UK Online Safety Bill

[andy06shake]

The fact of the matter is if a kid wants to go on a porn or dating site and a platform prerequisite is providing facial recognition because of government laws to protect the platform, then themz the rules that one now needs to follow. The protection is now for both the platform owners and the children.

So I think, right up front, on these platforms that they will be requesting facial recognition with consent. Although I don't know because I've never been on a porn or dating site, so I don't know what they request of subscribers at this time to prove one is of legal age to participate.

And im sure they will be given a face to recognise, chances are it won't be the real deal all the same, hence my ambivalence to believe this kind of scheme will work, at least the way it's intended. 

It will be used, abused, and circumvented, make no mistake about it.

[quintessentone]

And im sure they will be given a face to recognise, chances are it won't be the real deal all the same, hence my ambivalence to believe this kind of scheme will work, at least the way it's intended. 

It will be used, abused, and circumvented, make no mistake about it.

What if the platform requests all forms of ID, how many people will just give it up?

[Anna]

So far, you can simply turn on a VPN and circumvent the requirements.

For now on yes but internet censorship is not only a British thing. Australia introduced age verification on social networks and the EU is working on a similar project. I read that some states in US have age verification on adult sites too. If censorship becomes international, VPN will be of little help.

[BeyondKnowledge]

After the printing press was invented, about 2/3 of everything printed has been porn. The same ratio continues on the Internet. 

Now, that being said, it seems bibles were partly paid for by porn. Without porn, there would have been fewer printing presses. And without porn, there would be less Internet coverage. 

Like it or not, it pays the bills. And there is no way to fully protect children from it. That is part of their parents job. 

Little Timmy is cought looking at dirty pictures. Where is his parents and why do they let him do this?

[ReturnofBroccoli]

How do you stop them from using a VPN?

You can't. 

All it will accomplish is to create a constant cat-and-mouse game between users trying to bypass restrictions and platforms trying to enforce them.

People will find a way or a means.

So this is just a waste of time and resources if you think about it.

I guess this isn't common knowledge for some reason, I thought it was, but it is very possible to block vpn connections from accessing any content

[Moon68]

I mean, heaven forbid parents, parent, Let's make sure big daddy government puts his jackboot down to force compliance because, of course, government knows best. FFS.

[ReturnofBroccoli]

If any country has an issue with a website they can simply block it at their firewalls. People with VPN will be able to bypass but I would think the traffic could be inspected and filtered out and actual locations worked out.

Yes its called Deep Packet Inspection, but there are other ways like IP blocking access control

[ReturnofBroccoli]

Even if it's our own government doing the online policing, it's still a bad idea.

It opens the door to censorship, where the line between stopping harm and silencing opinions gets blurry really fast.

Governments don't always get it right, especially so where ours is concerned, and they've got political interests too.

What counts as "harmful" today could just be disagreement tomorrow.

And once they have the tools to control speech online, it's hard to roll that back.

All this will serve to achieve is turning the internet into a space where people are scared to speak freely.

I thought this was about porn not speech lol

[ReturnofBroccoli]

It made me decide to purchase a paid VPN, just like most other people I know.

I had been planning to do so for a while.

That was just the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.

There is money to be made, which is another motivation now that I come to think about it.

As for the claim by a government minister regarding protecting children, pull the other one. 

As of April 2024, approximately 4.5 million children in the UK were living in poverty, which equates to about 31% of all children.

If he wants to help kids, there are other areas he could and should be addressing, and then some.

You are paying a middle man for services you can buy directly from the provider when you pay for VPN subscriptions

Go to infosniper.net while you are on your vpn, its provider is under ISP. If i had to guess its probably digital ocean.

[BeyondKnowledge]

It's not just government, it's other organizations too.

"Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide prevention charity, said “nothing less than a new Online Safety Act” is needed to reduce harm and overhaul the design of their platforms, arguing that young people have been “let down” by Ofcom’s decision to “prioritize the business needs of Big Tech over children’s safety.”  
Organizations including the Center for Countering Digital Hate, meanwhile, argue the act is toothless against mis- and disinformation, and would fail to prevent another episode like the riots that spread across Britain last summer, which were inflamed by false rumors that spread online. "

The UK’s online safety regime is here. Will anybody notice?  – POLITICO

I find it disturbing that all those organizations want to have a list of children with their identification, photos, addresses, locations, etc... Are they making a catalog for anyone wanting to do harm to a child?

If there is an online list, it will be used for bad things. Without an online list, none of this verification will work at all.