This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Just to fast-forward this dumb cat-and-mouse thing, the next step is people go back to torrenting their porn and deeper down the rabbit hole of garbage "free" websites skirting the rules.
As always, the UK is useful on the international stage because sometimes you need to be able to point at some idiot trying dumb stuff to explain to people why dumb stuff is dumb.
It does feel that way. UK bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig stunting it's own commonwealth.
Next someone will try enforcing paper umbrellas as a solution for climate action. We'll all say, "That won't work". They'll still do it; it won't work. We'll say, "We told you so", and it won't get reversed because they're already aiming at the next foot to shoot.
100% Brexit quickly shut up similar movements when people saw how badly it went
This kinda proves that it was never about the children. How many children have know how and the means to buy a VPN subscription?
Still an important part. Free VPNs that spy on you are a thing, but work
A lot more than you know, I knew how to use it since middle school.
And if they don't know they will use Reddit to find out how to access the sites:
https://reddit.adminforge.de/r/teenagers/comments/tv70x0/do_yall_know_a_good_vpn/?
Don't underestimate kids.
the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems
The government: Parents have you tried being a parent to your children?
Parents: Oh lord no that's too difficult can't you just, I don't know lol, ban it or something?
In my English textbook, ca. 2007 there was a comic of a child in a cage hanging outside the house. The father told the neighbor something like "This way they get out of the house, but stay off the streets."
I think that hit quite well, what many consider parenting in the UK.
This ends with just another war on encryption.
When encryption is legal, they can't know what is going on between two points. They going to make is so we can only have encryption to nodes they trust?
It is dangerously technologically illiterate to wage war on encryption.
Best of luck with that, idiots. How are you planning to tell the difference between my personal VPN and my work VPN?
If they outlaw VPNs then all internet-connected businesses will flee and everyone will just move to the dark net. Then you’ve got a whole other problem.
These ancient tyrants are in over their heads.
Selfishly, I think this is great for I2P/Snowflake/Tor. The incoming legitimate traffic helps to protect its most vulnerable users.
That sounds a bit like fear mongering from Reform: a VPN is safety 101 when using public networks, and most businesses make use of VPNs to secure their data. They are also a key component if WFH (you use the company VPN).
If Labour are stupid enough to go after VPN usage, I suspect it would guarantee their loss at the next election.
Eh, I dunno. The vast majority have no idea what a VPN is. If a VPN ban benefits Rupert fucking Murdoch then the tabloids will wang on about how they're used by paedophiles and people smugglers and that'll be that.
It would have been smarter for the UK to mandate that every ISP must provide a family filter for free as part of their service. Something that is optional and can be turned on or off by the account holder but allows parents to set filters (and curfews) if they want. They could even require that ISPs require new signups to affirm if they want it on or off by default so people with families are more likely to start with it enabled.
The problem is that content filters don't work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that's fairly straightforward ... but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.
I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn't the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they're doing exactly jack shit about that.
"It has come to our attention that we haven't fascismed hard enough, nor in sufficient detail"
Damn. Labor really wants to lose that election to Farage. Good luck to Corbyn and Sultana, I guess.
Farage: Gets elected.
Everyone: At least you'll abolish the OSA!
Farage: Nah, I said that because it would make me popular. Amma use the OSA to ban things I consider "woke".
Maybe if they see significant issues with the populace adhereing to this law they should identify the solution of revoking the unpopular law.
Come on UK, just skip all the boring parts and make unremovable collars for everyone fitted with GPS, cameras and miniature bombs that can be remotely detonated. After all, that's the only way to make sure nobody is doing bad, very bad illegal stuff and to PROTECT THE CHILDREN, isn't it? Fucking hell, these fucks really are trying to create a bloody dystopia...
I’d email my MP to ask why this Labour Government is using the BBC to promote Reform talking points and implementing brain dead Reform policies, but I don’t expect anything other than the blandest party line response.
"We will force you to do what we want", democracy in action
"Safety" meanwhile these same mp's can't budget can't run critical public services like bloody hospitals.
But don't worry, your thoughts and activity are policed.
Democratic failure to prioritise and run a country at its finest on display for the world to see. The waste is astounding.
Isn't this currently what Russia is trying to do with their internet?
It's something russia has been doing for a decade and got pretty good at.
A long term blanket vpn ban is not compatible with a modern digital infrastructure, but with certain protocols (openvpn, wireguard) they can detect their usage and filter them out when necessary.
It does require a lot of expensive DPI (deep packet inspection) hardware I'm not sure UK has, so building a Great Firewall of Britain (Hadrian's Firewall?) will take some time.
If this comes to anything I'm moving to somewhere in the EU and pursuing citizenship there. This is clearly not about protecting the children anymore (not that it ever was).
EU is about to do the exact same thing. Norway is the place to be. That's where I went - at least according to my ip address.
Funny how its always so important to ban useful and empowering things for citizens in the name of safety but someone we can't ban business practices that cause mass extinctions, change the climate, impoverish the working class or kill enough of us to only be seen as a statistic instead of people. If they actually cared about safety, they would be banning the things that cause mass suffering and death, not VPNs. We should be opposed to these kinds of bans on the principle that it further disempowered us so we are less able to deal with the threats of all the mass suffering and death that they refuse to keep us safe from.
apparently having a functioning brain isn't a requirement of being an mp
but of course we knew that when she did this in 2019:
On 16 July 2019, Champion stated: "If my party comes out as a remain party rather than trying to find a deal or >rather than trying to exit, I can't support that, it goes against democracy". She said she would rather support a "no-deal Brexit" than remain in the EU, as she believed Labour had to deliver the result of the 2016 referendum.
They can come and pry TOR from my cold dead hands lmfao
this law can eat shit. i ain't gonna dox myself and feed my personal info to companies. maybe they should take this as a hint that most people care about their privacy
if you don't want kids seeing NSFW stuff be an actual parent and don't raise your kids on the internet??
If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems
Your law is the difficult problem you daft cunt
Lol what is going on over there. The UK is becoming more dystopian by the day.
Not even China can ban VPN entirely, because businesses use it as a security measure.
Show me a ban that didn’t came with 10x problems. People have their needs even the filthy ones. Especially the filthy ones. Hence will find a way to fulfill it. If there’s no legal way to do so the demand will create an alternative market for it to match the demand…more trouble on the way if that’s the lane the UK choose
But they can't seem to muster up the "political" will to tax the rich
This online safety bill is dishonest. This has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with money.
Labour are not governing for the people, and they are not the Labour party anymore.
And there's the other shoe dropping with VPNs now. Didn't even take them an extra fucking year
"Hey! Stop using well known workarounds to my idiot demands! Surely this is brand new technology that no one could have known about!"
The UK is the testing grounds. After they figure it out, they’ll be rolling it out everywhere else.
