this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 228 points 3 days ago (12 children)

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.

[–] LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 61 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They over there looking at America being the absolute fuck up it is and are jealous.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 42 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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...

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[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 35 points 3 days 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.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 29 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Because they have to protect the children!! Oh why won't anyone think of the children?!

[–] anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works 20 points 3 days ago

Or the poor adults who can't be bothered to parent their own spawn.

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[–] synapse1278@lemmy.world 126 points 3 days ago (3 children)

There is no amount of blocking the Internet that will safeguard the children effectively. The real solution is this:

collapsed inline media

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 51 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If this were actually done to children/teens surely their brains would not form any associations between being restrained and horny, right?

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 29 points 3 days ago
[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

seems like a great way to train for hands free orgasms.

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[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 88 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 47 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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 21 points 3 days ago

Quite insane honestly

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[–] dan@upvote.au 78 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

Only commercial VPNs? So HTTP proxying, Tor, SSH tunneling, SOCKS tunneling, running your own VPN node, etc are all allowed? There's plenty of VPS hosting companies that don't need ID or proof of age to sign up. Even if the UK requires this, you can just sign up for a server outside the UK.

There's also weird approaches that work but not many systems catch, like tunneling stateless data (like HTTP responses) over DNS TXT lookups.

When I was in high school in the 2000s, kids figured out how to bypass the internet filtering at school. Kids these days have way more resources available to them, making it even easier to do.

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[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 76 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I fucking hate the UK, so much.

The MPs and Peers only fucking learnt about VPNs when this bullshit bill was being passed. They're so fucking clueless about the whole thing. They don't understand what a VPN exactly is and what it does and the fact their own government (hopefully) uses them, as do Banks (for security), Companies, and indeed, how it works.

This will lead to more bullshit.

[–] NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Wrote a email to my MP for this exact reason.

The OSA needs repealing. All it's doing is either teaching people to follow poor digital hygiene practices, or forcing people to follow more risky methods of bypassing the OSA controls.

Whole guise of child safety is laughable when they've made zero attempts to educate everyone (not just kids) on being safe online.

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[–] treesquid@lemmy.world 63 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Shithole country doing shithole things. The UK is acting like a red state, and their standard of living is dropping accordingly.

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[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 60 points 3 days ago

You can just mail cash to mullvad and include a code that links it to your account.

[–] nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 56 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

This is how you get under-18s to use Tor browser

[–] sefra1@lemmy.zip 48 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 27 points 3 days ago (4 children)

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

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[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 49 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Like Idiocracy has been a manual for the US, V for Vendetta is a manual for the UK.

For fuck sake people, these are movies of worlds we DON'T want to live in.

[–] Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world 37 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Quick! Someone make a movie where the population suffers from affordable housing, free and universal healthcare, fair taxation, and a healthy planet!

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 days ago (9 children)

You mean Star Trek? But where are the suffering people? It's no fun when there is no suffering. Why would fascists want a world like that. I don't understand why there are not more people willing to support the 1%ers. We might all be suffering, but their lives matter too you know! The world we live in right now, like in Don't Look Up, is much more appealing. I mean, fuck poor people, fuck sick people, fuck hungry people. It's their life choice. They just should have been born more fortunate. It's their choice to have no life, no future, no opportunity. Might as well lock them up in prison (concentration camps) and use them for forced labor.

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[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 44 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Porn loophole? You can literally Google image search porn.

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[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 43 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I wonder how they figure that's going to work out.

I couldn't imagine being this pants-shittingly stupid about how the internet works.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 38 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Don't tell them you can buy a vps and run your own vpn in another country.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I demand total access to UK official's private life then.

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[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 36 points 2 days ago (2 children)

To the people of the UK:

What the hell is this authoritarian, pearl clutching shit? You're fucking shit up for everyone. Can you get your people to please fuck off?

Thanks, from some guy on the Internet.

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[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Don't forget to donate to Tor Project and/or a relay operator if you use it, even $1 covers like several TB of traffic.

We did the year of Linux. Let's make this the year of Tor.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

Real talk though, Tor for porn would be an awful experience and would slow down the entire Tor network. Tor is slow to begin with, and downloading large files (like videos) only slows things down even more for everyone. It should be a last resort, not the first thing people flock to. It’s the same reason people avoid torrenting over Tor; It’s slow and inefficient, so your downloads take fucking forever.

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[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 33 points 2 days ago (2 children)

VPN company: "Don't care, not in the UK, fuck off."

[–] Iloveyurianime@ani.social 14 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Mullvad vpn is probably gonna be safe from this demand from the uk because their account system relies on random string of numbers PLUS their website is also available on the tor browser

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[–] Wooki@lemmy.world 33 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

UK has a massive budget problem and they still keep increasing expenditure on surveillance. That social value is negative at this point as its taking money away from critical services. Well done to the Government continuing the worsen debt, health, and wellbeing of the population. A terrorist will kill 5-10 people, failure to protect the health & well being of population (who needs a roof over their head) it just pales in comparison.

[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 3 days ago (22 children)

UK has a massive federal budget problem...

The UK isn't a Federal Country. It's a Unitary state with Devolution. I know it is basically a Federal state in Practice (Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Stormont all have varying amounts of autonomy) but the distinction is significant.

and they still keep increasing expenditure on surveillance.

This is the fucked up bit though: The OSA doesn't put the burden of Age gates on the State. They put it on The Service Provider (Websites and services). This is why so many non-porn forums, lemmy instances, and mastodon instances have either had to shut down or geoblock the UK, all the responsibility is on them to institute this lest they get sued out the arse. They can't afford to get YOTI or whatever, or don't have the manpower or money to institute their own system, so they shut down.

It's also why overblocking is a thing: because the OSA's official defination of what should be blocked is so vague so the two people who decide what get's blocked are the Service Provider and the Government effectively in that order. This is why Reddit is blocking things that should not be agegated (like support groups), because the law is so fucking vague, and why sites like Twitter are blocking tweets that don't need to be blocked under the "news" exception (yes, there is an exception for the news).

All of this, by the way, is because an investment trust and thinktank (yes, a lovely little conflict of interest) called Carnegie United Kingdom Trust pretty much wrote the OSA for the government. As an investment trust, they invest money in things, but being private, they don't need to tell Joe Public what they invest in, nor to the Investees need to tell us. So basically, they invested in YOTI or some others like it, and are making money from it because so many sites are forced to have it to work in the UK.

And all the other major tech players (Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft) are developing "Digital ID" systems as a "solution" which will not only make it easier to track people for them and the government, but also for advertisers, so they aren't complaining either.

TL;DR, The UK basically put all the pressure on the Websites so their friends can make loads of money.

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[–] Zen_Shinobi@lemmy.world 31 points 3 days ago (2 children)

That's fine. We'll just use Tor instead

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 31 points 3 days ago (2 children)

They'll just block that too. Can't have a full blown dictatorship without taking away any freedom people have. Better not have a negative opinion about it either.

Holy Fuck 1984 was a warning, not a fucking manual on how to do things.

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[–] Danitos@reddthat.com 20 points 3 days ago

Im guessing they'll make it illegal for users to try to bypass the restriction.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Let's extend our unpopular law to more places! Soon, you'll have to verify your age to see boobs in real life. Which will be pretty unfortunate for teens trying to get busy in the backseats of cars.

Microsoft Banned Commercial

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[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 29 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Good luck preventing someone from getting a vps in the another country and doing their own tunnel. It can be done in such a way is undetectable at the protocol level. Coming up next age verification for ssh.

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[–] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 28 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Damn, what is going on there? This is scary even for 18+ users.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 23 points 3 days 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.

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[–] Brewchin@lemmy.world 26 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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 15 points 3 days ago

I assure you these people are not well meaning.

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[–] PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk 25 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Use tor to tunnel to a more enlightened country

buy vpn anonymously

use vpn

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Continue to buy VPNs while using other VPNs. Or use mullvad who apparently even accept cash in the post.

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[–] Trihilis@ani.social 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Gee I totally didn't see this coming and made a comment about it earlier. Oh wait I totally did.

The peoples republic of United Kingdom.

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[–] commander@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days 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

[–] qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Are they gonna ban torrents next? Https? You can ssh to a remote server and wget files all day long, or setup vnc and have a vpn like experience.

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