfect get in the way of the good enough, we will continue to let bad actors dictate the public understanding of technological issues, and of issues more generally (eg: antivax).
- ls612 11mo agoThe trump administration in the US also frames its crackdown on civil society in terms of "accountability for lies". But I guess its fine when your side does it.
- Defletter 11mo agoAnd here is Exhibit A of those responsible for our current state of affairs
- lisbbb 11mo agoI don't see Trump doing this or his Administration. For the first time in years I'm actually not worried about the FBI and what dastardly political maneuverings they are up to. The CIA is still probably pretty bad. Yes, there are a lot of Republicans who are neo-authoritarians who need to be shut down before they ruin open and free society for a pipe dream. It's like you can't win no matter which party is running things because there are always the freaky lunatics who want to limit your freedoms, expand government, and cover for their own horrible misdeeds.
- esseph 11mo agoDHS is the one currently expanding its collective intelligence reach into becoming the CIA+FBI for americans.
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- pksebben 11mo agoIt'll be alright. We've dealt with manic authoritarians who dream of planetary control before. Just another quick world war and the development of an even more sinister superweapon and we'll be right back to thinking in sane, evenhanded terms. Or dead. Or, you know, we could huck our failed systems out with the trash instead. Reinvent democracy to be more direct and flexible. Could be nice.
- Ferret7446 11mo ago"I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Keir Starmer. He promised you order. He promised you peace. And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent."
- anal_reactor 11mo agoThat's not exactly true. Social engineering at scale is becoming better and better. You don't need to remove dangerous opinions, you simply need to make sure nobody cares about them. And the fun thing is, most people say that they support freedom of speech, but when they see an opinion they dislike, they say the opinion should be blocked. This is why all the laws restricting freedom of speech pass without major issues.
- aydyn 11mo agoThis honestly so pathetic, you have to consider that bongs arent even people anymore.
- SanjayMehta 11mo agoVPNs were the target from the beginning. Whenever a politician says "think of the children," it's the beginning of the wedge strategy.
- stuaxo 11mo agoThat implies a plan, its more lurch from one thing to the next expedient thing.
- Spivak 11mo agoThe money quote is that it's not at all clear whether the sudden VPN usage is from kids or from adults to (I think rightfully) don't want to hand over their government id or their CC to random websites. Because yeah, fuck that shit. The presumption should be that all content on the internet is for adults. If you want your site to be child friendly you can opt into a higher standard of moderation. How did we go from the internet is for porn to this?!
- pksebben 11mo agoIf I were of the mind that children are delicate little flowers that must be protected from everything in the world lest they shatter like a fancy vase (and I am not), this is not the plan I would be pushing. There's no way this path leads to better protection for kids. You want to sequester children from the 'harms' of the internet? You have to do more work - create a .kids TLD and build browsers and websites for that. Make a smartphone that has the protections baked into the kernel (and works fine for everything else a phone must be so parents actually buy them). Attempting to graft child protection into the existing ecosystem is attempting to build a tower on top of a swamp. It simply isn't happening. Unless (and I think we all see this) the goal isn't to build the tower, but to convince people to pave the swamp. The 'think of the kids' argument is also kind of dumb at face value. So what, like at 18 you're magically gifted with the ability to understand and manage the hard edges of the world? How on earth are you supposed to develop that understanding in a vacuum? I think we're not giving kids enough credit, frankly. Each generation seems to develop a more nuanced and complex view of the world than the generations previous (which makes sense, they learned with better tech).
- WarOnPrivacy 11mo agoThe UK government is facing calls to restrict children’s access to VPNs. VPNs aren't capable of harming kids. They aren't content and even the usual imagined harms can't be caused by a VPN. The Gov's entire argument seems to be 'We aren't getting our way". Imagine if Gov officials cared about Gov officials trading law for favors - like they do about popular hysteria.
- pksebben 11mo agoWho is making these calls?
- WarOnPrivacy 11mo agoAttacks on tech that protect speech tend to come from political interests. Attacks on tech that protect privacy often come from law enforcement. The actual goals are always to maximize control over the public while Gov officials and their allies avoid accountability.
- lisbbb 11mo agoIn my opinion, the government never had the authority to restrict access to online content in the first place. That authority was seized from us and more and more countries are falling into the black hole of censorship. It's the Satanic Panic all over again.
- Snakes3727 11mo agoIt baffles me that parents have become so lazy they don't even want to monitor what their kid does anymore online, and instead expect the government to do all the work. I remember when my daughter wanted to play Roblox with some friends I sure as shit did my best to monitor and lock down that horrible thing. Same with just general internet monitoring. Whenever she wants to play some game or something I research it. I have sat down with her countless times and yeah she has broken my trust a few times and she looses access to the internet.
- CJefferson 11mo agoThe world doesn’t consider it reasonable for businesses to sell beer to kids, and expect us all to constantly follow our kids around to make sure they don’t get beer. Bars don’t get to say ‘woops, we got thousands of 9 year olds drunk, their parents should keep an eye on them’”. And at this point, most kids, most people, spend more time online than outside walking around
- g-b-r 11mo ago> Bars don’t get to say ‘woops, we got thousands of 9 year olds drunk, their parents should keep an eye on them’”. Because there's no whatsoever downside in requiring bars to not serve children (if we assume that it's just to not give alcohol to children); online age checks instead have very big negative consequences for the whole populace.
- pram 11mo agoTBF my boomer parents didn't monitor a single thing I did on the internet, so I kinda doubt it's some unique failure of contemporary parents.
- jen729w 11mo agoBut was this in the late 90s/early 00s? I mean … it was kinda different then, no? I - 49 - also had boomer parents who didn't monitor my internet back then. I really don't think it can be compared to today.
- macinjosh 11mo agopeople pay to read The Verge?
- g-b-r 11mo agoor they use archive.is
- jswelker 11mo agoOn the one hand, fuck creepy government overreach. On the other hand, fuck scummy porn and social media platforms. Can we get rid of both? Maybe we can have some kind of Hamlet-esque ending where they all die in the duel.
- the_af 11mo ago> fuck scummy porn It usually does involve fucking, yes. "Rid of both"? This is against all kinds of porn, sexy stuff, erotica, and also unsexy things considered not suitable for teens. It has nothing to do with "scummy", even honest to goodness porn is affected. And I'm sure you can see grownups don't necessarily want to be tied to specific porn watching habits (multiple scenarios for why this is, but all can be chalked up to "human nature").
- lisbbb 11mo agoI'm not troubled by porn or my kids seeing it. If anything, I advocate healthy sex lives for my kids once they are of age because there is some kind of massive Puritanism push going on that looks to be the end of the human race--look how they are destroying the common bonds of love and intimacy using technology to demolish our ability to relate to one another. Don't think it's happening? Look around you--people are more and more isolated and miserable and fearful of making contact, especially intimate contact, for fear of accusations of r-a-p-e or assault or whatever. Of course I don't want predators finding my kids online and using the Internet to get to them, but that's where actual parenting comes in--teaching kids what to watch out for and to make smart choices. It's just that I don't believe we can bubble wrap everything and still have a functioning civilization on the other end. It will fail and fall down, all due to good intentions.
- the_af 11mo agoWe are in agreement. I'm arguing this isn't about "scummy porn". It's about censorship in general, but when it's about porn it's about all sorts of porn or sexy/naughty content. And it's wrong to want to restrict access to that. What's wrong with sexy? Everyone seems afraid to even talk about it. It's safer to talk about other things like free speech. But it's ok to watch porn made legally between consenting adults. And as for teens watching it, most of us old enough had access to naughty magazines back then, and it didn't mess us up. The moral panic is unwarranted is my point.
- zarzavat 11mo agoWhat is the best way to harden the internet against these imbeciles?
- pksebben 11mo agoAntitrust. Smaller more distributed ISPs. Or internet backbone alternatives. Household backyard microwave repeater mesh networks? Residential wifi meshes? I'm only indulging in sci fi because I don't have a good answer either. I do hate being dependent on systems with few points of failure.
- Refreeze5224 11mo agoTake the control of its direction away from companies like Google, which double as government access points to mass surveillance, for one.
- irilesscent 11mo agoTOR and the torweb
- GaryBluto 11mo agoHow much more will it take before people resort to direct action against the government? It's been shown time and time again that once stuff like this has been done that the government will never let it be undone.
- the_af 11mo agoDirect action against a government is usually taken when the economy crashes, families cannot make ends meet, there's no food on the table, etc. It won't happen over VPN restrictions. I'd like people to protest these draconian measures, but realistically, outside the tech bubble of HN, this is not foremost on people's minds.
- lisbbb 11mo agoIt's more likely we get some kind of new tech that works even better than a VPN but is totally deniable as far as it being used at all. A more stealthy VPN. I have advocated for Internet privacy for decades now, mostly to deaf ears. We're finally seeing some of the affects of neglecting our privacy. The little guy can win with technology and governments are terrified of that.
- iamnothere 11mo agoThere are people working on systems to create networks without using the internet at all. They work pretty well. It may be slow compared to the internet, but text is fine for most things anyway. It will be good enough for scrappy rebels.
- mrtesthah 11mo agoSo when do we get to the Great Firewall of the UK?
- protocolture 11mo agoEnjoy the internet without poms, and hope trump does the same thing?
- k310 11mo agoFirst websites, then VPN's, and then keywords ... WAIT! SCRATCH THAT! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore Why not just build spyware into every computer? WAIT! SCRATCH THAT! https://copilot.microsoft.com/ https://copilot.microsoft.com/ So here's the solution. AGO: Artificial General Orgasmatron. Be working on it. Since it's hardware, parents can restrict access at the source. Age verification built-in? Well, since it knows your secret desires in order to work, it obviously knows your age. One in every home. Hallucinations? It works entirely through hallucinations. Since the user builds the fantasy bank (Large Lust Model, or LLM) there's no need for an internet connection.
- iamnothere 11mo agoI guess we’ll need to run Snowflake bridges for the UK soon, as well. What’s next, will Bloody Sunday get the Tiananmen treatment?
- nirui 11mo agoYou know, there's prison and capital punishment, and yet people still commit crimes. There's a point you have just give up protecting, otherwise you're hurting yourself, just like an over-reacting immune system killing the host. What if the kid just rent a foreign VPS, put Windows on it, enable RDP, and then just "gooning" away on that? UK is going to ban all VPS providers too? Then what if it's "just a foreign friend's computer"? Ban all foreign IPs? Beside that, I never believed that what UK's doing is for protecting the children, otherwise where are so many other more important things to do, for example, UK can support low income families so their kids won't go hunger, UK can also provide social housings for young people so they know they have a roof to safely sleep under. None of that, but porn and VPN, wow, that's the enemy number one, kids must be protected from those things.
- barrkel 11mo agoIt's weird how this seems to be coming everywhere all at once. Is it just politician FOMO, when they see someone trying this somewhere they feel they need to try it too? It feels like a concerted push to deanonymize the web.
- tim333 11mo agoAs a Brit I'm going to protest if they try blocking VPNs. I was kind of ok with age checks for porn etc. but if kids are together enough to use VPNs then I guess leave them to it.