- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
This has nothing to do with porn or protecting children. It’s a backdoor way to attach names and faces to VPN usage so movie and music studios can sue specific people for torrenting. They failed in bringing lawsuits previously because they couldn’t pin point the piracy to specific individuals. I would bet money that the ministers leading this charge have ties to groups in the movie and music industry. The UK will be the testbed before the full rollout in the EU and then worldwide.
This is a lot bigger than the entertainment industry now. Creeping fascism and the trillion dollar surveillance capitalism industry are hellish bed buddies.
Even with an association of an identity to a VPN provider, there is no one-to-one correspondence between a person and an IP address.
True but that at least gives them a start point to try a prosecution that they didn’t have before. It also depends on if the VPN provider responds to a subpeona request or national/international jurisdictions.
This is fascists using “think of the children” to violate everyone’s online privacy and spy on everyone worldwide.
Everyone’s scared of Reform getting in and yet Reform are the only ones promising to reverse all this. All this is done based off the back of a 2016 survey where parents said they were worried about kids watching porn on the internet, but the survey gave no indication of what a solution would look like and gave no mention to online age verification and banning VPNs.
Why are people scared of reform getting in?
Because they are a bunch of idiot racist grifters. And those are their good points.
Racism, homophobia & sexism mostly, but I’m sure I’m missing a few.
Unfortunately amongst the unwashed masses of the British public this bill isnt actually particularly unpopular.
I don’t think it’s particularly popular either, no one seems to even really know about it.
If I had a nickle for ever time the UK did something pants-on-head stupid or short-sighted from a minor survey or public poll, [counts change jar]… How much are big macs these days?
Wow that doesn’t look shady at all.
Are you serious? It’s real and lead by the only two sane people left in British politics.
Personally I do have to agree though, the website itself looks kinda scuffed.
Stop ministers using VPNs to watch child porn.
Told!
Yeah, never forget how the people in power routinely gave Epstein a pass because they were participating in raping kids.
All this “for the children” is performative bullshit to take more power away from the average person.
Yeah, it’s just all these children with their bank accounts paying for their VPN subscriptions doing it all… Do they think we’re that stupid? Don’t answer that. 😔
It’s the free VPNs that are the problem. They are privacy nightmares.
If only there was some way the government could have predicted this would happen and maybe not rushed a poorly thought out law in the first place!
maybe then they would not have:
- forced big tech companies to withdraw service to the uk
- forced uk-based small forums and message boards to close
- given free vpn providers tons more data to sell
- reduced the overall cyber resilience of the country by forcing people to choose between giving photos of their passports to some weird online service or signing up for a free vpn which sells their data, may inject their own unregulated adverts etc
- reduced uk based advertising effectiveness and thus investment and marketing spend
- pissed everyone off while doing it, scoring yet another win for the far right
absolute roasters the lot of them
Well, hold your beer because Brazil is just passing a similar law at this moment. Expect other countries to follow.
It’s happening due to a big child sexualization/adultization scandal that took forever to blow up[1]. When the deputies came up with a law that was ready and just sitting in a drawer, my mind immediately went “Oh, fuck”. I still gotta read it, because it was approved recently.
While instagram itself has some “moderation”, they’ll happily turn a blind eye to anything that could hurt engagement. 10yo girls doing extremely sexual dances with pornographic music in the background? Boost that shit, look at the engagement!!! Tiktok is equally at fault for the same reason. This shit has been going for years and predates Hytalo and Felca. ↩︎
Which is worse, the free VPNs or the UK government?
I mean I don’t think I could pick right now 😂
It’s a bit like “my kids will only eat chocolate” and the therapist’s response “where are they getting the chocolate from?”. If the kids are using VPNs then where are they getting the money for the VPN from? Is this parental consent?
Most likely they’re using “free” VPNs.
Which is an anticipated problem too. Because those free VPNs are harvesting all of your traffic to sell; If you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold. Almost as if opponents of the ban said this would happen, and would only work to push kids towards sketchy sites…
This is FUD, but most of you will believe it to fit in with others.
Here’s a free VPN: riseup.net/en/vpn
Let us know if you find any evidence that they are doing what you accuse them of.
a rare exception. but most have a different business model
Crazy how I got censored for posting that. Looks like there’s some kind of concerted effort to suppress information of reliable free VPNs.
Everyone check the modlogs to see what these people are trying to keep from you.
well that was interesting. what is your justification @technopagan@lemmy.world because that is obviously not “spam”. I’m almost sure you’ll just delete my comment too instead of an explanation.
https://photon.lemmy.world/modlog?user=17022223
It’s also interesting you got 3 downvotes. too bad we can’t check their owners anymore.
Mods are humans and make errors. No reason to suspect a conspiracy or be a dick about it
This shouldn’t have been censored.
Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: “Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it’s absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that’s one of my major recommendations.”
If this fucker had any idea what VPN even stood for they’d realize how fuckin stupid this statement is…
Let’s say they do. So people start using non UK VPNs. So you need age verification for any Internet access? For any computer or phone that could connect to the Internet?
Don’t parental controls exist for a reason? Can’t you just block VPN use on individual devices like an additional parental control rather than making everyone that uses a VPN prove they’re not a child?
That’s what they’re aiming for, yes.
They want to know where everyone is and what every person is doing at every possible moment of every day, be that in public or on the Internet. They are paranoid and know that their entire system is in danger of collapse with the common man gaining control over the rich and powerful.
Thus they resort to extreme control of the commoners to ensure that won’t happen.
Child protection and anti-pornography stances are perfect excuses because they’re very difficult to argue against.
difficult to argue against.
Well, except for this one.
Every time some new measure is released “for protection”, the next day it’s being used to sniff out dissidents. That usually means journalists, activists (political, labor, environment, …) and sympathisants to give them a bit of pressure to straight up arrest them on some pretense.
and here we have the heart of the issue, and their end goal. identification required for Internet access. total control.
100% and as always they boil it down to “well even if all that other stuff is true, it’s for the safety of children.”
Yet we have fucking confirmation that exposing networks of wealthy and powerful pedophiles is not on the agenda. Those people are untouchable. Those people are also the ones that we are handing complete control over to.
So who tf are we really protecting children from by doing this?
So you need age verification for any Internet access? For any computer or phone that could connect to the Internet?
I mean, experts have said for a while that if you’re going to require age verification, doing it directly on the device would be the most secure way. Allow parents to verify their phones, while creating child accounts for their kids.
When the site needs to verify their age, it simply asks the device directly if the user account is age-verified. It all happens in the background, so the adults never even need to bother with it once it’s set up.
That makes sense. And seems like it would have much easier implementation as well.
You ban something, and people will always find a way around it. Always.
Yup, and that’s how the US got the Mafia. We banned alcohol, but people wanted to drink, so the Mafia made that happen.
All a ban does is hurt law abiding citizens and businesses.
This is a fairly revisionist history version of the mafia, they were here for decades before prohibition. One might say that they profited greatly from prohibition, but to suggest they began with it is incredibly incorrect. I hate to be the actually guy but I find organized crime fascinating and I can’t let this one go
Eh, not revisionist, just overly simplified. Prohibition massively increased their power and relevance.
Not all bans are bad or hurt law abiding citizens. Slavery and gambling come to mind, both still exist illegally (or, in the case of gambling, semi-legally, what with the deluge of sports betting and online casinos HQd in shitty countries), but I would say them being illegal is a net positive for society.
Eh, I disagree. Slavery being banned is obviously a good thing, but that’s because it’s immoral to own someone else, so it’s essentially just kidnapping. Gambling, on the other hand, shouldn’t be banned for the simple reason that consenting adults should be able to do it if they choose.
Basically, I believe there are two types of rights:
- negative rights - restricts others from preventing individuals from doing things to you (e.g. freedom from slavery, freedom to gamble, etc)
- positive rights - forces others to provide goods or services to you (e.g. free healthcare, right to counsel, etc)
I believe nobody should gamble because it’s a poor financial decision and very addictive (and I choose to avoid gambling), but I also believe you should be allowed to gamble, and the government should ensure that companies that provide gambling services do so fairly (i.e. advertisements about win-rates and whatnot are accurate).
So yes, if gambling wasn’t allowed, people w/ addictions would be better off, but those who aren’t at risk of gambling addiction would be harmed due to restrictions on their freedom. So the question is, do we want government to protect us from ourselves, or merely provide a safety net for when we screw up? I’m absolutely in the latter camp, and I think we should use taxes to fund recovery programs for addictive behaviors in lieu of banning them. In general, I think a tax is way more rights-respecting than a ban.
Gambling between two people or very small groups is mostly ok and something humans have done since cave times.
Now, because real life has profit seeking corporations in control of gambling that know and abuse all psychological tricks available to maximize profits, I don’t think allowing them to exist is good for anyone except the owners. Casinos are also perfect for money laundering, so that’s another reason to not allow them to function, although with the internet they can just pick and choose a country to exist in.
I agree that gambling is bad and nobody should do it, but that’s different from the government preventing you from doing it.
Something being “bad” doesn’t mean it should be banned, it means it needs closer scrutiny to make sure both sides of the transaction are fully informed of the risks and can meaningfully consent.
money laundering
I don’t like this reasoning because the underlying assumption is that violating people’s privacy is okay if it helps catch criminals.
That said, there are typically rules that limit this. In most areas, casinos have to ID you and report any transaction over a certain amount (usually $10k or so per day, many casinos have a lower threshold) to tax authorities specifically to combat money laundering, just like banks do. That seems to limit money laundering for larger players, but obviously doesn’t do much for smaller players. To do better, we either need much lower limits, or much higher surveillance, and both would violate innocent people’s privacy.
Instead of that, we should take a hard look at policy and policing. For example, a lot of money laundering is by drug dealers, and they exist due to drug bans. Maybe we should consider legalizing and regulating more drugs, which would give people safer options, reduce incarceration rates, and reduce laundering from illegal drugs since more people would go for the safer options. On the policing side, we can improve training, reallocate people from ticketing to investigative work, and build community trust to improve quality of reports.
At the end of the day, I think personal liberty and privacy is more important than preventing harm or catching criminals. I also think we can do both, but we need to start from the perspective of maximising liberty and privacy.
When you think about it, most of the work of catching criminals (or gathering evidence) involves invasion of privacy, I guess it becomes a question of how much we’re willing to part with
Dead drop USBs for file sharing?
Banning Pornhub makes them use the VPNs in the first place.
Clearly it’s a parental problem to determine if the VPN they are buying for their kids is being used to wank off, but apparently this party of ‘liberty’ has an unhealthy obsession with monitoring our children’s genitalia these days.
Unfortunately, neither Labour nor Conservatives are parties of liberty, although there are some individuals within both that see the importance.
Stop ministers from using children.
Watch them get Halloween masks to make them look like grammar just so they can automatically get recognized into the good stuff… BDSM burrito spiroasting. When I was a kid I kept a matchbox that I found on the streets. It was this awesome woman with the best looking naturally inspired gigantic breasts from Dick’s last resort. Who ever dropped those, thanks man, you made my member at least 1/4" taller. At least. I don’t know what the effects are to be honest.
Why are the kids technologically illiterate and undersexed until it comes to matters of government control? I’m not usually into tin foil hats, but this doesn’t feel like the kids are the primary concern here.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory if everybody already knows it.
What you said there, that was just a fact.
I know, it just bothers me how little they’re trying to hide it.
They aren’t.
But Dame Wontsomeonethinkof-de-Children saw a government report which says 65% of children under 5 have seen explicit videos of kittens being raped to death using power tools! Surely this constitutes an emergency which requires us to abandon online anonimity
When they effectively make the internet a dangerous place, Usenet will rise from the darkness. P2P will also always exist and these politicians dont understand computer math, so a lot of what they’re trying to accomplish is bound to fail.
As someone who just read the Wikipedia article on Usenet and doesn’t know anything else about it: Would this be pretty much the equivalent of the internet before search engines? Because if so I’m really intrigued
From my small understanding, usenet was like several forums loosely connected to one another, many servers are used mainly for filesharing. Every time I’ve checked some servers, all of them had a paywall to create an account.
Think fediverse less features more text
Never mind search engines, Usenet was being used before people were using web browsers.
I’ll read up more on it, seems interesting













