[armada651]

If this becomes law, then yes. But then people will turn to VPS providers instead and set up their own VPNs, which will then prompt a law to demand age verification before renting any server. I wonder how far they're willing to go down this rabbit hole.

[landl0rd]

You're implying pervasive KYC and tying everything to your real-life identity is some unfortunate side-effect rather than a deliberate end. I have contempt for people who pass policies such as these but I do not think them foolish; they are likely aware of what will happen.

[ratelimitsteve]

the purpose of a system is what it does, not what it purports to do. doubly so, if it does what it purports to do poorly but does something else very well. this system purports to protect children from adult content online but what it does is offer a legal justification for eliminating any and all anonymity.

[bigbadfeline]

The people who pass the policies may not know, but the people who formulate and drive the policies know for sure. The Window of Overton is fundamental to today's political environment, more than any other time in history.

[gnarlouse]

Age verification to wake up in the morning, age verification to breathe air, age verification to use the restroom, age verification t...

[rustyhancock]

You got a Loicense for that?

[gnarlouse]

..o ask for a license, age ve...

[gjsman-1000]

Not necessarily - how is a kid paying for a VPS server?

A personal debit card (which requires ID verification anyway, and likely has their parents able to see activity)? A personal credit card (which definitely requires ID + 18+)? Stealing their parents' card (works for like 5 days)? Does the VPS company block VPN ports without verification, similar to how most companies handle email? Do you think VPS services have any interest, at all, in an underage clientele?

The proposed law is plenty effective - saying otherwise is like saying kids can bypass age verification at the knife shop or alcohol store by using eBay. No sane mind says that age verification is therefore useless.

[whatshisface]

If having a credit card and the ability to make purchases was good enough as an ID system, they could have simply made it the law instead of requiring tech companies to collect those sweet, sweet personal ID document photos.

[gjsman-1000]

The UK law doesn't say you have to use ID photos, that's porn companies knowing that charging even £1 a visit would be devastating to the business. Credit card verification is a completely legal method in the UK.

[whatshisface]

They can check for credit cards without requiring any payment. Are you sure that's sufficient given these vaguely worded laws? If so many HN readers could solve the whole problem by making websites which issued digital signatures of random numbers to anyone who can support a £0.01 debit which is then immediately reversed.

[gjsman-1000]

The problem is porn companies know full well nobody, nobody, wants that on their credit card statement. Kinda weird that something supposedly as natural as rain needs such levels of privacy; the hypocrisy is notable (if it's so natural and so many people do it, own it).

[whatshisface]

They can have whatshisface's digital certificates, Inc. on their statements.

[sublinear]

Single people don't care, and they are becoming the majority of adults and probably more likely consume porn too.

[munksbeer]

When they block adult content behind age gates, children still view adult content, via VPN or via websites that have no interest in complying with the UK but may well have worse motivations to access children's data.

Age gating legitimate VPN or VPS will result in the same thing. Children will end up using less safe services to view what they want to view.

When my children are old enough, if we're still in the UK, I will be providing them with enough education to avoid ill intentioned sites, and will also provide them with a private VPN.

We learn nothing from history.

[HK-NC]

When my daughter was young, maybe 8, she had access to a laptop. She wasnt glued to it, but it was her little computer for fooling around on. One day my PC died and I had important things to do, so I used her laptop. As I typed into the address bar some prior history popped up and I had a moment where I wondered if I should respect her privacy or make sure shes being safe. By the time Id done my emails I decided to take a peek. I regretted it as soon as I saw her search for "funny memes" or something followed minutes later by "funny memes for kids". To this day she complains that nobody in her age group knows how to use a search engine without writing a full sentence in the form of a question, instead of using key words.

The govt is a shit parent.

[CrossVR]

> Not necessarily - how is a kid paying for a VPS server?

The same way the kid is somehow paying for a VPN apparently.

[deaux]

The kid could easily be using a "free" VPN that harvests all your data in return for its services. No payment required. Not the case with VPS. Even free tiers require credit cards.

[subscribed]

They can buy the server without KY paying with crypto or PayPal (11+ can have debit cards in the UK).

Or ask their parents.

[gruez]

>If this becomes law, then yes.

Or they just operate outside of UK jurisdiction, in which case they can politely decline. Any executives/directors of said company might be liable to arrest if they decide to vacation in uk, though.

[HDThoreaun]

The UK already has ISP's blocking sites. Anyone that ignores the law will be blocked, will be interesting to see what happens if they end up blocking one of the cloud megascalers.

[anonym29]

Hilarious that they think they can prevent motivated people from accessing information using technical measures. China has been working on this for decades. It's a lost battle. Shadowsocks, V2Ray, xray; protocols like vmess, vless, trojan, etc.

The British government, for all their effort (London has a higher geographic density of CCTV than Beijing) is wasting their time competing for the gold medal at International Totalitarianism Olympics, even the the world's current undisputed champion is losing the internet censorship battle, and always has.

Central planning doesn't work and it never has. That includes central planning of what your citizens are allowed to see, hear, think, and feel.

[digiown]

Depends on the how you formulate the goal in the totalitarianism olympics. The goal of totalitarian regimes is not really to completely prevent the flow of information to motivated people. It simply needs to raise the motivation bar high enough so that all but the select few is fed only government-approved propaganda. The few that retain access is tolerated as long as they don't raise a stink. In this view, the efforts of China or Iran is fairly successful.

The UK has a different flavor of authoritarianism centered on surveillance to (ineffectively) improve "safety", and general paternalism at all levels. It doesn't really intend to prevent the flow of information all that much.

[brightball]

Watching laws like this play out in real time adds some color to the other discussion about software in Europe right now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46767668#46769847

[dlisboa]

All of this would easily be solved by just banning social media. Nothing will convince me they are a net-positive to society.

[eikenberry]

I don't think social media needs to be banned, but maybe using complex algorithms to drive attention should be. Even Facebook was pretty good back when its feed was a simple, chronological display of all your friends posts and nothing else. It went down the tubes as they moved away from that.

[Fr0styMatt88]

Put together, it’s likely most people’s friends wouldn’t produce enough content to drive engagement, at least in ‘public’ social media like Facebook.

I remember this phenomenon back when Facebook was less algorithmic — some days there’d just be no new content at all. Especially I’m guessing if you limit adding friends to actually just the people you’d be happy to grab lunch with.

[munksbeer]

I wouldn't ban social media.

Here in the UK we require cigarette suppliers to advertise the dangers of smoking on every package.

I'd mandate that every social media platform is required to advertise the dangers on every page, and also give a very visible option to reveal the workings of the algorithm that is feeding you the pages.

[bigbadfeline]

If you apply the logic of your comment's parent to your suggestion you'll discover that banning social media would soon lead to using any and all communication under mandatory supervision and only after an application and a written permission for every individual act of communication.

[direwolf20]

Did banning heroin soon lead to consuming any and all substances under mandatory supervision and only after an application and written permission for every individual act of consumption?

[bigbadfeline]

No, but they issued an umbrella ban on anabolic steroids of any kind, regardless of chemistry, even on those not invented yet. FDA criminalizes or makes prescription-only whatever they want, willy-nilly and without any consequences - drug enforcement opened the door for that.

I'm not saying that drugs should be legal, only that given perverse intensives, legitimate problems are routinely used as a Trojan horse to sneak in oppressive regulations.

In the case of communications and speech, the government's incentives for censorship, eavesdropping and control are enormous - otherwise there wouldn't be a Constitution, 1st amendment or the entire Bill of Rights that depends on it. Once the routine circumvention of these becomes acceptable, any kind of true but inconvenient for Big Brother speech will become impossible - with or without a written permit.

The manner of doing it doesn't matter, the permit was a figure of speech, kind of telling that I have to state it explicitly.

[retired]

At the risk of doing a "you participate in society", would that include HN?

[direwolf20]

That depends if it's social media.

[PaulKeeble]

Severely disabled people need social media to get any form of communication with others. It is a key mechanism of infrastructure that provides connection for those limit to their homes and bed, which nowadays is an increasing amount of people with Long Covid and ME/CFS patients. We are talking about 10s of millions of people here that you would cut off from each other and the wider world.

Social media isn't just bad interactions, there isn't just one twitter or reddit, its about what you choose to read and interact with and most of its not toxic its just people talking on the same topic.

[mghackerlady]

The government shouldn't be limiting any legal communications over the internet

[direwolf20]

That's a tautology. The limited communications are illegal.