[azalemeth]

I think it's worth mentioning the likes of tor, lokinet, yggdrasil, i2p, freenet and maybe other "esoteric" forms of networking like vless or v2ray. If they really do put significant barriers in the way of nerd-to-nerd communication, other metrics will only grow really.

At the moment, it's network effects that are the biggest deterrent to using these technologies -- at the moment I don't want to browse eepsites or .loki domains at the moment although I think the technology is interesting -- because the use cases are "normal" consensual porn, horrific illegal porn / CSAM, illegal drugs, and organised crime, none of which are me. If they manage to drive even 0.1% of the population towards talking about, say, cat pictures, unreal tournament matches (gamer-to-gamer communication is itself banned under these proposals without age verification!), or something that normal nerds would like, then (a) the popularity of these methods would explode; (b) the ability of law enforcement to surveil them as proxies for genuinely bad stuff would be significantly hampered; and (c) I think the net result is that more people would be exposed tangentially at least to criminality than before.

It's a shockingly short-sighted proposal. I wrote to my MP about it; her response was basically "We have a difference of opinion".