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[return to "VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in"]
1. Velila+se4[view] [source] 2025-07-29 13:13:35
>>mmaria+(OP)
This is one of the times where law is outrunning technology. Apple and Google are both working on anonymous attestation but they're pulling the trigger before it's ready.

But that's not what laws like these are about. In the US at least these laws are driven by Christian Nationalists are setting up a situation where PII of porn users is able to be leaked. That's what they're counting on. They also want to have political control of platforms by continually holding a Sword of Damocles above any publisher's head.

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2. palmfa+Sk4[view] [source] 2025-07-29 13:45:30
>>Velila+se4
I have to disagree with the "Christian Nationalist" characterization.

https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2025/07/29/nigel-farage-taki...

>"Nigel Farage ‘on the side of predators’ with Online Safety Act criticism, says Labour"

Is the UK's Labour Party now Christian Nationalist?

The end goal here is digital ID and censorship. Compare this to the perennial efforts for encryption backdoors. If there is a characterization that accurately encompasses this, it is the illiberal, statist, authoritarian impulse. Sure, they used a sex-panic to advance their agenda. However, this is merely symptomatic of the larger illiberal trend towards authoritarianism and the expansion of the state.

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3. captai+GA4[view] [source] 2025-07-29 15:04:46
>>palmfa+Sk4
Strictly speaking the law was passed under the conservatives, albeit in collaboration with Labour (it's bi-partisan). But I would agree that the drive is more authoritarian and it just uses moralistic arguments to shame people into siding with it.

The law could mandate that retail device OSs ship with a turnkey child safe mode complete with app and extensive site whitelists and run an educational campaign on the subject. But instead they've gone the needlessly invasive route which is telling about the true motives.

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4. ndrisc+0E4[view] [source] 2025-07-29 15:21:44
>>captai+GA4
Requiring device side child safe modes would be far further reaching and likely mean your cannot run your own software anymore. Requiring providers of adult content to check id is much more limited in scope.
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5. delfin+BR4[view] [source] 2025-07-29 16:27:49
>>ndrisc+0E4
This is 1000000% where we are going between Google moving away from AOSP and Samsung removing the ability to unlock bootloaders altogether.

There is a conspiracy and it's being rolled out. There was already some country that declared anyone running non-standard OSes on their phones are highly suspect.

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