mmarian 2025-07-28 02:33 UTC link

sefrost 2025-07-28 05:01 UTC link

It is only a matter of time before they attempt to regulate VPN usage. Here is an article written by a British MP hinting at that:

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/onli...

tapoxi 2025-07-28 05:07 UTC link

I really don't understand why it wasn't just a requirement for Apple and Google to include a client side filter. Parent sets up the phone and it's enabled by default. Much simpler option for everyone involved.

cakealert 2025-07-28 05:35 UTC link

What message does it send when your government tries to impose costs on your preferred behavior while at the same time being unable to do it when you download a single app?

The words that come to mind are malicious and incompetent. The only 'achievement' is to increase contempt towards the government. And the times aren't exactly stable to begin with.

zaptheimpaler 2025-07-28 05:54 UTC link

Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically is taking action - is the issue bigger there, or are they just more aware of and willing to act on it.

thdhhghgbhy 2025-07-28 05:59 UTC link

The new online safety rules are already being used to shut down government criticism. How it works is their new elite protection squad, if someone is deigned an influential critic of government policy, trawls through your social media posts until they find something against the laws. A lot of government critique is coming from the working class here now, who have virtually no political representation in the UK. As you can imagine, some of these social media posters don't mince their words, and end up getting caught out and arrested.

gg82 2025-07-28 06:14 UTC link

The safety rules are also being used to block content about protests in the UK. How convenient for them.

https://freespeechunion.org/protest-footage-blocked-as-onlin...

gorgoiler 2025-07-28 07:06 UTC link

The VPN trick potentially won’t last long. We’ve seen it go stale already in the world of intellectual property rights. For at least the last ten years Netflix et al have been well aware of which AS numbers / IP netblocks correspond to people sat at home in front of the TV, and which correspond to servers in a rack somewhere (including those hosting VPN endpoints.)

One tweak to the rules and all of a sudden not only do porn sites have to verify the age of their UK visitors but also anyone connecting from something other than a residential ISP.

The more troubling thing about these laws is enforcement. The threat of fines only works against websites that map to a business entity. For anything else there will surely see a ramp up in the size of The Great British Firewall Ruleset, edited by the courts, and distributed to the Big N (5?) ISPs.

What will become of the smaller ISPs that refuse to block illegal sites?

chrismatheson 2025-07-28 08:31 UTC link

There are a lot of comments and thinking along the demo and gloom lines.

On the "silver lining" side, could be a eye-opener for the population of the UK, that things they take for granted cant get summarily yanked away if they don't actually do something.

And with any luck it will pull up the technical competency of every person using these services (pretty much every adult).

With any luck parents might even be forced to gain the skill their kids already live and breathe and don't think twice about.

:)

PaulKeeble 2025-07-28 13:09 UTC link

A lot of people are going to be putting their ID details into all sorts of websites and giving this to all sorts of third parties because of this law. Its going to cause a huge increase in ID related theft and fraud in the coming years and its not even going to achieve its stated goal. Worse is its blocking sites it really shouldn't, wikipedia is fighting this in court at the moment because they want to censor it!

This is terrible legislation, there is a petition that has reached 350k already to repeal it. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903

justref 2025-07-28 13:21 UTC link

I wonder which company is gonna be the first one to leak all of the ID and Selfies. After that, I'm expecting these laws to be lifted off.

RealCodingOtaku 2025-07-28 15:58 UTC link

There is a petition to repeal the Online Safety Act[0].

The initial government response can be read as “lol, no”.

[0] https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903

qingcharles 2025-07-28 17:15 UTC link

British VPN users right now:

https://x.com/NoContextBrits/status/1949181229791592887

or

https://xcancel.com/NoContextBrits/status/194918122979159288...

reedf1 2025-07-29 12:52 UTC link

Phishing for material for sextortion has never been more trivial. The implementation of this is going to lead to mass fraud. Walk into parliament, ask who is willing to go to jail in defense of the act if and when the first lot of randy pensioners are bankrupted, or kid commits suicide out of shame - and if no one raises their hand, repeal it.

digitalsushi 2025-07-29 12:55 UTC link

Our ability to filter and modify the content of the web constantly improves, and itchy trigger fingers might hover over many nation's "Great Walls", ready at the next galvanizing event to overnight change our relationship with this interchange we exist upon.

My current guess is that if things really went to hell with censorship and disjointedness, that we'd re-establish an ancient pattern - magazines. I recall as a child, my uncle would leave his "Big Blue Disks" around for perusing, and it was a magazine in the form of floppy disks, of various media - essays, games, primitive computer music.

The curation of these always struck me as a great favor. Perhaps not compatible with the current attention span, such a provision, in the absence of access, would, I believe, quickly become a surrogate for what we lost.

Of course, these magazines are editorialized, and so we're at the mercy of the editor's perspectives to discern the truth. I appreciate our current access to information, even in its weakening form.

But I suppose I'd prefer if we could not tinker more with censorship. I think I may be looking for a digital magazine in the next decade, or whatever else we can invent to replace our losses.

Veliladon 2025-07-29 13:13 UTC link

This is one of the times where law is outrunning technology. Apple and Google are both working on anonymous attestation but they're pulling the trigger before it's ready.

But that's not what laws like these are about. In the US at least these laws are driven by Christian Nationalists are setting up a situation where PII of porn users is able to be leaked. That's what they're counting on. They also want to have political control of platforms by continually holding a Sword of Damocles above any publisher's head.

kypro 2025-07-29 13:40 UTC link

I was thinking last night how many in some ways these age verification laws might actually have some upside for those of us who were fond of the early internet...

Ultimately what these laws will end up doing is pushing internet traffic towards the "normie web", create a separation between sites which refuse to implement these measures and those who will.

Ultimately for this filters to work authoritarian countries like the UK will need to ban sites like 4chan which do not comply with their age verification demands despite hosting adult content. As it stands until the UK do this the age filtering may as well not exist because kids (and adults) will just go to other sites.

Additionally search and content aggregators will likely come under increased pressure to blacklist these "rogue" sites so slowly both the ability to access non-compliant sites and the ability to find non-compliant sites will diminish.

Like in the old days when cool sites and blogs spread more by word of mouth than social media and search aggregators, we're likely heading back to a world where those who are savvy enough to work around the filtering of authoritarian states will have access to a new kind of "semi-dark web" or a "rogue web".

I almost like that idea. If the internet bifurcates it might actually become a more authentic place for those of us in know. I suppose the only question then is whether authoritarian countries like the UK will ultimately come after private VPN users as well, but I feel like that would be impractically costly to enforce.

benreesman 2025-07-29 14:32 UTC link

This seems like a hard fight to win against determined network engineers without OFAC-level co-encorcement around spending money abroad.

I rent servers in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Tokyo, and many other places, and route tunnels among them all, and this is just mundane aboveboard stuff, many of the providers happily accept PayPal and crypto as well as CC and wire. I haven't even tried to design a system for evading this sort of thing, I can only imagine the ceiling is pretty high: QUIC and shit are increasingly the default.

I oppose this on principle, very much oppose it. I'm merely noting that until they're willing to start licensing the right to spend money abroad, they're going to have a tough time outlawing VPNs with any effect.

Maybe this pushes everyone to switch to Tor all at once: fucking with people's porno is a pretty quick way to move things around in the App Store ranking.

It would serve em right if this backfired massively by getting everyone to go cypherpunk by default.

thisisit 2025-07-29 15:16 UTC link

The 2nd order effect is that nearly every creator will be sponsored by NordVPN - as the market expands. As well as not being able to identify legitimate vs illegitimate uses. So, I guess mission achieved!?

donmcronald 2025-07-29 16:27 UTC link

I wonder what the (supposed) anti-censorship people that supported things like eSNI and DoH think about this. They took away our ability to filter our own networks, so now we can't even argue that filtering and monitoring is something that should be done on the client side (per network).

Sometimes I feel like both sides are actually just one side playing the long game. IMO the goal is to get verified digital IDs in use everywhere they can so they can lock down the internet to have absolute control. We'll end up paying inflated subscriptions for everything and watching all the ads.

These are the kinds of regulations that are deigned for incumbents because it becomes impossible for new market entrants to satisfy the requirements. I wouldn't be surprised if big tech companies are silently lobbying for this kind of stuff behind closed doors.

scott_w 2025-07-28 05:25 UTC link

It definitely seems like she’s conflating two issues: access to pornography and child grooming. I don’t see why she thinks regulating VPNs would reduce the latter.

john01dav 2025-07-28 05:34 UTC link

It's because this law isn't about protecting children, but about control of the Internet. They want online activity tied to real identity as a power grab.

ChrisKnott 2025-07-28 06:09 UTC link

Do you have any examples of people being arrested for criticising a law?

Most of the time these dystopian descriptions of the UK turn out to be completely overblown nonsense when you look into them properly.

alwa 2025-07-28 06:23 UTC link

> “West Yorkshire Police denied any involvement in blocking the footage. X declined to comment, but its AI chatbot, Grok, indicated the clip had been restricted under the Online Safety Act due to violent content.”

I’m not involved with X or with its chatbot. Is its chatbot ordinarily an authoritative source for facts about assumptions like this one, that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video?

It’s a bad look either way, but I feel like there are important differences between the law leading to overly conservative automated filtering, vs political actors using it deliberately in specific cases. Bad symptom either way, but different medicines, right?

cs02rm0 2025-07-28 07:05 UTC link

The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're seeing those with a few quid to rub together leave, but as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income.

On the NHS, I tried for years to push for improvements to switch to digital cancer screening invitations after they missed my mother (offering to build the software for free), which is now happening, but suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here. My sister who works in NHS DEI hasn't spoken to me since publishing a book on it.

Every time someone with the finances, vision and ability leaves I think the situation gets a little bit worse, it increases the proportion of people remaining willing to put up with all of it. Anecdotally, many of my friends have already left, some of the older generation want to leave but feel tied in. My flight out is in 6 weeks. Good riddance, no doubt.

willvarfar 2025-07-28 07:33 UTC link

Its because the popular press has, for a very long time, been pushing a narrative of a country under siege. It sells papers, but to keep selling papers, it has to keep steadily upping the narrative over time.

nly 2025-07-28 07:33 UTC link

This isn't about illegal sites?

I don't think many people object to blacklisting known sources of child pornography etc.

The fact is you now have to verify your identity (name and photo id) in the UK to access an adult subreddit.

orthoxerox 2025-07-28 07:40 UTC link

> Sarah Champion is Labour MP for Rotherham.

Seriously? You can't make this up: she represents the town that did nothing about a massive (and completely offline) child grooming and molestation network for years and she has the gall to say, "think of the children on the Internet"?

crimsoneer 2025-07-28 07:52 UTC link

The fact X flags protest videos as adult content is not entirely the fault of the UK government.

crimsoneer 2025-07-28 07:54 UTC link

Because reinforcing a natural monopoly is bad? The law is specifically written to allow a range of different business models etc.

Also, because desktops/different browsers are a thing?

blitzar 2025-07-28 07:55 UTC link

> it wasn't just a requirement for Apple and Google to include a client side filter

I am old enough to remember when Apple proposed client side filtering and everyone absolutely lost their shit.

makingstuffs 2025-07-28 08:00 UTC link

In a word, division. The UK is so divided that people are too busy pointing the finger at each other to realise the root cause of the deterioration of our quality of life is entirely generations of mismanagement of the public purse.

Instead of questioning how MPs are entitled to a pay rise while your average person gets made redundant, people are questioning why people fleeing persecution should ‘be paid for with my tax money’.

Brain fatigue and mixed signals combined with destitution and desperation drastically impede the average person’s ability and desire to fact check and extrapolate. We are moving towards a society of down and out people living with no hope serving the elite and those with a bit of money behind them.

My fiancée and I have had enough and are also leaving in October. No idea where to all we know is we have a one way ticket away and will figure the rest out.

hkon 2025-07-28 13:01 UTC link

Any suggestions?

cornfieldlabs 2025-07-28 13:17 UTC link

This. Even sites who don't want to store IDs because they are small or it's against their ethos have to do it or pack their bags

reflexco 2025-07-28 13:37 UTC link

I used to be optimistic that way, but if you look somewhere similar developments happened before like China: yes, people adapted to circumvent their regime's oppression, but the laws never changed.

Since surveillance is only a 2nd tier issue in terms of mind share (at best), it's untouched by electoral democracy. And because rulers automatically support more surveillance, there are no mechanisms for positive developments on that side, both in the UK and in China.

graemep 2025-07-28 13:43 UTC link

> I wonder why the UK specifically is taking action - is the issue bigger there, or are they just more aware of and willing to act on it.

Other countries are moving in the same direction. The EU has repeatedly tried to push things like on device scanning or banning encryption.

> Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government.

Mostly a failure of democracy - we have two major parties that are hard to tell apart.

They are both cynical and scared, and have for decades believed the future of Britain is managed decline. They also strongly believe the hoi polloi have to be forced to do what is good for them - e.g. the sugar tax and other "nudge politics", or the currently Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill which is basically about imposing central policy on how children are brought up and educated.

kelsey98765431 2025-07-28 13:49 UTC link

This is just a cat a mouse game. VPN services will start to offer residential endpoints when enough websites start blocking them enough to damage the value proposition. There is no way on the current internet to verify an ip address means anything at all other than it's an ip address.

Ylpertnodi 2025-07-28 13:51 UTC link

> After that, I'm expecting these laws to be lifted off.

Bollocks (nicely). A shit-load of 'the 1%', just got a free pass. If anything, after that!, 'I'm expecting these laws to be doubled-down on.'

e4325f 2025-07-28 14:46 UTC link

Doesn't make any sense, it's in Netflix's interest to prevent this, but it's the opposite for porn sites.

Jean-Papoulos 2025-07-28 15:50 UTC link

If anything they will double down to "track cyber-bullying" or some other load of horsecrap.

isaacremuant 2025-07-28 15:53 UTC link

If COVID policies and mandates including the vaccine passports which absolutely paved the way for digital IDs for any action in society, didn't wake up populations around the world, nothing will.

You just need to scare them when there's an appearance of dissent and that's that.

Few people can combat them effectively from a tech and legal framework, for sure, but don't expect magic from nowhere.

Every time this comes up, an accusation with some label becomes sufficient to dismiss any arguments from a person.

jonathantf2 2025-07-28 16:14 UTC link

I'm not sure I've ever seen a petition on that website with a positive outcome.

tmaly 2025-07-28 16:18 UTC link

There is definitely some questionable VPN providers.

qingcharles 2025-07-28 16:28 UTC link

I don't know. A lot of countries in the Middle East block all sorts of stuff and yet VPN usage is ubiquitous, but the governments appear to turn a blind eye. Like "we've done our bit and made the law." So it remains to be seen how far they'll go with this.

koakuma-chan 2025-07-28 16:32 UTC link

Government responded

"I would like to thank all those who signed the petition."

Who "I" ?

tim333 2025-07-28 16:33 UTC link

My Reddit selfie was a bit rubbish looking. I think they'll have to abolish the law if that gets out.

Xelbair 2025-07-28 16:34 UTC link

From tourist point of view UK felt to me like a police state, and I'm leaning more towards the former view. Cameras everywhere, non-stop reminders that you're being watched, being tracked everywhere(including which train car you're in now), constant reminders about possible dangerous bags being left alone etc.

Tracking would feel helpful and useful, if not for constant oppressive reminders that "Bad Thing could happen any second, be vigilant!".

While at the same time, it was vastly more unsafe than Eastern Europe.. and cities themselves were vastly dirtier.

Whole trip felt more like what i would imagine visit to mainland China would be like rather than a trip to a free western country.

To be honest and to give some context - they have been under threat of terrorism(due to The Troubles first - the name itself seems to reinforce this view, seems innocent..) roughly since end of WW2. well WW2 was a factor too.

To add a bit more context: this wasn't my first nor last trip to UK, and each time i visit it the worse it feels in every aspect: Cleanliness of cities, safety, and oppressiveness.

data-ottawa 2025-07-28 17:04 UTC link

Adding a browser header field would be sufficient, could be easily integrated into the OS and browser, and would let developers handle this issue in a few hours worth of effort.

ID verification is such an invasive measure and prone to the exact same failures as the simplest solutions.

renewiltord 2025-07-28 17:13 UTC link

Everyone with any ability to open their eyes migrated to the US from the UK ages ago. The civilization that exists today is what happens when people too scared to get on a boat live in the dregs of a dying empire.

vorticalbox 2025-07-28 17:13 UTC link

> The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.

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