Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told
Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told
www.bbc.co.uk
Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told
As sure as night follows day.
56 comments
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Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: "Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it's absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that's one of my major recommendations."
She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs "to implement highly effective age assurances to stop underage users from accessing pornography."
Stop trying to enforce this at the service level, for God's sake. What are you going to do when people switch to stuff like Tor? 'Online safety regulation pushes kids to that dark web' will be a fire headline in a couple of months/years.
I remember seeing someone link to something here they described as 'Tor for apps' that I can't find, does anyone have that at hand?
The report also found more children are stumbling across pornography accidentally, with some of the 16 to 21-year-olds surveyed saying they had viewed it "aged six or younger".
I'm sorry, but this is genuinely a failure of parents. Like, I'm not normally one to trot out the 'parents should helicopter their children' defence against regulation of social media, but giving a bloody six year old not-monitored-enough access to the internet is on the parent.
Also, I'd take this all a lot more seriously if parents actually used the tools already available to them:
We actually already have measures to deal with this: back in 2011 the government worked with ISPs (internet service providers) to come up with a Code of Practice on implementing ‘parental controls’ for all new customers. In 2013 this was adopted by all the major players. So when you (an adult – because you have to be over 18 to do this) register for an internet connection, you are offered adult content filtering by default. You can tweak this, if you like, for example you can decide you’re happy for your family to access social media sites but not pornography. Or if you don’t anticipate any children using your connection, you can opt out of adult filters altogether. Research conducted in 2022, however, found that although 61% of parents were aware of these filters, only 27% actually used them. Again, sing it with me: lol.
Back to the BBC article.
More than half of respondents to the survey had viewed strangulation as children, prompting Dame Rachel to also ask the government to ban depictions of it.
This is an implicit admission that age verification is ineffective. If it was, then children wouldn't see it and then we wouldn't need to ban it.
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It's easier to police the users than it is to get social media companies to actually do the literal minimum amount of work to protect children. Plus it has the added benefit of greatly expanding the surveillance infrastructure so they can clamp down on those pesky 80 year old nuns who oppose genocide.
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The weird thing is that I've been ogling internet porn since the internet was invented, and I have never seen any strangulation porn ever. This sort of shit you have to hunt down. You certainly don't "stumble across" it.
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It's insane - I don't give unrestricted internet access (certainly no social media) to my 9 year old, let alone a 6 year old!
Parent education is needed badly!
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It's because of the idiots that proudly announce that they "don't do computers". Refusing to understand even at a fundamental level the most basic parts of computing is like refusing to learn to read, it's just not acceptable in modern life.
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Yep. But these authoritarians do not think you should have a choice. Because some parents fail. They will use the claim to control all internet.
It is no accident that the solution is the force data sharing with the least trusted companies when it comes to data.
Just as smart folks choosing to pay VPN as more trusted then sharing data with random porn sites scares the crap out of them.
It's got little to do with protecting anyone. Def not your children.
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None of this was ever actually about protecting anybody's children.
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Can we focus one moment on why the fuck a 6 years-old kid could watch porn?
What the hell was a 6yo kid doing with an unsupervised internet device? How about you don't give your 6yo kid an internet device if you can't (or don't want to) parent them?
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Well, that's exactly why they do.
You give them an iPad and they shut up, and that's enough of a reason for many parents who shouldn't be ones.
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Even then it's possible to lock the iPad down. You can just disable internet access, or you can be more subtle and just block certain sites. You can put YouTube into kids mode, lock the iPad to the YouTube app and stop worrying about it.
It requires 30 seconds of parenting and then you can go back to ignoring your child. But they can't even be bothered to do that bare minimum of effort.
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How about.. Supervise your children's use of technology? Don't give them unrestricted devices? The government can't do anything to stop a motivated intelligent kid, but parents can (to a greater degree at least)
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I'm sorry, are you suggesting I actually parent my children? Really? Have you seen them? 😂
No no, much better to get the government to do this for me. All I care about is sourdough and designer dogs.
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Good luck with that, maybe parents should step the fuck up and start parenting instead of fucking up the Internet?
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But think of all those children who lost their lives because they saw people having sex on the Internet!
The ones that survived are scared for life! Missing limbs, eyes blinded, forever unable to work. They'll be begging on the streets!
Right?
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Yeah, I died probably thousands of times as a teenager.
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You are mixing things up. You are thinking of the genocide that is actively supported by the UK government.
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Is there any data to support this? Are parents not parenting or is gov using "for the children" 100th time as an excuse?
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Yes (it's an inclusive or).
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So now they’re moving to restrict even the technology minors could use.
Since they’ll need to know the age of anyone using a VPN, that means mandatory ID checks for everyone who connects.
What a brilliant mindset these politicians have. Welcome to the age of dictatorship, censorship, and neo-fascism.
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It'd not about children, and it's not about parents.
When you phrase this as anything but being about control you're playing their game.
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Correct
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Correct
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All devices have parental controls which can be enabled. If watching porn is bad for a child's mental health and parents are allowing their children to use a device they have neglected to enable those controls on, how can that be considered to be anything other than child neglect? Why put the onus on providers when even the most non tech savvy parent could spend a few hours learning to stop their kids from encountering it in the first place? This is all going to go very wrong very soon.
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How is anyone supposed to 'think of the children' when you're here throwing logic around?
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Age verification on VPNs. Hmm, collecting the ID of people that want to hide their identity. Seems about right.
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Honestly, country is gripped by clowns.
Would not be at all surprised to find the commissioner has shares or a financial interest in Age Verification companies.
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Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: "Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it's absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that's one of my major recommendations."
She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs "to implement highly effective age assurances to stop underage users from accessing pornography."
That's not how... That doesn't...
Oh you know what? They'll find out.
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I have my doubts. Most people barely grasp the surface of what technology can do, let alone understand how it does it.
They also don't understand that whatever they come up with, technology has a way around it.
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That's always the problem with escalation wars on this sort of thing.
Incidentally, I saw reports today about the fallout of the regulation in EU press. One highlighted as a success of the measure that traffic to the top porn sites from the UK had dropped by about half (which shouldn't have been the case if only underage users were blocked anyway). It proceeded to flag all the EU countries prepping similar regulation.
In their defense they also reported further down the article that VPN usage had skyrocketed and traffic to smaller, less safe sites that had just ignored the regulation had gone up a lot as well. I'm sure that's unrelated, though.
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Staunch conservative - wants a totalitarian state.
Nothing newsworthy there.
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Might be relevant
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Next up: Stop children using HTTPS to watch porn.
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The s stands for sexy!
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When is it the parents responsibility to care and look after a child? Just admit you want to look in my closet. Just admit it and we would all feel better about it because the truth would be out there.
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We have a government dumb enough that they might actually try and ban VPNs. I'm not sure if I'll be able to buy enough popcorn for this.
I have to use six different VPNs for my job, I'd love to see them try and craft a law that bands VPNs at the same time as still allowing business to take place.
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Wait what type of work do you do that you need 6 VPNs?
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It's pretty common.
I have six different clients at the moment that requires me to sign into six different systems each one has to have its own VPN because they're different companies. Oh and actually there's a 7th VPN if I want to do anything with my schedule because I don't work in an office
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I imagine they will start enforcing age checks on payments to VPN companies
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Lmao kids would just pay double to some
proxyreseller. Or use a free service.-
Hell, even Android ProtonVPN app can not only be used for free, but also without sign up:
If you prefer, you can use the app without a Proton Account. Simply tap Continue as guest. Doing this allows you to access all the free features available in the app. To access our premium features, you’ll need to sign in with a paid Proton VPN account.
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I FUCKING HATE THIS TIMELINE.
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Pound shop China.
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It's the UK trying to out-stupid America?
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Holy shit that is a nonsensical sentence
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Have they tried massive whips?
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56 comments
Guys don't get sucked into the misdirecting packing - this is nothing to do with keeping children safe. Better parental effort isn't going to make this UK govt stop the initiative because it has absolutely nothing to do with child safety.
This is about authoritarian tracking of everything a UK citizen does and says online - that's why the careful quote is about it being ok for adults to have VPN not kids.
You know how they do that ? They make it necessary to show ID to have a VPN so then they can track what the adults are doing on a VPN.
The "think of the children" pearl clutching is a sham and a scam
It’s never ever been about the children. Every time someone uses children as a meat shield for their arguments it’s because arguing against it is hard.
“We need to execute all criminals to protect the children!l”
“That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“What? You’d support a rapist pedophile over an innocent child? You support pedos??”
Yup, do you have a license to use that VPN bruv?
I have been saying this is the long term aim of this style of legislation for years.
They knew when they implemented IPA back in 2016 that VPNs would be an ongoing problem and have been chipping away at the perception of them since then.
Well, time to start sending envelopes of cash to Mullvad!