Of course.
UK Official Calls for Age Verification on VPNs to Prevent Porn Loophole
Submitted 8 months ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
dan@upvote.au 8 months ago
Only commercial VPNs? So HTTP proxying, Tor, SSH tunneling, SOCKS tunneling, running your own VPN node, etc are all allowed?
iopq@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You can easily make it a ton harder by blocking VPS IPs when serving certain types of content
dan@upvote.au 8 months ago
If you have issues with IP blocks, get the AWS equivalent of a VPS (Lightsail). It’s expensive compared to other VPS services - $5/month for only 512MB RAM, 20GB disk and 1TB monthly transfer, when good deals usually have at least 8GB RAM for that price - but it’s difficult for anyone to block Amazon/AWS IPs because so many services use them :)
x_pikl_x@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I used a server on my personal computer that would just echo back the raw HTML from a PHP call back in the day. Definitely not the safest or best way to do things but ebaum’s world had the best games. All fun til the principal wanted to talk about my friends putting porn on all the computers in the library.
dan@upvote.au 8 months ago
CGIProxy / PHProxy were definitely very popular when I was in school. Some of the more tech-savvy kids would get free hosting accounts and install a proxy in them and share the URL.
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You can just mail cash to mullvad and include a code that links it to your account.
Brewchin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Doubling down on the batshit. Everyone knew VPNs were going to be the low effort workaround to this authoritarian batshittery.
I get what the (well meaning, I think) people lobbying for this are trying to achieve, but everything from the lobbying to legislation to enforcement seems to be happening in the worst way imaginable. Almost like it’s an intentional “You want to see how badly can we do this? Hold my drink! YOLO!!”
For me, the tell was UK PLC leaving it up to the sites themselves to decide who/how the verification would be done. Classic bad management “I don’t understand the slightest thing about any of this, but HOW HARD COULD IT BE?!” response. It’s like the “series of tubes” stupidity all over again.
Whostosay@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I assure you these people are not well meaning.
Whostosay@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I assure you these people are not well meaning.
commander@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m certain a lot of politicians and veterans are bitter over the lack of universal adoration they get in their own countries. Politicians certainly annoyed with how easy it is for victims of war and veterans against war speaking out against enlistment. Politicians and the rich want their populaces to be patriots whereas the Internet makes people jaded when learning their countries history and present in detail.
I’m certain that’s the real reason internet censorship picked up steam. The Internet has poisoned the well for so many countries when trying to build out some unified national message of righteous action. Can’t like how negative the public reacts to bills described as for child safety. Internet makes it real easy to call it another manipulative cry of wolf. It’s got to be the #1 marketing trick for the rich and powerful. #2 being those foreigners are evil. But shit now people see people across the world are mostly just getting by not even participating in politics or don’t even have any voting power and are just caught in the crossfires of the power hungry
Today there are no heros from the invasions across Asia west to east. In recent times you don’t get a marketing bump for fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, wherever. That’s problematic for patriotism and public support for future war fighting. Every government leader now has a mixed legacy while alive that makes their memory mute in history compared to WW2 and earlier leaders who committed just as much or likely far worse terrors but enjoyed widespread domestic support while in power and adoration in retirement.
National anthems before sporting events are tacky whereas just like 15 years ago damn near everyone bought into those. I swear one day there will monitoring software and crackdowns on hitting the mute button during national anthems and commercials
cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Damn, what is going on there? This is scary even for 18+ users.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
they want to know POCs, immigrants, women, which political parties you support, of course criticism against trump.
IllNess@infosec.pub 8 months ago
It’s scarier. They will track everything you are doing not and not have to guess what device you are using behind a shared IP address.
nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is how you get under-18s to use [Tor browser](www.torproject.org/download/$
bbb@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
sefra1@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Until the go government starts blocking entry nodes, then there will be a whole new country relying on the snowflake protocol.
Also, this doesn’t affect only people under 18, any sane adult should never send a copy of their id to anything but the government, bank, insurance or employer.
pHr34kY@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If they block entry nodes, just build an entry node. They can’t block stuff inside your own network.
nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 8 months ago
a whole new country relying on the snowflake protocol.
That would put them in the company of China, Russia, and Iran. Getting unrestricted Internet to people in those countries is why I am among those who run a snowflake node on a dedicated VPS (the link also has a simple browser addon – it’s easy to support the network, everyone should)
Yes, these moves suck for UK youth. But, anti-censorship tools do exist, and volunteers like me want people who could benefit from them, to know about & use them.
any sane adult should never send a copy of their id to anything but the government, bank, insurance or employer.
100% agree, take my upvote
undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 8 months ago
Seeing this from the US scares me. I already have an elaborate system for tunneling my traffic out of the country without it appearing I’m doing so from my end devices.
But seeing this happening in the UK and knowing there’s a chance of it happening here, I really feel the need to get into China-style circumvention with shadowsocks and what have you, and I need to figure this out sooner rather than later.
fishpen0@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Where will you peer to once these laws are active everywhere. That’s where this is actually headed
IllNess@infosec.pub 8 months ago
21 states have laws for age verification on porn sites. 4 more states are in the process of passing laws for age verification. That’s nearly half the states…
ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Quite insane honestly
j4k3@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Why is the UK such a hell hole all the sudden? I’ve never had such a terrible opinion of the place until now with encryption and authoritarian fuckwitism against the last bastion of real democracy on the internet.
daw@feddit.org 8 months ago
I wouldn’t underestimate the effect Brexit had on this. No there is no check for the national Government anymore.
kepix@lemmy.world 8 months ago
sometimes the french are right. the brits are indeed cunts.
so seriously, this i brilliantly evil. this is the way that will allow some police state level of oversight for both social media, chats, and even vpn data will be tied to your personal file. this is so dark in every possible way. any site can be labelled porn or harmful at this point. even wikipedia. how dare the young browse the open truth of the internet? and this is already the second phase, mind police.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
knowingly leaking everyones medical information, fucking surveillance camerason every corner… my opinion didn’t meaningfully change by these, they are being a hell hole for a longer time
qevlarr@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s always been a bit like this, actually
jobbies@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Yep. Politicians creating tech policy on the fly without consulting people who actually know what they are talking about.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Tony Blair thought that the Labour Party would win if it were more like the US Democratic Party. That began an electorally successful period of unprincipled triangulation and petty authoritarianism. Eventually that momentum fizzled out due to the gloomy paranoid leadership of Gordon Brown, corruption of people like Peter Mandelson, and the loathsome hypocrisy of Blair’s lies in support of GW Bush’s second Gulf War.
Then the Conservatives got in for 14 years and fucked everything up even worse. Now the Blairite authoritarian-centrist faction is again running Labour, and so far has shown none of the political cunning that kept Blair on top. And the media fawns over the smarmy mini-Trump Nigel Farage despite his party having no policies.
NeilBru@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t know if it’s the root reason, but one gets scoffed at harshly by the average Tom, Dick, and Harry when suggesting that a Monarchy is an archaic and, frankly, insulting form of governance in spite of protestations that the role of the sovereign is purely ceremonial.
Simply put, they (mostly) seem to prefer political masochism, and are ruled by sadists. Sadly, in 2025, aren’t we all.
Armand1@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Don’t forget transphobia. They seem to have suddenly decided that’s a good idea in the last 3 years.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You should watch some Adam Curtis documentaries to get perspective on the UK.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Turns out Liberals are Fascists.
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Always have been bit, just with a better PR campaign.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
UK is far from being liberal lol, they are closer to the US than not
j4k3@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Uhh no… Idiots are fascists. Some idiots may call themselves liberal but that doesn’t make it so. Liberals by definition cannot be fascist. The idiots are those that let fascists parade as anything but.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 8 months ago
All of a sudden?
This is the country where 1984 was written, where they have more cameras than anywhere else, this sort of social surveillance and quiet, polite fascism is normal for the UK.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
When the Snowden Revelations came out, it turned out the UK did as much or maybe even more civil society surveillance as the US, and unlike the US it doesn’t even have constitutional limitations on surveillance of people on their own soil (in fact the UK doesn’t even have a written Constitution).
In the US they actually walked back on some of the surveillance (because of said constitutional protections), in the UK they just passed a law that retroactively made the whole thing legal, got the editor of the newspaper who brought out the Snowden Revelations kicked, fired a bunch of D-Notices around (the UK’s Press Censorship mechanism) out and nobody ever talked about it again.
As soon as the technology was good enough for that the UK created a Digital Stasi and it’s only gotten worse since.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 8 months ago
china has that too.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
And almost all those cameras are privately owned and operated, and not integrated into any kind of centralised surveillance apparatus. More typically, they’re in place to deter graffiti or to keep drunks from pissing on the walls outside pubs. Police can and do request footage when investigating crimes, but if a camera owner’s retention policy means the footage has been deleted, that’s the end of the discussion. And such footage is useful if some arsehole has just jammed a broken beer glass into someone else’s face.
The worse forms of authoritarian overreach are the increasingly pervasive number-plate recognition cameras that track the movements of every vehicle, and the inane attempts to regulate the internet and to ban peivate use of encryption.
As for “quiet, polite fascism,” I’ve lived for extended periods in the US and the UK, and so far, despite the seemingly draconian laws, I’ve always found there to be more personal freedom in the UK. The police don’t kill people very often, people tend to ignore the laws and the government can’t be bothered to enforce the most intrusive of them, and there’s far less social pressure towards brainless conformity and mindless obedience than there is in the States.
ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s always such an insane fact to me compared to how many China has. Their traffic cams are impressive
warm@kbin.earth 8 months ago
Because they have to protect the children!! Oh why won't anyone think of the children?!
aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
andrew does every night.
anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Or the poor adults who can’t be bothered to parent their own spawn.
LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
They over there looking at America being the absolute fuck up it is and are jealous.
fluxion@lemmy.world 8 months ago
To be fair, they were the OGs of a prosperous stable country spontaneously shooting themselves in the head because someone convinced them they could be doing SOOO much better aaaannd it’s gone…
PattyMcB@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Oh, here we go 🍿