5 ms·

> 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 researc

> 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 ago
Full 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 ago
  What 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 ago
    Good 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.
    - tpholland 4mo ago
      Hi! It sounds like you may have misunderstood the TV license as you seem to be describing it as a recent thing whereas it was introduced 80 years ago in 1946. The point of the license was always to fund broadcast content--not sure how this could apply to VPN use. I think the discussion of VPNs relates to how, if we decided it was appropriate to block foreign sites, you'd accomplish this. As somebody who grew up in the heady days of the early internet this who conversation saddens me, but when you hear for example interviews with the folks running Roblox you can see where these ideas come from....
  - ben_w 4mo ago
    > What is there to research? The trade-offs and how many people care and about what specifically. E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school? I'm all on board with just banning this kind of analytics, but there's a lot of people who are more angry with the EU for forcing companies to at least ask for permission before they sell your data to all those analytics firms.
    - nekusar 4mo ago
      > E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school? Because capitalism itself is the enemy. And information assymmetry is a potent tool, as is constant and persistent surveillance. All of these enable extracting more money.
      - soupbowl 4mo ago
        Yeah, you don't have these issues in communist countries. . .
        nekusar 4mo ago
        You can complain (read: peaceful protest for redress of grievances) without going whole hog the complete opposite way. Most of this end-stage crapitalism was warned by Adam Smith, and then by Marx. And what did economists do? Fucking ignore it. Or named it trickle down. So, yeah. When the capitalists control the government, you get all the abuses written about it for the last 300 years. And it fucking shows. Computation and copyright was just dropping helicopter loads of gasoline on the already terrible fire.
        AngryData 4mo ago
        More than one set of policies and ideals can be shitty at the same time. Just because authoritarian central planned economies failed doesn't mean we should never try anything else ever again that isn't pure capitalism or refuse to criticize its faults.
  - baranul 4mo ago
    But that's the point, circumvent democracy, to set the stage for techno-fascism. The citizen has no rights which the state is bound to respect.
    - subscribed 4mo ago
      By all means. For example the vast majority of the UK residents is against the ongoing support and complicity of the UK in the genocide of Palestinians, to which the government orchestrated the whole operation to turn the protest into act of terrorism (!). Etc.
      - hactually 4mo ago
        Got any numbers/sources for that specific claim?
        subscribed 4mo ago
        Yeah. Polls from Opinium, YouGov, even earlier ipsos, showing that UK general public does not support the genocide, but immediate ceasefire, stopping sale of arms to Israel, back ICC, et. You'd struggle to find anything that would show that UK public support aiding and abetting.
    - phs318u 4mo ago
      Set the stage? Techno-fascism is already here. Private conglomerates own all the 21st century “commons” that matter and can already de-platform you at will with no explanation and no recourse, including from those platforms necessary for survival in the modern world (banking/payments). If anything, (western) governments are late to this game.
  - IanCal 4mo ago
    Are there ways of doing age gating while preserving privacy? For whom? How many people need that kind of privacy, would it impact lots of (say) teens seeking help or is this about whistleblowers? Are many under 18s using VPNs for porn? Or have they just shifted to other platforms anyway? If we implemented it “perfectly” would it even do the thing we wanted? What are the actual numbers here? If there’s lots of fuss about vpns but actually while there’s been a big jump in use it’s not under 18s anyway it wouldn’t help. > Privacy is a human right, and one which is essential for effective democracy. And does this get broken enough for age gating something? We age gate alcohol to reasonable success, sometimes that involves showing id. I’m not arguing for age gating here but I do think understanding the tradeoffs may require more evidence.
    - rustcleaner 4mo ago
      >We age gate alcohol to reasonable success, We shouldn't. >sometimes that involves showing id. Then the yokel checkout attendant proceeds to punch the 8 digit birthday into the keyboard, which serializes you as one of less than 30,000 customers in the area. Birthdays are leaky identifiers.
  - DrBazza 4mo ago
    It's the UK gov. Rather than do something, it's endless inquiries and 'research'. Example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Thames_Crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Thames_Crossing - the planning application is 360,000 pages and not a single shovel is in the ground. Or HS2. The list goes on. This is a really, really minor example of the same sickness that infests British politics for the last few decades.
  - AngryData 4mo ago
    I don't know how this works in the UK, but where I am at that would look like politicians just fishing for bribes while they stall committing to any action which also helps in PR.
- Xelbair 4mo ago
  >both sides
- AlienRobot 4mo ago
  These people created a law that is catastrophic for privacy, so I don't believe they will be stopped from banning VPN's just because someone claims VPN's are good for privacy.
- nickdothutton 4mo ago
  "I want to do the thing that gets me the most votes and carries the least political risk". Note this is not necessarily the wisest thing, or even the thing that objectively solves or mitigates the problem the most. Many such cases...
  - rustcleaner 4mo ago
    Democracy is a consent [to be ruled] manufacturing system which defuses head-lopping popular rebellions. It is not for the benefit of the people.
- happyPersonR 4mo ago
  > they say they should be banned because kids are using them to get around. Ummm what??? lolll if they don't want their kids using vpn... why would banning vpn for everyone and requiring ID verification be the answer? LOLLLL That sounds like they need to control their kids "it's hard" ... "WHY DID YOU HAVE KIDS THEN?!?!?!"
- DrBazza 4mo ago
  More context: > Elizabeth Louise Kendall (born 11 June 1971)[1] is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology > [sic] graduating with first class honours in history in 1993 > [sic] after graduating from Cambridge, worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research (charity) tl;dr never worked in the private sector, and utterly unqualified to make judgements on technology. So of course she's the science minister. This is what UK parliament is full of, ill qualified, political lifers. What a depressing time to live in the UK. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Kendall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Kendall
joe_mamba 4mo ago
Isn't it how it alwasy works?
- halJordan 4mo ago
  The tobacco industry has decades worth of research saying smoking was beneficial. The antis just kept funding more studies.
  - joe_mamba 4mo ago
    So the government can't do the exact thing?
varispeed 4mo ago
Obviously Labour has been "lobbied" and now have to deliver this for whoever wants this. It's pathetic how they use sobbing families to push it through, similar tactic like before Iraq invasion. same players behind the scenes.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 4mo ago
  Conspiracy theory^ This is happening worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_laws_by_country#/media/File:Online_age_verification_laws_by_country.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_laws_b...
  - iLoveOncall 4mo ago
    The fact that it's coordinated in all "Western" countries show it's a real conspiracy, not just a theory.
    - inigyou 4mo ago
      Or maybe different people respond similarly to the same incentives. For decades companies like Facebook have been saying you just have to let us groom children, there's no way to have this tech and not groom children. Now the predictable consequences of that are arriving: the tech industry is being turned off, because it grooms children. And when I say groom children, I'm talking about actual child predators, not the transphobic nonsense point.
    - hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 4mo ago
      Oh yes like Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey. If it is happening worldwide, it is less likely to be a coordinated scheme and more likely coming to the same conclusions based on current research. Edit because I'm getting limited: This isn't exactly something old that has been going on for decades in its current form and the usage has increased especially since the lockdowns. Nations have also been copying each other for centuries, you don't need a secret group coordinating for it with a singular ulterior motive.
stranded22 4mo ago
Reminds me of the drugs tsar, Dr Nutt, saying that drugs should be legalised/decriminalised. So he got sacked. Quite often, people in power don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear their own words/views parroted back to them.
- subscribed 4mo ago
  To put it into perspective he was asked to do the harm review, in which he proved how much more harmful the legal drugs (alcohol and nicotine) are from some of the banned ones (namely cannabis, LSD or Psylocibin). Famously at the exact same time UK was claiming there was no evidence of the medicinal use of the cannabis, the UK was also the biggest exporter of it, and all was then turned into Sativex, a cannabis based medicine, not approved for use in the UK of course (individual import is allowed). Interesting is that the husband of one of the very prominent Home Secretary and later Prime Minister is a senior executive in the producet. Of course there's no suggestion of the financial interest of them in keeping a monopoly. See also: https://leftfootforward.org/2021/04/revealed-uk-is-the-worlds-biggest-producer-of-medical-cannabis-but-brits-cant-access-it/ https://leftfootforward.org/2021/04/revealed-uk-is-the-world...
basisword 4mo ago
Nothing new unfortunately [0]. Happy to trust the science as long as it suits them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal

embedding-shape 4mo ago

Full 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 ago
What 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 ago
  Good 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.
  - tpholland 4mo ago
    Hi! It sounds like you may have misunderstood the TV license as you seem to be describing it as a recent thing whereas it was introduced 80 years ago in 1946. The point of the license was always to fund broadcast content--not sure how this could apply to VPN use. I think the discussion of VPNs relates to how, if we decided it was appropriate to block foreign sites, you'd accomplish this. As somebody who grew up in the heady days of the early internet this who conversation saddens me, but when you hear for example interviews with the folks running Roblox you can see where these ideas come from....
- ben_w 4mo ago
  > What is there to research? The trade-offs and how many people care and about what specifically. E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school? I'm all on board with just banning this kind of analytics, but there's a lot of people who are more angry with the EU for forcing companies to at least ask for permission before they sell your data to all those analytics firms.
  - nekusar 4mo ago
    > E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school? Because capitalism itself is the enemy. And information assymmetry is a potent tool, as is constant and persistent surveillance. All of these enable extracting more money.
    - soupbowl 4mo ago
      Yeah, you don't have these issues in communist countries. . .
      - nekusar 4mo ago
        You can complain (read: peaceful protest for redress of grievances) without going whole hog the complete opposite way. Most of this end-stage crapitalism was warned by Adam Smith, and then by Marx. And what did economists do? Fucking ignore it. Or named it trickle down. So, yeah. When the capitalists control the government, you get all the abuses written about it for the last 300 years. And it fucking shows. Computation and copyright was just dropping helicopter loads of gasoline on the already terrible fire.
      - AngryData 4mo ago
        More than one set of policies and ideals can be shitty at the same time. Just because authoritarian central planned economies failed doesn't mean we should never try anything else ever again that isn't pure capitalism or refuse to criticize its faults.
- baranul 4mo ago
  But that's the point, circumvent democracy, to set the stage for techno-fascism. The citizen has no rights which the state is bound to respect.
  - subscribed 4mo ago
    By all means. For example the vast majority of the UK residents is against the ongoing support and complicity of the UK in the genocide of Palestinians, to which the government orchestrated the whole operation to turn the protest into act of terrorism (!). Etc.
    - hactually 4mo ago
      Got any numbers/sources for that specific claim?
      - subscribed 4mo ago
        Yeah. Polls from Opinium, YouGov, even earlier ipsos, showing that UK general public does not support the genocide, but immediate ceasefire, stopping sale of arms to Israel, back ICC, et. You'd struggle to find anything that would show that UK public support aiding and abetting.
  - phs318u 4mo ago
    Set the stage? Techno-fascism is already here. Private conglomerates own all the 21st century “commons” that matter and can already de-platform you at will with no explanation and no recourse, including from those platforms necessary for survival in the modern world (banking/payments). If anything, (western) governments are late to this game.
- IanCal 4mo ago
  Are there ways of doing age gating while preserving privacy? For whom? How many people need that kind of privacy, would it impact lots of (say) teens seeking help or is this about whistleblowers? Are many under 18s using VPNs for porn? Or have they just shifted to other platforms anyway? If we implemented it “perfectly” would it even do the thing we wanted? What are the actual numbers here? If there’s lots of fuss about vpns but actually while there’s been a big jump in use it’s not under 18s anyway it wouldn’t help. > Privacy is a human right, and one which is essential for effective democracy. And does this get broken enough for age gating something? We age gate alcohol to reasonable success, sometimes that involves showing id. I’m not arguing for age gating here but I do think understanding the tradeoffs may require more evidence.
  - rustcleaner 4mo ago
    >We age gate alcohol to reasonable success, We shouldn't. >sometimes that involves showing id. Then the yokel checkout attendant proceeds to punch the 8 digit birthday into the keyboard, which serializes you as one of less than 30,000 customers in the area. Birthdays are leaky identifiers.
- DrBazza 4mo ago
  It's the UK gov. Rather than do something, it's endless inquiries and 'research'. Example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Thames_Crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Thames_Crossing - the planning application is 360,000 pages and not a single shovel is in the ground. Or HS2. The list goes on. This is a really, really minor example of the same sickness that infests British politics for the last few decades.
- AngryData 4mo ago
  I don't know how this works in the UK, but where I am at that would look like politicians just fishing for bribes while they stall committing to any action which also helps in PR.
Xelbair 4mo ago
>both sides
AlienRobot 4mo ago
These people created a law that is catastrophic for privacy, so I don't believe they will be stopped from banning VPN's just because someone claims VPN's are good for privacy.
nickdothutton 4mo ago
"I want to do the thing that gets me the most votes and carries the least political risk". Note this is not necessarily the wisest thing, or even the thing that objectively solves or mitigates the problem the most. Many such cases...
- rustcleaner 4mo ago
  Democracy is a consent [to be ruled] manufacturing system which defuses head-lopping popular rebellions. It is not for the benefit of the people.
happyPersonR 4mo ago
> they say they should be banned because kids are using them to get around. Ummm what??? lolll if they don't want their kids using vpn... why would banning vpn for everyone and requiring ID verification be the answer? LOLLLL That sounds like they need to control their kids "it's hard" ... "WHY DID YOU HAVE KIDS THEN?!?!?!"
DrBazza 4mo ago
More context: > Elizabeth Louise Kendall (born 11 June 1971)[1] is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology > [sic] graduating with first class honours in history in 1993 > [sic] after graduating from Cambridge, worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research (charity) tl;dr never worked in the private sector, and utterly unqualified to make judgements on technology. So of course she's the science minister. This is what UK parliament is full of, ill qualified, political lifers. What a depressing time to live in the UK. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Kendall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Kendall

joe_mamba 4mo ago

Isn't it how it alwasy works?

halJordan 4mo ago
The tobacco industry has decades worth of research saying smoking was beneficial. The antis just kept funding more studies.
- joe_mamba 4mo ago
  So the government can't do the exact thing?

varispeed 4mo ago

Obviously Labour has been "lobbied" and now have to deliver this for whoever wants this. It's pathetic how they use sobbing families to push it through, similar tactic like before Iraq invasion. same players behind the scenes.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 4mo ago
Conspiracy theory^ This is happening worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_laws_by_country#/media/File:Online_age_verification_laws_by_country.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_laws_b...
- iLoveOncall 4mo ago
  The fact that it's coordinated in all "Western" countries show it's a real conspiracy, not just a theory.
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    Or maybe different people respond similarly to the same incentives. For decades companies like Facebook have been saying you just have to let us groom children, there's no way to have this tech and not groom children. Now the predictable consequences of that are arriving: the tech industry is being turned off, because it grooms children. And when I say groom children, I'm talking about actual child predators, not the transphobic nonsense point.
  - hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 4mo ago
    Oh yes like Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey. If it is happening worldwide, it is less likely to be a coordinated scheme and more likely coming to the same conclusions based on current research. Edit because I'm getting limited: This isn't exactly something old that has been going on for decades in its current form and the usage has increased especially since the lockdowns. Nations have also been copying each other for centuries, you don't need a secret group coordinating for it with a singular ulterior motive.

stranded22 4mo ago

Reminds me of the drugs tsar, Dr Nutt, saying that drugs should be legalised/decriminalised. So he got sacked. Quite often, people in power don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear their own words/views parroted back to them.

subscribed 4mo ago
To put it into perspective he was asked to do the harm review, in which he proved how much more harmful the legal drugs (alcohol and nicotine) are from some of the banned ones (namely cannabis, LSD or Psylocibin). Famously at the exact same time UK was claiming there was no evidence of the medicinal use of the cannabis, the UK was also the biggest exporter of it, and all was then turned into Sativex, a cannabis based medicine, not approved for use in the UK of course (individual import is allowed). Interesting is that the husband of one of the very prominent Home Secretary and later Prime Minister is a senior executive in the producet. Of course there's no suggestion of the financial interest of them in keeping a monopoly. See also: https://leftfootforward.org/2021/04/revealed-uk-is-the-worlds-biggest-producer-of-medical-cannabis-but-brits-cant-access-it/ https://leftfootforward.org/2021/04/revealed-uk-is-the-world...

basisword 4mo ago

Nothing new unfortunately [0]. Happy to trust the science as long as it suits them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal