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I will not be participating. I’ll get around any barriers they put in place.
And if I can’t, I’ll just stop using the internet for anything I don’t absolutely have to.
I don’t really need my smartphone. A laptop will do.
You don’t use the internet on a laptop?
absolutely have to
Anything you can do on a smartphone that would require Internet would also require Internet on a laptop no?
I suppose you could download offline installers to a thumb drive at the library or smth
absolutely have to
I’m sure some countries will gladly setup VPNs for accessing this stuff even when all other countries block adult stuff.
Well time to sell thumbdrives to teenagers filled with “tutorials.mp4” and “online class.mp4” lol.
Just give em live distros with tor installed.
What is it with Neo-Liberal governments and implementing over-reaching state controls that will eventually grant a tyrant unprecedented levels of control over public life?
Because they want to privatize all aspects of living so that a handful of exorbitantly wealthy people can build larger hoards. There’s no end to it; it’s a mental disease, enabled by Capitalism and the death of real Labor laws and rights.
Every industry should have unions that actively work to dismantle owner authoritarianism, but for 40 years Boomers have been paving the way for every awful piece of shit “business owner” to have some idolized place at the top of our society. And of course, the knock-on effect of that over time is that the pieces of shit have carved into the legislative and political arenas that provided even a modicum of worker/commoner protections. The digital divide is just a coefficient on the slippery slope.
Since the earliest days of the internet, governments have been scheming to gain control over the dissemination of content - to have authority over what people can and cannot see.
Autocracies like Russia, China and North Korea simply established censorships regimes, but the best that western governments have generally been able to do is ban content that is illegal in and of itself, like child porn. Their goal, all along, has been to establish systems by which to censor content that is not in and of itself illegal.
This is the most success they’ve had yet.
The people technologically competent enough to pull it off are usually not stupid enough to want to pull it off and make their lives harder.
They also generally make more money not working for the government.
That’s just not true. People (including competent enough) are well willing to make the society worse for everyone if they are going to be gentry. That’s been this way for all of human history, thinking otherwise is that new thing of the 90s, when American exceptionalism has been expanded into “post-Cold-War globalist” world exceptionalism, similarly to how Judaism expanded into Christianity.
That’s likely true.
But that’s not going to stop governments from trying, and mostly succeeding, since beating their censorship will require both the will and the ability to break the law. Granted that their systems will certainly be flawed, it will still require at least some minimal technical ability to beat them, which will put it out of reach of many.
And it will also provide the governments with a handy fallback charge to bring against pretty much anyone they deem troublesome enough, since they’ll almost certainly be among those who are breaking the law by beating the system.
If that’s been their goal for decades then there would be something written down to that effect. Policy statements, press releases, meeting minutes… Got anything?
There is a long history of proposed bills, and other legal maneuvers, to require ID for things like age verification, and other purposes, from around the world, dating back to the 90s. When COPPA was in the proposal state there was tons of discussion about ID requirements, it was ultimately struck down, but the conversation was being had.
I can remember this being discussed on CSPAN back when I was in high school, in the 90s.
Of course there is no public evidence. It’s just a very probable speculation that governments want to control the internet.
Back in the days of newspapers/radio/tv, governments had control as they could easily go after news outlets.
However, with internet, they lost this power. They have been trying hard to regain the power of controlling information. The latest success was masking moderation as child protection.
See, there are a few ways this could go.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, and it’s left at that. I like to call this “the miracle”, and we all know those don’t happen.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a government asks for “access to data to prevent crime” - things degenerate from there. This is the “systemic failure” scenario.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but new scams evolve around it to make it dangerous. This would be the “criminal element” scenario.
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Age verification is not as secure and private as promised, and a leak occurs destroying lives and careers. This is the “system failure” scenario.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a few companies start scraping and selling data, leading to widespread harms. This is the “unethical merchant” scenario, and the most likely outcome.
All in all, there is only one “ok” scenario, and a lot of horrific ones. The math says we’re entirely boned ^_^
Five seems to be the most plausible. Although knowing how shit corporate security is, I foresee a mix of three and four being common.
4, as it’s already happening. It’s just to be seen if people will have their lives ruined
We would need politicians to be the victims. Then these fascist laws will suddenly be cancelled.
If they were victims they would go even harder fascist, atleast that’s usually the case.
In theory, it isn’t hard to make it work, give everybody born on the same day a specific UUID and use that to authenticate with a database if it is true or false. Store the ID somewhere where the person has access to (ID/Passport/Digital passport etc) and it should be enough. Get IT persons and accountants to regularly audit it for security and if they keep logs/don’t have UUID’s per person etc.
But that’s not how it seems to work for the UK at this time
Or all of the above while still not being “as secure and private as promised”.
Nothing is ever as secure and private as promised.
I feel like people are downplaying how dangerous even the possibility of #2 is. A lot of nations are already targeting the LGBTQ community on a regular basis and this would massively assist to streamline persecution of “certain” citizens as well as the rapid spread of religious dogma. Both the U.S. and Australia are current testing grounds for these outcomes.
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I didn’t need the Internet anyway thanks though
these laws are all about control and tracking what you do online. they make the internet MORE dangerous, because (as with everything the government restricts or bans) there will be a black market, which is always more dangerous and exposes people to more things than they were looking for in the first place. you think dark web providers are gonna make you upload your id to stay compliant? no, they’re gonna continue anonymously operating through TOR and serve up some very questionably sourced content to those teens that are searching “boobs” and can no longer access pornhub
I really, really dont want to search for porn on the dark net…
There’s like a gazillion porn sites on the clearnet though, I can’t imagine them being able to track then all
If a government agency cant find them, they will be very difficult for average users to find as well
There is so much of it on the internet in general that you can’t really do much about it. On top of the fact it is still all over torrent websites as well.
I am aware of many, I am just saying looking at the dark web is not a good idea because… well… OK we’re all adults here. That’s where all the CP is and I have no interest in seeing that shit.
That’s a kinda not true tho. There is a fuck ton of cp on the clear web. The only thing I can say, is that Twitter used to have a lot of spam posts with links to cp.
I actively avoid those. I used to go on the chan forums but after seeing people just posting random attachments and someone saying ‘get that kiddie shit out of here’ before it stayed up for a while I turned tail and ran from those and never looked back.
That’s what this is going to become. And that’s another point to this. They can just go after people using the dark net claim it was for kiddie porn even if it wasn’t. the masses will just believe them.
Fuck it, let’s get back to something like the way it was.
Anonymous, amateur, just slightly hard to access to keep the mouth breathers out.
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Well now that sounds a little like the fediverse itself!
Not for me, bitches!
Sucks, because it’s going global and we can’t seem to stop it. I’m fine with laws to age gate in terms of a button you click. If some kid is willing to say they’re 15… well, let’s make sure people are treating them as a 15 year old. But… making everyone deal with real verification is at best going to further entrench big business, and at worst, destroy the internet we love. And it raises the question: are trans teenagers talking to each other now creating adult content because the UK hates trans people?
how do you know it’s going to be global?
Canada currently has a bill looking to do the same thing. AFAIK, Australia’s already passed one, many US states are looking at them individually. The EU is looking at frameworks for it. I suppose there will be some places that won’t, but this is increasingly looking like what governments have decided to do, and rather than geofencing, once a large number of money-making territories want this, I think most corporations will do it globally, and smaller sites simply won’t be able to run.
🇨🇦 Pretty messed up that the NDP voted yea. :(
For porn and games etc. that should be enough yes, but for online gambling, opening stock market accounts etc we do need actual verification, but there are tons of methods of doing it so that the site only gets a true or false (18 or above) and the government gets obfuscated URL’s so that the government doesn’t know what you visited.
If I’m opening a stock market account, I’m trusting them with generating my tax receipts! If I don’t feel comfortable trusting them to hold my personal data directly, I probably should choose a different brokerage…
Edit: Anyways, I’m annoyed enough that everyone has gone to phone based 2 factor that requires me to buy a phone and keep it on a cell network, so you can imagine how much I despise even an easier version of this.
After making the comment, I realised that stockbrokers need full KYC anyway.
You can use OTP codes without a phone, since you can buy OTP keychains. Which don’t require any form of internet connection, same with the physical Passkey’s.
On the internet everyone will know you’re a dog.
Mrreow? 😾
I wonder what it was that made Pornhub cooperate this time around. Iirc in texas and france they just “left” instead of implementing the age verification.
Maybe Britons are depraved porn fiends and spend so much that Pornhub can’t afford to lose this market!
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I want to go back
If it makes you feel better, this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.
Because these regulations never do.
I still remember when social networks tried to impose a real name requirement.
And now everybody think it’s normal. It wasn’t.
I’ll take that bet. Probably won’t be effective, but I’m betting this shit is here to stay. There already hasn’t been enough push-back.
Check out the book the master switch. This is just all parts of the wheel.
It still doesn’t have to be this way.
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That’s fine. The actual internet will still be here.
