The UK’s Online Safety Act doesn’t just age-gate porn; it blocks material deemed “harmful” to minors. Days after the law went into effect, reports of non-explicit content on social media getting blocked in the region started to crop up. Subreddits from r/IsraelCrimes to r/stopsmoking are now walled in the UK. Video games, Spotify, and dating apps have instituted or will institute age checks.
Given the SCOTUS age verification decision [June '25], Stabile fears that people [in the US] will go “mask off” in the fall and spring, when state legislatures start getting back together. “People are going to attempt to restrict the internet even more aggressively,” Stabile said. “I think people are going to work to restrict all sorts of content, particularly LGBTQ content, but also content that is broadly defined as any sort of threat or propaganda to minors.” Other experts Mashable spoke to agree with him.
“I’m going to jump to the end step,” [Eric Goldman, law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law] said. “The end step is that most online users are going to be required to age authenticate most of the time they visit websites. That’s going to become the norm.” In a paper he wrote, Goldman called these statutes “segregate-and-suppress” laws.
The stated reason behind these laws is to “protect children.” But as journalist Taylor Lorenz pointed out, in the UK, age verification is already preventing children from accessing vital information, such as about menstruation and sexual assault.
“When we see crackdowns on spaces on the internet, we’re essentially stripping away that potential for self-actualization,” Goldman said. We’ve reached the dystopian stage of the internet, he added.
Age verification isn’t really age verification: it’s identity verification. And once you have given your identity to one or two websites, data brokers will ensure that all your other activity on the internet will eventually be tied to it. Burner devices and anonymous VPNs could help, but only until those become illegal too.
This will have a chilling effect on not only every kind of discourse the fascists hate, but also political organization and people’s ability to resist. You won’t be able to organize a protest online without the police knowing in advance who is likely to come and finding a pretext to intimidate or pre-arrest them.
That’s the most insightful and chilling comment I’ve read in a while. I especially like the “it’s not age verification; it’s identity verification” part. (That messaging needs to be more commonplace.) The key(s) for organizing data about individuals online will shift from email addresses only to enough stable identifiers to impersonate someone or maybe even steal their identity. Data leaks and fraud will probably increase dramatically given the value-add of these data.
With the level of quashing dissent these days - eg UK police arresting hundreds of nonviolent people with placards denouncing genocide; military deployments in LA and DC - no wonder certain states/ governments support online identity verification laws.
“No Kings” protests are already a non-story in mainstream news today. Tomorrow, they can be prevented from happening in the first place! /s c/aboringdystopia
And one key thing. Fascists and fascist collaborators will claim, “everything you do online and already tracked to your real identity.” But the truth is, if that were already the case, then there wouldn’t be a push for these identity verification laws.
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And even if that’s somehow protected, I’m really uncomfortable with the government having that data.
You won’t be able to organize a protest online without the police knowing in advance who is likely to come and finding a pretext to intimidate or pre-arrest them.
That’s been true for a while. But it was “The FBI can put a pin in it” true before. And now it feels like “LinkedIn is going to have a second secret file on you” true.
Fun fact:
That was the plan all along.
The guy who founded LinkedIn… Paypal mafia
The guys who invested in Facebook. . PayPal mafia
The guys who founded YouTube… Paypal mafia
The guy who founded Square … Paypal mafia
The guy who ran doge and got all your us gov datasets, has literally half of all satellites in orbit sucking up your location and data… Paypal mafiaThe guy who decides who attends the bilderberg group, is ceo of the ai that is used by nearly every police force in the USA, and has contracts with military, who funded trump and Vance… Paypal Mafia
These guys have literally created the techno society we are now slaves to.
They are just getting started.
They are just getting started.
Idk, man. Seems like they’re wrapping up. Not a whole lot left to do when you’re this far up on the board.
My friend, you have no idea of the hell that awaits… There’s always a deeper layer…
Sure sure sure. Modern American politics is just the Shepherd Tone.
idk what that is. Also, I’m referring to the global state of things, not just North America; the identity-tracking mania, as far as I know, began with the EU, no?
Time to start making zines and locally organizing i guess
18+ to shop at Walmart. I don’t want my children exposed to harmful things like books, my boys shouldn’t be exposed to cleaning supplies or see women’s garments and my girls shouldn’t have to see that other girls are allowed to pick out their outfits or do manly things like play sports.
In the UK some supermarkets charge extra for children to buy products. You need to register an account for them to harvest even more data and if you don’t then some products can cost a lot more. Children can’t register as they can’t collect that kind of data on children.
I shop at Aldi instead because they don’t do this shit
Those store loyalty cards suck. When I’m forced to use one, I just enter my parents’ number or something because I don’t want yet another company to spam me with calls and texts.
And they dont even have any valid excuses, because its totally possible to implement anonymous age verification that cannot be fooled. These systems already exists and work perfectly, but it was never the plan to do it this way. It was always intended as a political tool of censorship.
What systems are you referring to?
The EUs eID system. https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en
Depending on the use case, varying amounts of information can be transferred like only age or nationality or everything.
Ive used it for signing EU petitions but also local bureucratic things like residency stuff.
The eID system is kind of overkill if all that matters is age verification. You could build a suuper lightweight system just for that which would make checking the source code much easier.
Does the system know what service is requesting the age verification?
Nuclear weapons are harmful to children.
Global warming is harmful to children.
Microplastics and forever chemicals are harmful to children.
But, no, let’s just block the porn.
The felon sitting in the Oval Office is harmful to children.
*The pedophile king whose name has been confirmed to be in the Epstein files
The world is on fire
But don’t say “cunt”
Angelspit - Don’t Say
We need to purge our society of these genital obsessed religious extremists
genital obsessed religious extremists
A lot of these people are pedophiles just like the owner class so it makes sense why they always get good representation
When they’ve been in Power for so long pedophilia becomes an elite norm.
We should haul them into public arenas and feed them to lions. They get off to that sort of thing.
Lions are boring. I wanna see the fanatics fight hippos and a pissed off rhino.
I’m thinking hyaenas.
Amen
Remember, according to the UK government you’re legally able to have sex, give birth, choose your future, and (soon?) vote at 16. Heaven forfend if you see a pair of titties though, you’re not mature enough for that…
You can have sex, but you better not look!
I’m not against a bit of spice, but blindfolds at 16 just seem a little advanced. Especially when sex at that age is akin to a oblong peg in a tesseract shaped hole of unknown location.
No no you’re missing the point. It’s not that you can’t look, you just have to tap the gubmint on the shoulder so they can watch you look
oblong peg in a tesseract shaped hole of unknown location
Thanks for that. I just spat out my coffee and laughed a little too hard.
You really dont see the difference between two 17 year olds in a relationship and watching porn online?
Two 17 year olds have no idea how relationships work - one or both is normally carrying a Disney complex, and you’re both heavy risk takers.
Been there, done that, no thanks. It was an experience, but not one I’d voluntarily relive.
A 17 year old consuming pornography? Sounds to me like their parents need to put that shit into some context.
Just to be clear, you are arguing that 17 year olds dating is somehow worse than consuming porn?
I just highlighted the differences. What you conclude from those is your problem.
“I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called Bring back the porn!”
- Dr. Percival Ulysses Cox
Percival.
Edited. Thank you
Happy to be of service!
I always thought it was spelled “Percy Valuli sees cocks”
The very instant a website wants me to verify my age by providing PII, I’ll just blacklist that website from my network. There isn’t a single website that I can’t go without.
What if it ends up being all discussion boards?
Oh no, where can I go in order to be made to feel outraged by chronically online children, bots, and foreign intelligence services.
/s
reddit?
Sure, blacklist those goobers too
Lemmy?
I think it’s too early to talk about it, but it’s still worth being on guard, since anonymity is questionable here.
Until they ban Tor there will always be porn available.
This isn’t about protecting children.
It never was. But that is hard to discuss. I remember when I still was young and went to house parties decades ago when my country discussed yet again some measures “to protect the children”, don’t recall exactly what, you found lots young people who of course couldn’t be against protecting the children. How could you be against that? It’s such a shitty way to get these things through.
This isn’t about protecting children.
This is about narrative control on the internet.
You dare argue with the Ministry of Truth?
Bingo
Of course it is about protecting children. We dont sell porn magazines in grocery stores anymore, despite the fact they are still “available”.
The internet is a public place, having awful things available for children to look at is not a good thing. Personal freedoms have to take a backseat to public health and safety.
If parents want their kids to not see porn, they should set up filters on their devices and monitor their computer use. That has been doable for decades.
The internet isn’t a shopping mall where everyone needs to follow some set of rules, it’s more like a neighborhood where you can go up and knock on anyone’s door. If you don’t like what they do at their house, the solution is to not visit their house, not force everyone to follow some set of rules on their own property. Websites shouldn’t have to go out of their way to block traffic that doesn’t follow some set of rules, people should go out of their way to not visit sites they don’t want to see.
That usually equates to removing all technology from kids hands as most are unable to research and properly secure what they give their children. Technology is needed, they can’t grow up without knowing how to use it and making that safer is fine by me.
If you want to look at adults only material prove you are an adult or go about it a different way. The internet isn’t the only place porn exists.
No, it usually equates to parents not filtering anything because that’s the laziest option. That’s not great, but violating everyone’s privacy for an ineffective law is worse.
Commercial products exist for those who want them. Use those instead of asking governments to handle parenting for you.
If personal privacy is that important to you then download your porn from torrents, or just dont watch it. Porn isn’t a necessity. You aren’t owed porn.
But it’s not about porn, it’s about government interference on the internet.
Is it though? Seems funny to me that porn websites had to hang up “no kids” signs and now people are claiming its an issue about freedom and privacy.
Freedom is a prerequisite to health and safety.
No its not, or else I’d be free to hurt people as well.
Funny how broad “awful things” gets determined to be. Can’t have people learning that the LGBT and political dissent exist, can we?
The dark web is a public place too. Are you expecting that to be banned as well?
People aren’t learning that lgbtq people exist by casually stumbling upon it on pornhub. This is besides the point.
It isn’t besides the point, you’ve just missed the point:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/childrens-online-safety-laws-are-failing-lgbtq-youth/
And you’ve conveniently ignored my second question.
The person you are talking to repeatedly and loudly advocates for fascist, oppressive, totalitarian policies. I would not expect any productive or good faith exchange with them.
Yeah, you’re right.
Well bless your heart for warning them, they might get into trouble if they talk to me! Oh no!
I can’t speak for people using the law to also target lgbtq people, it doesnt seem to be the goal of it but I’ll accept that there will be people who try to twist it. At this point it seems literally everything is twisted against that community.
As for the dark web, its so unpopular I dont consider it having a societal effect but If there was a site or service on there popular enough that it shows up in regular life for non-tech users, then yes it should regulated. I’m not for banning content, but rules and regulation can mitigate negative effects of something like widely available pornography.
It’s not about protecting the children and never has been with the Party of Pedos. It’s about control.
Outlaw porn. Then start calling LGBTQ folks pornographic. Now it’s illegal to be gay. You KNOW they are going in that direction.
Comrade, it seems you have just committed a thought crime. The thought police are already coming for you. Please do not resist. :)
Stephen Fry’s character in V For Vendetta is a perfect depiction of this
Pornographic content is literally & figuratively the canary in the coal mine of the internet.
Somewhere in the UK, a 13 year old has already figured out a way to bypass it and watch porn.
That’s what young me would have done.
There’s a news clip of a reporter bypassing the restrictions in under 4 seconds. I actually think more teens will get around this than adults lmao. I look at the positives though, the silver lining is at least teens are learning about vpns early.
Oh god we’re so fucked.
They will be using whatever “free” vpns show up on a google play/App Store search - which will expose them to worse.
Yes but at least protonvpn and mullvad are among the free VPNs they’re using.
Oh god we’re so fucked.
Most of the bypasses are by using a fake picture though. Two problems with that - if you consistently use the same fakery then your identity is still tracked between things (which is barely better than using your real identity), and if one service reports you for it being fake, you might lose all your connected accounts if they implement some sort of system like that in the future.
Maybe the silver lining is teaching them about the limitations of data obfuscation and misdirection early? The adults of tomorrow will be so much better off once they experience rejection via automation due to dumb shit they did on the internet as kids.
Oh god we’re so fucked.
Google image search for tits works without any age verification
Will soon be stuck in “safe mode” until you log in with verified if on your account.
Apparently the OSA counts for platforms and Google isn’t a platform? Not sure if that is accurate, or are Google just saying lol get fucked.
The stated reason behind these laws is to “protect children.”
The first time this PII is leaked about some politician’s online search history, it will all get repealed.
Wanna stop this? Get some whale to buy up the data and find people pushing this shit and any mass adoption for these things will die. Politicians like to eat up religious lobbyist’s shit until it’s used to expose their less savory activities to the greater population.
“Poorly Implemented Attempt to Censor Porn will Ruin Corporate Internet”
There, FTFY
Poorly implemented? There is no good implementation of censorship or any other restriction on freedom of expression. All attempts to do so are dangerous, existential threats.
Yeah, but it’s like it’s total slop on top of the censorship part. It’s literally adding insult to injury.
We need to consider building on and spreading the word about other protocols like Tor, Yggdrassil etc etc. Show people that the Commons cannot be stolen again.
I think the problem is that most of the people who have casually heard of Tor already associate it with CSAM
'Need" means what? I can’t hear you.
“Cotton” swabs his ear with a Bowling Pin
No. None of those or other prptocols are above legislation or javlass politics. This starts and ends with the public amd who they vote for. Just moving the goal post isnt going to stop this.
UK isnt so puritanical as the US, the sudden shift is very suspect of the actors behind these legislations all over the world.
