United Kingdom

Guys don't get sucked into the misdirecting packing - this is nothing to do with keeping children safe. Better parental effort isn't going to make this UK govt stop the initiative because it has absolutely nothing to do with child safety.

This is about authoritarian tracking of everything a UK citizen does and says online - that's why the careful quote is about it being ok for adults to have VPN not kids.

You know how they do that ? They make it necessary to show ID to have a VPN so then they can track what the adults are doing on a VPN.

The "think of the children" pearl clutching is a sham and a scam

Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: "Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it's absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that's one of my major recommendations."

She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs "to implement highly effective age assurances to stop underage users from accessing pornography."

Stop trying to enforce this at the service level, for God's sake. What are you going to do when people switch to stuff like Tor?* 'Online safety regulation pushes kids to that dark web' will be a fire headline in a couple of months/years.

* I remember seeing someone link to something here they described as 'Tor for apps' that I can't find, does anyone have that at hand?

The report also found more children are stumbling across pornography accidentally, with some of the 16 to 21-year-olds surveyed saying they had viewed it "aged six or younger".

I'm sorry, but this is genuinely a failure of parents. Like, I'm not normally one to trot out the 'parents should helicopter their children' defence against regulation of social media, but giving a bloody six year old not-monitored-enough access to the internet is on the parent.

Also, I'd take this all a lot more seriously if parents actually used the tools already available to them:

We actually already have measures to deal with this: back in 2011 the government worked with ISPs (internet service providers) to come up with a Code of Practice on implementing ‘parental controls’ for all new customers. In 2013 this was adopted by all the major players. So when you (an adult – because you have to be over 18 to do this) register for an internet connection, you are offered adult content filtering by default. You can tweak this, if you like, for example you can decide you’re happy for your family to access social media sites but not pornography. Or if you don’t anticipate any children using your connection, you can opt out of adult filters altogether. Research conducted in 2022, however, found that although 61% of parents were aware of these filters, only 27% actually used them. Again, sing it with me: lol.

Back to the BBC article.

More than half of respondents to the survey had viewed strangulation as children, prompting Dame Rachel to also ask the government to ban depictions of it.

This is an implicit admission that age verification is ineffective. If it was, then children wouldn't see it and then we wouldn't need to ban it.

Can we focus one moment on why the fuck a 6 years-old kid could watch porn?

What the hell was a 6yo kid doing with an unsupervised internet device? How about you don't give your 6yo kid an internet device if you can't (or don't want to) parent them?

How about.. Supervise your children's use of technology? Don't give them unrestricted devices? The government can't do anything to stop a motivated intelligent kid, but parents can (to a greater degree at least)

Good luck with that, maybe parents should step the fuck up and start parenting instead of fucking up the Internet?

So now they’re moving to restrict even the technology minors could use.

Since they’ll need to know the age of anyone using a VPN, that means mandatory ID checks for everyone who connects.

What a brilliant mindset these politicians have. Welcome to the age of dictatorship, censorship, and neo-fascism.

It'd not about children, and it's not about parents.

When you phrase this as anything but being about control you're playing their game.

All devices have parental controls which can be enabled. If watching porn is bad for a child's mental health and parents are allowing their children to use a device they have neglected to enable those controls on, how can that be considered to be anything other than child neglect? Why put the onus on providers when even the most non tech savvy parent could spend a few hours learning to stop their kids from encountering it in the first place? This is all going to go very wrong very soon.

Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: "Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it's absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that's one of my major recommendations."

She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs "to implement highly effective age assurances to stop underage users from accessing pornography."

That's not how... That doesn't...

Oh you know what? They'll find out.

Honestly, country is gripped by clowns.

Would not be at all surprised to find the commissioner has shares or a financial interest in Age Verification companies.

Staunch conservative - wants a totalitarian state.

Nothing newsworthy there.

Next up: Stop children using HTTPS to watch porn.

When is it the parents responsibility to care and look after a child? Just admit you want to look in my closet. Just admit it and we would all feel better about it because the truth would be out there.

We have a government dumb enough that they might actually try and ban VPNs. I'm not sure if I'll be able to buy enough popcorn for this.

I have to use six different VPNs for my job, I'd love to see them try and craft a law that bands VPNs at the same time as still allowing business to take place.

I imagine they will start enforcing age checks on payments to VPN companies

Pound shop China.

Stop children using VPNs to watch porn

Stop children using VPNs to watch porn

Stop children using VPNs to watch porn

So many ways to read this

I FUCKING HATE THIS TIMELINE.

It's the UK trying to out-stupid America?

Holy shit that is a nonsensical sentence

Have they tried massive whips?