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Posted by iamnothere 7 hours ago

VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'(www.birminghammail.co.uk)
258 points | 262 commentspage 4
MaxPock 2 hours ago|
The UK has always been an authoritarian country masquerading as a democracy.
tombot 6 hours ago||
Glad HN is getting to experience the true level of adverts on “news” sites in the UK. It really is next level.
arbol 6 hours ago||
Adblock??
krapp 6 hours ago||
That will be illegal soon enough.
nubinetwork 6 hours ago||
They can have their cookie, I'm deleting it as soon as I close my browser.
RevEng 6 hours ago||
Funny how quickly "won't someone think of the children" turns into mandatory government ID for private services, banning necessary and secure (and encrypted) communications systems, and locking children out of access to the de facto communication systems of the modern era.

This is a privacy nightmare on all fronts and a horrible limit on freedom of speech. These kids will be learning how to drive a car, yet unable to contact their extended family over Messenger or follow news on Twitter. For everyone else, it means no anonymity or secrecy which has a chilling effect on free speech at a time when fascism is growing within democratic countries and dissidents are being imprisoned or murdered.

Yes, there are some really big problems with social media, but keeping children away from it doesn't fix the problems - it just leaves them for the rest of us to deal with. Let's fix the root of the problem, starting with the recommendation algorithms that inherently polarize people by building echo chambers around them and pushing divisive content all in the name of "engagement".

inigyou 5 hours ago|
That's because the tech industry never made any attempt. It's like you blocked all the good options, now you get the worst one because it's one you can't block.
kitd 5 hours ago||
Uk kids about to discover the power of Hetzner Linux vps + vnc.
dryarzeg 5 hours ago|
And then UK residents are going to discover the "power" of government which will require age verification for renting a VPS or VDS or any other kind of cloud infrastructure, tied directly to your passport/ID, because "many families are desperate for this to happen and I listen particularly to bereaved families that say the longer we delay this, the more children are put at risk".

/j or /s

P.S. by the way, is it possible for them to use Hetzner? Don't they need something like credit card?

arbol 25 minutes ago|||
What about the services that rent vps/compute for crypto?
dryarzeg 22 minutes ago||
I'm not so sure, but aren't some attempts to regulate the cryptocurrencies (therefore completely obliterating their initial goal to be government-independent) already have been made? Maybe I'm wrong though, because I don't really remember... Probably I have to look it up.

Anyway, how would they obtain the (let's say) Bitcoin to pay for VPS?

rgblambda 3 hours ago|||
Perhaps it'll work like dodgy boxes/firesticks, where you have a handful of people who individually set up their own service then charge a fee for access.
shevy-java 3 hours ago||
So the UK government finally admits that age-sniffing is just an attempt to censor people. How evil.

People need to look at the UK government much more so than the US government in ADDITION. Everyone knows how the USA serves the superrich only these days, but the UK government is kind of polite on the outside, but pure evil on the inside.

vld_chk 3 hours ago||
There is very little doubt that we need to find a way to update our relationship with social media. The evidence of their harm in current form is overwhelming.

However, using this reason to induce censorship rules, word by word matching Russia/China playbook is making the goal less achievable if anything.

horsh1 4 hours ago||
Enclosure of XXI century
specproc 6 hours ago|
Just moved back to the UK after many years away, and it's creepy here. Doing the elderly under terror legislation, some crazy kangaroo court antics, a frankly sinister approach to "online safety". VPNs?

The even more concerning thing is that we've got a far right party that have been leading in the polls for most of the last year.

This is a very dangerous situation.

Fredkin 3 hours ago||
Where is the evidence for that? Though I grant they may get into power and suddenly change their mind, at the moment those parties are against digital dystopia, most likely because the centrist parties are most interested in using those tools to silence criticism of current immigration policy and other failings.

-Reform UK vows to repeal ‘borderline dystopian’ Online Safety Act https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/28/reform-uk-v...

"Block the Introduction of Digital ID." "Repeal the Online Safety Act." https://www.restorebritain.org.uk/restore_civil_liberties

And the left are also being surveilled and censored, e.g pro-palestine / anti-war / anti-capitalist groups, though the strategy used there is less censorship and more often bogging those groups down with infighting about identity issues. What seems more dangerous is letting the increasingly tyrannical centrist establishment, dead set on stagnation and "managed decline", give legitimacy to censorship tools (which will be available to future extreme governments!) rather than fixing things properly.

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