Summary

Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, all websites hosting pornography, including social media platforms, must implement “robust” age verification methods, such as photo ID or credit card checks, for UK users by July.

Regulator Ofcom claims this is to prevent children from accessing explicit content, as research shows many are exposed as young as nine.

Critics, including privacy groups and porn sites, warn the measures could drive users to less-regulated parts of the internet, raising safety and privacy concerns.

  • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    My problem with all this nonsense is that it doesn’t actually solve the problem, while causing many more. You’d need to fundamentally rethink the basic design of the technology if you were to actually prevent children from accessing sexual material with it.

    Absolutely - this always happens with these “save the children” laws.

    That’s something they don’t want to do, however, presumably because they’re addicted to the power it offers them to spy on everyone, and exploit the population for profit.

    Jesus Christ… You ever hear the phrase “never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance?” Politicians do this sort of “make the people feel like we’re doing something” shit all the time. They rarely consider the ramifications beside appeasing parents.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      6 hours ago

      The UK has a History of intrusive civil society surveillance which the Snowden revelations showed was even worse than in the US, and whilst the US actually walked back on some of it back then, the UK Government just retroactivelly made the whole thing legal.

      Also, lets not forget how the UK has the highest density of CCTV cameras per inhabitant in the World (or maybe it’s just London: it’s been a while since I read about it).

      Their track record on the subject heavilly indicates that this specific measure with the characteristics it has, is extremelly likely to have been purposefully crafted to extend civil society surveillance and information access control.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 hours ago

        So - the people abusing policies are often not the people writing policies. We’re both making lots of assumptions but the way I see it is that the “well meaning but stupid MP” wants to make their constituency happy by passing laws to show “I’m listening to the needs of parents!”. Later that law is then used by other agencies to do things with your data you would rather them not do. Government is “people” not a “person”.

        And for that matter there are laws passed to explicitly give agencies power. Government doesn’t often need to hide it, they just say the magic words “national defense”.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 hours ago

          If by that you mean that some out of touch MPs can be easily swindled by members of the security apparatus working together with other MPs and higher level politicians who are smart enough to know what they’re doing, I don’t disagree with that.

          What is less likely is that a majority of British MPs, repeatedly and over the course of 2 decades, have been deceived like that.

          Maybe I’m wrong, but most British MPs don’t come out as stupid (though some definitely do) - incompetent at anything but salesmanship and power-games, crooked, greedy, ethics-free, unprincipled salesmen types and people driven by objectives which do not at all match what they state, sure most of them come out as that, stupid, not most.

          I mean, your point would make a lot of sense if this was some kind of one-off event rather than a repeating pattern of measure after measure increasing surveillance of Civil Society, for the last 2 decades, and if Civil Society (or at least the Media) had been silent about it or even supportive of it, but as things stand the theory that a majority of MPs are stupid as an explanation for this bill passing Parliament really stretches the laws of probability.

          As the saying goes: “You can deceive some people all of the time or all people some of the time but you can’t deceive all people all of the time”.

          PS: I accept that I might be wrong. I just don’t think that given the Historical track record the odds favor the “they’ve been swindled” (a majority of them and again on a subject that has been steadily going in just this direction and with not so long ago exposés on the press of how previous legislation has been abused for surveillance) explanation over the explanation that at least the ones in leadership positions acted with full awareness and possibly the active intention and purpose of crafting and passing a bill that expands Civil Society Surveillance in Britain.

    • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      You ever hear the phrase “never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance?”

      Generalities like that can be useful when applied appropriately, but counter-productive when applied blindly. That positions of power are held primarily by those who are motivated primarily by power ought to be the most straight forward assertion possible.

      • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        Agreed. I feel we’ve been giving politicians passes on “ignorance” for far too long. First, ignorance is not a defense in any other situation. Second, these people are supposed to uphold our laws and virtues, so they should be held to a higher standard. Third, if you can find a pattern in their “ignorance” which somehow always seems to benefit them personally - they’re not ignorant, but malignant.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        1 day ago

        That positions of power are held primarily by those who are motivated primarily by power ought to be the most straight forward assertion possible

        Generalities like that can be useful when applied appropriately, but counter-productive when applied blindly.