But the real kicker is what content is now being gatekept behind invasive age verification systems. Users in the UK now need to submit a selfie or government ID to access:
- Reddit communities about stopping drinking and smoking, periods, craft beers, and sexual assault support, not to mention documentation of war
- Spotify for music videos tagged as 18+
- War footage and protest videos on X
- Wikipedia is threatening to limit access in the UK (while actively challenging the law)
The age verification process itself is a privacy nightmare wrapped in security theater. Users are being asked to upload selfies that get run through facial recognition algorithms, or hand over copies of their government-issued IDs to third-party companies. The facial recognition systems are so poorly implemented that people are easily fooling them with screenshots from video games—literally using images from the video game Death Stranding.
But here’s the thing: even when these systems “work,” they’re creating massive honeypots of personal data.
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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Privacy
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Contrary to the general opinion, I think this law is positive: it's teaching everyone how absolutely needed a VPN is nowadays.
It's teaching me that a guillotine is needed.
I'm also glad the UK demonstrated to everyone why more surveillance isn't the answer (and I hope they ask what the correct answer could have or should have been).
Yeah, the USA and the UK leads in that nowadays IMO, showing off what not to do.
until critical mass and vpn access or usage is criminalized :(
I'd love to see them try and realize why that is such an incredibly bad idea.
what will they care? they’re capitalists. they purchase the forces and they don’t understand the tech and we’re all too distracted, poor, tired, and one check away from death anyway.
Every company and its mother uses a vpn for a variety of work related stuff. And I'm not talking about remote working, but secure connections, remote assistance, communications between different work sites... Banning vpns as a whole is so stupid that I'd love to see them try and crash the economy.
you fail to recognize that the process will involve simply kissing the boots and approved vpns will be fine. (backdoors included)
lol this legislation might be trash from top to bottom but it sure don't mean commercial VPNs are a good thing
contrary to the general opinion i think attaching social media accounts to real identities anonymously (which is remarkably easy to do) will go a very long way to solving the bot, troll, commercial and foreign influence issues with social media. while still being private and anonymous
To someone in e.g. the USA, doing as you may may literally be the difference between life and death, when agents show up at your door for exercising the incorrect opinion. I presume here that the "anonymous" part is only what is shared with the public, but since you mentioned "real identities" that is the part that is dangerous.
for it to work the government must not be able to access the public website's database that associates, say, your online activity with your government id token, and the public website must never have access to the government database where your personal information is associated with the government id token
this means the website, for example, would only know that you are the same human (or someone with access to that human's government id documents), if you sign up with a different avatar. the government only knows that you use a certain website
if that is not the case then yes this information can be abused
Got Mullvad a year ago because Sky fuck with your internet if they're able, but damn, am I pleased to have it now.
The Peter Kyle quote is really dumb. Wanting to avoid thermonuclear war is on the side of predators. Wanting to reduce the spread of COVID was on the dude of predators. Universal suffrage was on the side of predators. Once something is bad for everyone, opposing it will always be on the side of predators, and if you have a lot of critics taking the side of predators, it's a strong sign you're doing something that's bad for nearly everyone.