r00ty

I drink beer, and I know things.

With 10 upvotes and 2 downvotes (*), it looks clear that veganism is the winner here.

(*) accurate at time of writing.

Most internet forums are this way. Reddit users are also on average more technically literate than average. In fact I'd say it's the more purely social media platforms where it gets back to close to normal. Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/etc etc.

Yeah, this is what happens when you write laws with vague language. Companies will always err on the side of caution.

No. I fully expect them to monitor the traffic from the UK. And search warrant your premises. People using VPNs are most likely going to have evidence (the keys for the VPN and ways to start it up) on the machines, in their house that they could seize. They don't need to touch your VPS.

Like I say, it'll be a rarity. It's too much work to go after people wholesale for this and the manpower to get the hard evidence it prohibitive. But, they will make a few examples.

For court purposes (and they will be careful to keep these cases in magistrate courts unless there's solid evidence of more crimes found), there will be enough evidence to show the changing traffic patterns and the proof of a working method of accessing sites from another jurisdiction present on the machines found in the user's possession. More than enough for well trained magistrates to convict.

But look, this is IF they try to route of banning VPNs too. It's just the ranting of one or two MPs right now.

But that's true of any law. They need to prove you broke the law. I doubt they will ban VPS'. They might ban private use of VPN's and they will occasionally convict someone of it, to keep the fear level up. Just like most hard-to-prove laws.

The thing is, if they're able to monitor traffic, then they can easily isolate "likely" VPN traffic. HTTPS will almost always be on 443 and to a variety of sites. If suddenly you have a metric ton of encrypted traffic going to a single host and your traffic going to other hosts also drops accordingly. You've got a very likely use of VPN.

Now, yes to prove it they'd need to get search warrants and the like. Which is why I think enforcement will be one of those things they make a big noise about when they do. Just to keep normal people scared to do the thing.

Just like IPTV use, normal piracy, and this kind of thing.

I live in the UK and host my own instance (not hosted in the UK). I don't really have any real active users other than myself and most signups end up being deleted as soon as they post some advertising spam.

So, to that end I ensured I don't have any communities marked as NSFW on my instance at all. But, I'm one person and cannot moderate the entire fediverse content I carry. When it moves to enforcement time and I see a definite sign of targeting fediverse hosts, or (as I expect will be a first phase) warnings being issued to fediverse hosts. I'll likely just close registration, go on an account purge and lock out content to logged in users only. Then scale down the operation to a server hosted in my own house and just for me.

If things start to turn into serious enforcement against fediverse hosts, I fully expect the number of instances that will allow UK users to drastically reduce. But, don't forget this is coming to the EU and US if things keep moving as they are. So, there may be no real way to survive as an independent forum/gathering place. And maybe, maybe that's been part of the plan all along? Hobbyists like me cannot provide the time or financial burden to perform age checks or moderate everything to ensure there's nothing that will breach the extremely (and deliberately) vague rules.

We live in interesting times.

I mean, in terms of the age restriction rules, we might get it first. But the EU is setting up for a very similar set of rules, the USA is also working on their own version. France came before us. Australia are also running I think (now, soon? Not too sure). As to whether similar talk (and it's just talk right now) around banning VPNs will happen elsewhere too. Well, if they pull it off here too without too much of a problem, yes it will likely be rolled out elsewhere.

It's not isolated in any way and the fact it seems to be very suddenly a thing every country wants to do should make it even more concerning.

Well, if you connect to your own VPS, you're still "illegally" using a VPN if they ban them. Yeah, you enter a world of how they will enforce it. But, it's not dodging the law to make your own VPN on a VPS.

That is very likely what they will do, I'm certain of it. Probably worse than that. I bet they will allow VPNs to licensed users (businesses), they will require specific protocols where they are able to backdoor in and snoop if they want to.

This isn't a good road we're going down right now.

Oh man, they're going to come visit everyone that didn't do the "optional" affirmation thing at his coronation, aren't they?

Kinda hoping MPs don't read anything here. But, hopefully they omit socks/http proxies from whatever ban they impose....