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VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'
- huflungdung 4mo ago[dead]
- Caius-Cosades 4mo agoThe great firewall of UK.
- arrosenberg 4mo agoHadrian’s Firewall
- m00dy 4mo agoHadrian's Gate
- blululu 4mo agoFeel like there ought to be some Sinn Fein backed point to point connection in Belfast that leverages the Good Friday Agreement to get around this.
- fidotron 4mo agoIt would have to alter the voice of anyone on it to make them sound ridiculous.
- wbl 4mo agoFor yanks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%931994_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%931994_British_broa...
- dingaling 4mo agoYou omitted to mention that the Irish state broadcaster, RTE, actually implemented voice restrictions before the UK did: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0119/1217560-section-31-broadcasting-ban-censorshop-troubles/ https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0119/1217560-section-31-b...
- netfortius 4mo agoThere are few things more exciting, in relationship to attempting to restrict access to (data) communications, than a government which thinks geeks won't find ways around such. Now sit back, relax, and let's wait for the next generation of encrypted channels solution development.
- subscribed 4mo agoOh, they're in motion already. There are other countries that tried to ban VPNs for decades now, that sparked multiple great avenues of development. It's exciting to think I'll become a dissident like my parents, just because I don't want a slimy, rightwing, greasy friends of Epstein and other known abusers to ID and surveil me.
- CPLX 4mo agoPerhaps then you could at least vaguely understand the desire of people to avoid having slimy, rightwing, greasy friends of Epstein and other known abusers to ID and surveil their children. I definitely see both sides of this argument but to pretend the answers here are obvious just means people aren’t being serious. Serious harm is being caused to children and just because that’s a known cliche doesn’t make it not a real concern people have.
- TheOtherHobbes 4mo agoThe slimy, rightwing, greasy friends of Epstein own all the main political parties, the UK's mainstream media, most of the social networks, and have their fingers in the NHS. The UK hasn't been quick to deal with Epstein's associates and has a long history of either ignoring or losing critical evidence in CSA cases associated with politicians and public figures. With that background, mandatory ID makes it easier, not harder, for abusers to act with impunity and/or official protection.
- subscribed 4mo agoLook, the excuse is being made that kids are exposed to harms in online places, in general. Most famously in Roblox (that's now fixed on Roblox side first with age banding, now by sharding it into three parts), and then in socials -- but the impact of, say, Instagram where kids are preyed upon because the algorithms are promoting them to preying populace, and where Meta openly runs experiments with their mental health, knowingly pushing them into harms way, is vastly different from, say, Coverstar. Impact of abuse from Meta is well documented already, yet Meta is not punished. Kids are being radicalised by being fed toxic content, and it's also well known. Elon Musk's X was knowingly producing CSAM and non consensual nude images of real people and it took a tremendous amount of time for _anything_ to happen - and I don't see Musk on the dock yet? There are ways to automatically block almost all kids on socials. Take away DMs and comments on the posts from all unverified users and kids suddenly will be much safer. All that can be done today. The greasy friends of Epstein are running this shitshow, they're in the government (most famously PM of the UK knowingly appointed a longtime Epstein friend as the UK ambassador for the US), they've been covering Jimmy Saville abuses in the BBC, Police forces, the past government, which receives financial incentives from some of these companies to push things exactly the way they want. Most severe harm to children is caused with the tacit approval of the government and media. Sneaky access to the socials is not this. Oh, and you know what? Receipts show it's Meta behind this weird, sudden push for age checks. Meta and their $2B. So you already know something's off, or at least you should.
- kouteiheika 4mo ago> the main thing that we've done is we've commissioned additional research on this because I've not been happy with the evidence. Ah, yes, the existing research doesn't agree with our biases, so let's fund new "research" that does.
- embedding-shape 4mo agoFull context: > Ms Kendall told Nick Ferrari: “I told MPs yesterday I'm going to come back to the House with a statement on the issue of VPNs in July. There are very strong views on both sides of this. For some people, it is about privacy, and it is the ability to use that is really held strongly by people. And for others, they say they should be banned because kids are using them to get around. And so I— the main thing that we've done is we've commissioned additional research on this because I've not been happy with the evidence." Sounds like they realize there are two sides and no "clear winning argument" in either direction, that's why the additional research is needed. Sounds a bit more nuanced than what I expected based on your snippet.
- Retr0id 4mo agoWhat is there to research? Yes, VPNs can be used to circumvent geofences (and by extension, regional age restrictions). Yes, attempting to age-restrict VPNs is at odds with strong privacy guarantees. Privacy is a human right, and one which is essential for effective democracy.
- gmerc 4mo agoGood thing then that Democracy isn’t gonna defend itself.
- ranger_danger 4mo ago> What is there to research? Probably how they can best attach a license to VPN use like they're doing with TV.
- 4mo ago
- farbklang 4mo agoAt least we get to raise the next generation of IT geeks because they'll have to understand a bunch of networking basics to watch porn, and might get hooked on it. (on IT)
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- varispeed 4mo agoI am sure a contract with Palantir to find these miscreants is just around the corner.
- dgellow 4mo agoOr they will ask their AI to do that for them, learn very little about the networking stack in the process
- afroboy 4mo agoIsrael will be making kill on this, they will unleash their free VPNs to the young people like they did to Iran. UK national security will be like Suisse cheese
- rustcleaner 4mo agoTheir kompromat-gathering is first class... maybe even the best!
- emsign 4mo agoBaffling how easy companies like Meta have it with politicians. Fuck them all, I'm leaving for the woods. It's been fun with tech but now it's just so painful,
- quater321 4mo ago[dead]
- shakna 4mo agoEvery corporate I know of, uses VPNs. Especially when workers connect from home. Is the UK government really interested in going up against the majority of their business partners...?
- kdheiwns 4mo agoLaws don't apply to corporations. It'll only be used to punish individuals.
- capexandcode 4mo ago[dead]
- shakna 4mo agoHow do you tell the difference between someone working from home, and someone just at home?
- rcxdude 4mo agoIt would not be hard to write laws to restrict one use but not the other. They may be the same tech but the use-cases are quite different.
- inigyou 4mo agoIt's not about a technical capability to encapsulate packets, it's about whether people use it to bypass censorship or not.
- collabs 4mo agowhat if instead of this age gate or whatever government is doing, what if we simply said these big companies need to self police and if a child can reach their service they have to pay the child like lets say GBP 10k per instance? remove all "reasonable step" shield to hide behind. for example, a shopkeeper can't say they took "reasonable steps" if they sell alcohol to a child so why should a website be any different? if we are going to the absurdity of age-gating VPNs, at least lets make it so that there is an incentive for children to self-report
- mhluongo 4mo agoOr perhaps we should expect parents to take some responsibility for their kids' screen use?
- harel 4mo agoDon't be daft. It's not the parent's responsibility to monitor and care for their kids.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoYou expect the average parent to outwit Meta and TikTok and their teams of psychologists scheming to get their kids attention? The social media companies could have done the socially responsible thing a decade ago and avoided all this.
- mhluongo 4mo agoI expect them to give a shit, yeah. Just like they should care about what they read or watch, or who they hang out with. Don't let your kids have an internet-connected phone, or keep it locked down so they don't have parasitic apps preying on their pre-frontal immaturity until they're old enough to handle it. All of this needs to be done intentionally, of course, or it will feel like the kids are being punished. But I can't emphasize this enough... it's our job as parents to raise our kids.
- 4mo ago
- wnevets 4mo agoGood thing Brexit happened to prevent government overreach.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 4mo agoBetter then performing a social experiment on children.
- functionmouse 4mo agodon't worry they're still doing that
- subscribed 4mo agoThis is not to stop children from doing that. This is primarily to deanonymise as many people as possible, before the next steps come into force (scanning all files and messages on the every Internet - connected devices, hardware attestation of all the internet - connected devices, etc) So when the citizens inevitably start protesting against the oppression, it's easier to subdue them.
- basisword 4mo agoTbf the point was to prevent the EU 'overreach' i.e stopping us violating our own peoples human rights. We can violate them freely now. Success.
- specproc 4mo agoJust moved back to the UK after many years away, and it's creepy here. Doing the elderly under terror legislation, some crazy kangaroo court antics, a frankly sinister approach to "online safety". VPNs? The even more concerning thing is that we've got a far right party that have been leading in the polls for most of the last year. This is a very dangerous situation.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Fredkin 4mo agoWhere is the evidence for that? Though I grant they may get into power and suddenly change their mind, at the moment those parties are against digital dystopia, most likely because the centrist parties are most interested in using those tools to silence criticism of current immigration policy and other failings. -Reform UK vows to repeal ‘borderline dystopian’ Online Safety Act https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/28/reform-uk-vows-to-repeal-borderline-dystopian-online-safety-act https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/28/reform-uk-v... "Block the Introduction of Digital ID." "Repeal the Online Safety Act." https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/restore_civil_liberties https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/restore_civil_liberties And the left are also being surveilled and censored, e.g pro-palestine / anti-war / anti-capitalist groups, though the strategy used there is less censorship and more often bogging those groups down with infighting about identity issues. What seems more dangerous is letting the increasingly tyrannical centrist establishment, dead set on stagnation and "managed decline", give legitimacy to censorship tools (which will be available to future extreme governments!) rather than fixing things properly.
- flexagoon 4mo ago1. Age-gate social media 2. Children start using VPNs to bypass the ban 3. Age-gate VPNs 4. Repeat steps 2-3 Truly a masterful plan.
- inigyou 4mo agoIt's actually 1. Ban something 2. People bypass the ban 3. Ban however they're bypassing the ban 4. Goto 2
- subscribed 4mo agoDon't forget about plans to scan phones (in this iteration).
- varispeed 4mo agoThis is all about pushing Digital ID by the backdoor and building surveillance state for benefit of corporations pretending to be against it. https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/blair-and-the-billionaire/ https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/blair-and-th... https://institute.global/insights/politics-and-governance/digital-id-a-defining-step-for-britain https://institute.global/insights/politics-and-governance/di...
- big85 4mo agoUK government has been talking about digital ID for a while now. The existing verification methods are too vulnerable to cheating (fake beards, fake ID, borrow dad's credit card, etc...), so the logical next step is direct government ID numbers. The goal is to link all online activity to a unique identifier to make it easier to punish dissent.
- Kim_Bruning 4mo agoAt some point there has to be a line past which you can still get a clean network between A and B somehow. At very least for corporate, right?
- tombot 4mo agoGlad HN is getting to experience the true level of adverts on “news” sites in the UK. It really is next level.
- arbol 4mo agoAdblock??
- krapp 4mo agoThat will be illegal soon enough.
- nubinetwork 4mo agoThey can have their cookie, I'm deleting it as soon as I close my browser.
- hashiman 4mo agoIt is so funny to read. They are so stupid.
- EmbarrassedHelp 4mo agoThe moment the UK does this, politicians in other Western countries are going to start thinking that its a good idea and attempting to copy the UK.
- sowbug 4mo agoDoesn't the UK already have geo-targeted age verification infrastructure in place? A website or app could require the user to submit a live video of themselves quaffing a local beer.
- wbl 4mo agoDamnably hard to find local ales. I had to wander for hours last time I was in London to get Fullers.
- maccard 4mo agoNo. It has laws that websites must follow to serve content in the UK. It’s up to the websites to do the age verification themselves, and the majority use third party ID verification services. Reddit used an American company to do it,
- formit34 4mo ago[flagged]
- reactordev 4mo agobruhghghbmphf, the VPNs! the VPNs! can't have those! What's that good sir? You say ssh? Do not shh me sir. Oh, SSH... yes, SSH, can't have that! It's elementary, any system which one accesses MUST report to parliament. Personally Identifiable Documents for General Evaluation Of Ne'er-do-wells. We'll call it the P.I.D.G.E.O.N. network.
- inigyou 4mo agoIt's never about the technical capability of the tool. This is a mistake technologists keep making. It's about what the average person thinks it does or uses it to do.
- cassianoleal 4mo agoBan VPNs, an industry of SOCKS5 proxies will boom. Ban those, put the SOCKS5 proxy behind an SSH port-forward, and so on and so forth. Suddenly calling a Kubernetes API puts you in a secret service list somewhere.
- reactordev 4mo agoWe’ll just invent internet over WebRTC hops… wait..
- rustcleaner 4mo agoIsn't that liblyrebird/Snowflake that Orbot/Whonix/TBB use as an anticensorship gateway?
- reactordev 4mo agoFirst rule of fight club...
- inigyou 4mo agoYou seem to think they're banning OpenVPN protocol and if you just use a different protocol you can work around it. They're not, they're banning privacy.
- harel 4mo agoWhile I do support restricting social media to younger minds, the way they go about it, and the collateral damage that will result is unacceptable. For about 500ms I thought I might have found the "one thing" I agree with this government, but nope... I'm considering whether it's time to leave the UK. There is an air of hostility here towards... well everything.
- chronogram 4mo agoWhere would you go to then? European countries, Australia and American states already have implemented or are keen to implement ID requirements/tracking for websites.
- harel 4mo agoIf it was just ID, or just X or just Y, that would have been manageable. It's the barrage of action against people who are actually trying to be productive in society. Success is now penalised here. Where to go - well... There are options. Not many but they exist; south east asia (e.g. Thailand), The Channel islands, The Emirates if that's your thing. I'm sure there are more - I'm doing my due diligence on the options now. But I REALLY wish I didn't feel like I have to. I want my country to love me back like I love it, but right now it feels a bit one-sided.
- als0 4mo agoLeaving is not the hard decision. The hard decision is where to go. Do you have any suggestions?
- harel 4mo agoLeaving IS the hard decision for me. I love the UK, and I am full of gratitude to live in England. I know anywhere else will be a downgrade. See my reply above for my current list of options.
- nly 4mo agoI've been using a VPN in the UK on my laptop and phone exclusively for 20 years, and the state has been working with ISPs to make "connection records" for most of that time. On mobile a VPN isn't always effective in avoid geoblocks. Some apps are able to determine I'm in the UK and still ask for ID - reddit is one for example, if you stumble on to an adult subreddit. Using the web interface avoids this. The UK has also moved to force ISPs to block certain bittorrent search engines. The UK is not shy when it comes to invading your privacy or censoring the Internet.
- iLoveOncall 4mo ago> On mobile VPN isn't always effective in avoid geoblocks. Some apps are able to determine I'm in the UK and still ask for ID - reddit is one for example, if you stumble on to an adult subreddit. I've never had this issue (using Private Internet Access on iOS).
- bjackman 4mo agoI'm a Brit living abroad, when I visit the UK I use a Tailscale network with an exit node at my home, and yeah this always seems to work for me. Going the other way around to try and watch British TV I used to find with a normal hosted VPN services could still figure out I wasn't in the country, but now I have a Tailscale exit node at my mum's place in the UK it always works fine. So I suspect it all comes down to the IP source, probably a residential IP is the best possible case and with commercial VPNs it depends on how hard they work on isolating their IP blocks from known datacentres.
- prima-facie 4mo agoCommercial VPNs publish their exit nodes IPs online. There are services like ipinfo.io which can accurately determine if you are using a known VPN service.
- poilcn 4mo agoApps can read sim card info. Its country and whether the card is currently in roaming, you can't full them that way You would need to get your sim card out of your phone and use wifi or buy one of them foreign esim For vpns I actually found that websites that block vpns for some reasons are worse at detecting commercial vpns than when you deploy your own on vps --- Also I forgot about other things. When my phone for some unknown reason had its region set as GB, I had British ads in YouTube music
- RevEng 4mo agoFunny how quickly "won't someone think of the children" turns into mandatory government ID for private services, banning necessary and secure (and encrypted) communications systems, and locking children out of access to the de facto communication systems of the modern era. This is a privacy nightmare on all fronts and a horrible limit on freedom of speech. These kids will be learning how to drive a car, yet unable to contact their extended family over Messenger or follow news on Twitter. For everyone else, it means no anonymity or secrecy which has a chilling effect on free speech at a time when fascism is growing within democratic countries and dissidents are being imprisoned or murdered. Yes, there are some really big problems with social media, but keeping children away from it doesn't fix the problems - it just leaves them for the rest of us to deal with. Let's fix the root of the problem, starting with the recommendation algorithms that inherently polarize people by building echo chambers around them and pushing divisive content all in the name of "engagement".
- inigyou 4mo agoThat's because the tech industry never made any attempt. It's like you blocked all the good options, now you get the worst one because it's one you can't block.
- RevEng 4mo agoWhat are some better options? I honestly can't think of any way of proving someone's age other than electronic ID provided by a well trusted institution like a government. The only alternative would be removing anything possibly inappropriate for younger ages, which is historically what people fought for, but that didn't work well either, partly because plenty of adults wanted those things and partly because there's no practical way to enforce it.
- formit34 4mo ago[flagged]
- clear-octopus 4mo ago[dead]
- 4ndrewl 4mo agoSome context - Birmingham Mail is one of dozens of clickbait-driven publications owned by Reach plc. They're not a high quality source of news - they've more than decimated their journalism staff and replaced them with 'content' staff who are performance monitored on the number of clicks their articles generate. Content is syndicated in different accents across their range of papers from the national papers, The Mirror and The Daily Express down into a large number of notionally 'local' outlets. So, take it with a pinch of salt.
- basisword 4mo agoYeah I've seen similar stories a few times this week and it's always one of the dodgy regional media sites. Shame it's getting so much traction here.
- iLoveOncall 4mo agoThe article is based on a direct quote given to the BBC, which you can find the original article here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9824zvpz9po https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9824zvpz9po The link is 100% true in this case.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4mo agoIn Russia, they claimed that new measures to block websites are necessary to protect the children online. Of course, they immediately used these new capabilities to block opposition websites and sources critical of the government. Now, seeing many European governments tirelessly push for these new measures to protect the children, I'm pretty sure that the children are finally going to be safe online.
- crims0n 4mo agoIt is really disheartening to see the sentiment around privacy erode like this. Fifteen or even ten years ago this would have been unanimously and vehemently opposed, but now it is somehow up for debate?
- satvikpendem 4mo agoOpposed, yeah right. People don't care back then just as they don't now. Only small groups of technical users like us care.
- Symbiote 4mo agoThere has been 15 more years of highly motivated psychologists tuning their social media systems to create addiction, time for those who've grown up through this to become adults, foreign interference with democracy etc. Though I think banning it for children is the wrong approach. Ban the addictive and dangerous features for everyone, adults included — no more infinite scroll, and no more feeds showing content from outside social connections.
- pigpop 4mo ago> no more feeds showing content from outside social connections So, kill all news agencies and reporters I guess? or would there be a carve out for incumbents so they can cement their market share? who controls the approval list?
- drdexebtjl 4mo ago
- zrn900 4mo agoThe article below sharply summarizes why all this is a dystopian surveillance setup: > how, precisely, do you stop a fourteen-year-old from opening Instagram without first checking the age of the forty-year-old? > You don’t. You can’t. So everyone gets carded. Britain is lifting the system wholesale from Australia, where a computer first scans your face and guesses your age from your cheekbones, then, failing that, surveils you to death, studies your browsing habits and the hours you keep, and then, when the algorithm throws up its hands, simply demands your passport. https://reclaimthenet.org/starmers-social-media-ban-surveillance-state https://reclaimthenet.org/starmers-social-media-ban-surveill...
- big85 4mo ago> You don’t. You can’t. So everyone gets carded. Exactly. A little at a time. First it's adult sites, because if you need to show ID to buy alcohol, shouldn't you need ID to buy pornography? Once that's accepted, expand the sphere of control to non-adult sites too by redefining everything as 16+.
- zrn900 4mo agoI can assure you it will be much faster than that.
- ck2 4mo agoisn't the simple answer an age-limit for VPN? /s all this because they refuse to make the law just "legal parent/guardian is responsible for the child" if a parent faced fine or jail for a child having access to the internet you can be sure 90% of the children wouldn't have internet access I'm no defender of the big social/media sites but I don't see why it's their fault/problem if a minor has internet access when they aren't supposed to This all feels like the opposite goal of knowing everyone who is online everywhere Because it's not how you'd make the law, you'd wouldn't go to service by service and make it their problem, you'd make it the adult responsible for the child's problem
- ajb 4mo agoIn a way, the cack-handed way they've gone about this makes me slightly more optimistic. If we must have such a law, please let it be one which: * Creates a market for privacy tech of several million teenagers * Wastes police time chasing down social forums which kids are hosting abroad using their pocket money * Rubs the noses of the securirati in the fact that they've made it easier for terrorists to hide their comms among the thousands of teenage speakeasies This is not the 80's when comms tech required capital and man-years of engineering. Setting up forums online isn't even a high-school project.
- queeshonda 4mo ago[dead]
- isoprophlex 4mo agoOi m8! U got a fooken loicense fer dem veepee-en or wot?! The "loicense m8" memes are getting less and less funny ...
- big85 4mo agoMost VPN companies won't implement age verification, because their purpose is privacy. This is really an attempt to ban VPNs. This won't be popular when 70% of the population uses VPNs.
- dryarzeg 4mo ago> when 70% of the population uses VPNs. To be honest, unfortunately, I'm not really sure about this one.
- stevefan1999 4mo agoA large chunk of them is from China :p
- HDBaseT 4mo agoMe neither. I would suspect maybe <1% of the population uses VPNs. At least outside of work environments and connecting to intranets.
- maccard 4mo ago> Most VPN companies won't implement age verification, because their purpose is privacy. They will when it's law. Their purpose is most likely either snake oil, or bypassing geo restricctions on netflix or sports.
- cedws 4mo agoMost VPN providers are purely profit-driven enterprises, they don't give a shit about privacy. There are only a handful that would turn away UK business instead of requiring ID.
- Redshanks1 4mo agoHopefully won't happen
- kitd 4mo agoUk kids about to discover the power of Hetzner Linux vps + vnc.
- dryarzeg 4mo agoAnd then UK residents are going to discover the "power" of government which will require age verification for renting a VPS or VDS or any other kind of cloud infrastructure, tied directly to your passport/ID, because "many families are desperate for this to happen and I listen particularly to bereaved families that say the longer we delay this, the more children are put at risk". /j or /s P.S. by the way, is it possible for them to use Hetzner? Don't they need something like credit card?
- rgblambda 4mo agoPerhaps it'll work like dodgy boxes/firesticks, where you have a handful of people who individually set up their own service then charge a fee for access.
- arbol 4mo agoWhat about the services that rent vps/compute for crypto?
- dryarzeg 4mo agoI'm not so sure, but aren't some attempts to regulate the cryptocurrencies (therefore completely obliterating their initial goal to be government-independent) already have been made? Maybe I'm wrong though, because I don't really remember... Probably I have to look it up. Anyway, how would they obtain the (let's say) Bitcoin to pay for VPS?
- Hetzner_OL 4mo agoTo the best of my knowledge, customers must be 18 or older to enter contracts with us / become customers. --Katie (Hetzner)
- 4mo ago
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- yokoprime 4mo agoThis will be interesting to follow. I dont see how this can be fully enforced. Maybe for iOS and other platform where app distribution is highly restricted, but on linux, windows and even macOS i can use mullvad, sending cash in an envelope without ever revealing my identity.
- ekianjo 4mo agothey can forbid mullvad.
- drnick1 4mo agoHow would that work? The UK can presumably ban Mullvad from operating in the UK, but I don't see how it can prevent outbound connections to Mullvad servers elsewhere, short of implementing a nation-wide firewall like China or Iran. And even in those places the firewall is pourous and routinely circumvented.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 4mo agomullvad client relies on known servers, you could ban their access at the IP level from UK ISP. nothing complicated really
- rgblambda 4mo agoThe idea is that it doesn't matter if the ban is fully enforced. Most children only have a smartphone and they're the target of the ban.
- hereme888 4mo agoHonestly, the UK already shot itself in the foot. Now they're shooting their other foot. And they keep voting for the Labor party... And yet, govt will find it's impossible to regulate the creativity of software engineers.
- toyg 4mo ago> And they keep voting for the Labor party. The alternatives are even more power-mad, fundamentally illiberal parties (Reform, Conservatives), equally pearl-clutching ones that will likely continue on the same road as Labour (greens) and unreliable figures that will flip-flop as soon as they are in power (libdems). What's left? Count Binface, I guess.
- Fredkin 4mo agoConservatives drafted the OSA in 2021. Reform are against it https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/28/reform-uk-vows-to-repeal-borderline-dystopian-online-safety-act https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/28/reform-uk-v... Even the more extreme Restore are against it, and against Digital ID https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/restore_civil_liberties https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/restore_civil_liberties The Greens are ... well they wanted to amend it in 2024 to include a ban on fake news, but that could turn into a mechanism for censorship. And Lib/Lab/Con were all for building even more on top of it in 2024: https://www.handleygill.co.uk/handley-gill-blog/general-election-2024-manifesto-pledges https://www.handleygill.co.uk/handley-gill-blog/general-elec... There are no 'liberal' parties in the UK.
- toyg 4mo agoReform and Restore will say anything to get into power, and then they will turn into ultraconservatives. See also: council tax in pretty much all sizeable councils they got to control, which they promised to keep fixed and then raised immediately after getting in. Their instincts are traditional ultra-right. And yeah, I agree that there is no natural home in UK politics for social liberism. Hence why quipping "they keep voting for this" is just pointless - there are no realistic alternatives, what we have at the moment is the least worst and it's still pretty bad.
- dirasieb 4mo agomaybe the UK should instead look into protecting women and girls being systematically abused and raped while the police and government cover it up
- rasengan 4mo agoThe UK can’t block Dissent [1] since it looks like normal HTTPS traffic. [1] https://godissent.com https://godissent.com
- arbol 4mo ago> The site’s content happens to include an HTTP/2 endpoint that, when presented with an anonymous authorization token, behaves as a VPN server’s outer layer Is this not the fingerprintable aspect? Wouldn't you need to randomise the HTTP endpoint to avoid eventually being banned based on URI? Cool idea btw.
- willy_k 4mo agoFor a URI ban would that have to be through ISPs? If so, then alternative DNS would be an easy work around.
- lunar_rover 4mo agoIf you ban IPsec ESP people will start using WireGuard on random ports. If you ban WireGuard using DPI people will start using SSL VPNs. If you ban SSL you ban the entire internet.
- NegativeK 4mo agoThey don't want perfection. They want to move things forward, for their definition of forward. If they ban bog standard VPNs and find out they're still being used, they'll punish the VPN companies. If the VPN companies create workarounds and avoid the punishment, they'll punish the payment processors. If the VPN companies start using esoteric workarounds and taking cryptocurrency for payment, then they've mostly won -- most people aren't going to deal with that shit. All the while, they'll still go after the social media/etc companies for allowing circumvention of age-gating. So the social media companies will crack down on our ability to visit their sites with any sort of privacy. My point: laws are all imperfect but can still have a huge effect. Pointing out work arounds doesn't change that. For context, I'm really disturbed by the recent move to punish people seeking privacy instead of the social media companies that are enabling this social media shit. They know who the companies are, since that's who they're going to punish for not age gating. But they'd (I'm talking about US based age-gating pushes as well) rather fuck with our privacy and make our PII more susceptible to data breaches than tell the social media companies to eat shit.
- cherryteastain 4mo agoMullvad already does all of the things you mentioned. Cryptocurrency payments with no KYC, and many anti-censorship [1] methods. Moreover, their mobile and desktop apps apply heuristics to find combinations of anti-censorship measures that work automatically. It's very user friendly (all the user needs to do is press on connect). So, the blocking attempts are still pointless because large, prominent providers already make all these bypass methods very user friendly. [1] https://mullvad.net/en/help/connecting-to-mullvad-vpn-from-restrictive-locations https://mullvad.net/en/help/connecting-to-mullvad-vpn-from-r...
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- singingtoday 4mo agoWhat if I use a VPS instead? What if it's a virtual private VPS wholely in memory? What if it's a pool of VPS boxes shared by me and a network of people? There's always a way around, but this direction is concerning.
- rgblambda 4mo agoThey're banking on the number of kids using that mechanism to bypass the ban being small. I'm not in favour of this but I'm acknowledging that if the number of children accessing social media drops significantly because of a VPN ban then they've achieved what they set out to do. I don't like the salami slice tactics of not including this in previous legislation despite knowing that it would be necessary to enforce the social media ban. There would have been a lot less support if it was presented as a complete package that could be debated in it's whole.
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- horsh1 4mo agoEnclosure of XXI century
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- sandworm101 4mo agoDon't panic. These debates are nothing new. Encryption and obfuscation tech comes up every ten years or so. People scream and, in the end, nothing changes. One upon a time, encryption math was regulated as a munition and the act of sharing open source software was tantamount to weapon smuggling. Once upon a time, VPNs were being banned by credit card companies. Part of the rise of bitcoin was the idea that you would need it for services like VPNs that credit card companies refused to service. Today, VPNs are openly advertised as piracy tools for getting around media geo-restrictions. Once upon a time, ISPs throttled torrents and so torrents become encrypted. Once upon a time DNS was to be poisoned in order to block filesharing websites (see COICA and PROTECT IP acts). All those efforts also came to nothing. These too will die.
- lambdaone 4mo agoI'm very much in favour of blocking children from social media - it's an absolutely vile cesspit of cognitive addiction, bullying and social (and potential sexual) abuse. But none of it requires a mass-surveillance network to be put in place. Just for one example; it would be trivial for Apple and Google to put age estimation on my phone, verify it on opening the web browser and provide a zero-knowledge proof of age to websites in a way that does not reveal my identity. All the infrastructure is already there, and it's relatively trivial to turn it on. The downside is that this will only work for people who are older than about 25 because of the uncertainty of face-to-age recognition, but it would be a start. Another way to do it is for my bank, who know my age already, providing a similar credential that I can feed into the zero-knowledge proof engine on the phone. This was all done properly for the covid tracking apps, at a time when the phone providers actually wanted to do tracking with anonymity - this is a similar problem, and it's easily cracked by technical means. And you don't even need zero knowledge proofs if you perform on-device content detection - turn it on for kids, keep it off for adults. Modern phones have more than enough TPU capacity to do this. But none of the actual implementations I've seen are truly anonymizing, and they all rely on trusting some really dodgy companies with your identity and browsing habits. Yes, the more respectable ones have security and privacy policies that are audited, but will they always? The cynical answer is "no", because history shows that someone will always do something sooner or later if (a) it makes money, and (b) they can get away with it. Everything I see suggests that the desire for mass surveillance is the driver, and the "protect the children" front on this is a strategem by the people who are really driving this from behind the curtain. There are huge amounts of money to be made by capturing verifiable, blackmailable, personal data, and this is a magic money fountain for those who will be able to mine it.
- dijit 4mo agoIn more sensible times, we'd run an ad campaign highlighting the dangers and informational campaigns for parents on what to do to prevent your children getting access to social media. Perfect is impossible, but if its stigmatised then the network effects stop being so punitive to children who have reasonable parents. it's the 10-80-10 rule: 10% of kids will still access social media, 10% will never... but 80% can be swayed.
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- dofm 4mo agoFWIW you can age-gate VPNs the same way you can age-gate anything else that is paid for: just don't let people who haven't got credit cards (not debit cards) sign up. Or you can simply let free plans only terminate inside their own country. I noticed recently that TunnelBear has done this with their free plans — the "fastest" endpoint, which is the only one that is free, is now a UK endpoint. It still meets the security need anyone might have from a VPN. I am honestly not that bothered about adult content age gating in principle, and I never really have been. I personally think sexual content is not remotely immoral but that it's reasonable to say the very young shouldn't be able to see it. It's not a freedom of speech issue. Given the practical impossibility of parental regulation of access to devices when cheap phones and PAYG exist, the problem is the practice of it: how do you do that in a way that is privacy-preserving? I feel that Apple has coped with this pretty well: they decided I am an adult automatically based on how long I have held an account. I also think the UK PAYG mobile providers handle this well: they have simply always blocked adult content until you unlock it. I haven't bothered and I have never seen the content wall (except when deliberately testing it) so I believe its boundaries are drawn quite well. Though I do routinely use one site that might end up blocked over time because it sits right at the boundary of the law's interest. So one day I might need to, I guess. And I have considered what I might need to do about a website for my own photographic work, which sits on the edge of the ofcom rules interest in practice. We are missing secure anonymous age attestation but I think that will come. I do think American critics tend to interpret this in terms of the morality and religion battle-zone that riddles US culture and encourages US states to try to police morality in bizarre ways or to extend "porn" rules to things like information about sexuality, gender or sexual health (which would just not happen here because we're actually not really religious or prudes; there is essentially no religion in our politics, which is ironic considering the C of E have seats in the Lords). I don't think American critics should really leap to judge UK rules when you have two dozen different states imposing rule sets that in some cases came first and in many are wholly unworkable. UK concerns are about child access to extreme material and about sexual exploitation, fundamentally. It's not easy and it's clear some aspects of the legislation are difficult, but accepting criticism from Americans as if the US position is clear, unambiguous and robust is no longer something we should entertain, especially lessons about the morality of free speech from the US administration, given their apparent selective contempt for it.
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- cdrnsf 4mo agoAnyone who thinks parenting by legislation is a good solution to anything should be neither a parent nor a legislator.
- vld_chk 4mo agoThere is very little doubt that we need to find a way to update our relationship with social media. The evidence of their harm in current form is overwhelming. However, using this reason to induce censorship rules, word by word matching Russia/China playbook is making the goal less achievable if anything.
- timbit42 4mo agoRequire all feeds to be chronological.
- shevy-java 4mo agoSo the UK government finally admits that age-sniffing is just an attempt to censor people. How evil. People need to look at the UK government much more so than the US government in ADDITION. Everyone knows how the USA serves the superrich only these days, but the UK government is kind of polite on the outside, but pure evil on the inside.
- SilverElfin 4mo agoSafetyism is the actual biggest threat to free societies
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- oceanplexian 4mo agoToo many people are seeing this like engineers and not like bureaucrats. They won't be able to block all VPN services, and they don't really care. VPN still works in China. The entire point is to acclimate the public to a system of fear and control. You won't get arrested because you used a VPN, you'll get arrested a few weeks later because your neighbor snitched on you. They can easily enforce these laws without any form of technology.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> They won't be able to block all VPN services, and they don't really care The simpler explanation suffices. Politicians want to react to a political demand and don’t really care about the implementation details.
- cedws 4mo agoI'm curious what GCHQ make of all this. Increased VPN usage will reduce their visibility into internet traffic. They can try to force VPN providers to implement ID checks but if the provider is overseas it's not so easy to get that information. Not to mention that this will be used as an opportunity by state actors to harvest info on UK citizens via hostile VPN services.
- MaxPock 4mo agoThe UK has always been an authoritarian country masquerading as a democracy.
- everdrive 4mo agoI'm pretty busy and behind the times a bit on this one. What is a practical method to avoid such a ban? I'm not in the UK, but there seems to be a general anti-privacy movement that is sweeping the globe. What can we do when such a law comes to our country? - Route all traffic via tor, then connect to a VPN from Tor? - Finally learn I2P? - Something else?
- anaisbetts 4mo agoThe vast majority of children cannot and do not buy and pay for VPNs and use them to evade anything. The second that governments said "We intend to ban VPNs" they gave away the game as to what their actual intent was, and it wasn't "for the children"
- rustcleaner 4mo agoStates have been the most terrible churches imagineable! No one can be a true Atheist and not also be an Anarchist, and no one can be a true Anarchist and not also be an Atheist [all Scotsmen aside here :^)]. Apostates and criminals are synonymous.