To be pretty annoyed/creeped out by this incoming internet age verification thing

Ah, so thats why reddit wanted an age verification selfie of me earlier.
I didnt mind, i was reading the nosleep reddit of the national park SAR ranger guy and his strange experiences.
Weird place to request ID mind you as didnt think it was NSFW content.

It will be relatively easy to get round controls at first but as time develops it gets more and more difficult.

For example if you have an encrypted android phone my believe is that it is very difficult to get into it if you don't know the (long) password. Even I think the FBI have trouble.

If it is hard enough for them, then it would stop the majority of kids. And of course when you do find a hole, you plug it.

You would need to have greater restrictions on the system though. It's easier to plug a hole at an entry point than to plug holes once you are inside the system. You would have to do things like restrict apps etc.

But in my opinion this should be done anyway, and there should be a belt and braces approach with ISPs for example letting parents know that VPNs are being used on specific devices.

it will be a constant war between developers and people/children trying to circumvent the system. But that is how hacking/security works at the moment and is the price you need to pay if you want restriction, probably funded by a digital tax.

Many Youtubers popular with teens and children are sponsored by VPN companies and their favourite YT’er will accompany that ad with innocent uses of VPNs like watching Netflix from other countries as they have different films around the world.

You can google how to get around parental controls and teens will exchange tips with their friends in person. If it’s a question that many would have then somebody will cash in and make videos on TikTok or similar to help. The videos from when TikTok went dark in the US for like 12 hours are probably still around.

Err no.

In fact as you see from my earlier posts I believe quite the opposite.

It's about implementing the right sort of regulation.

I believe the regulation should start at the device and it should be up to the parents to parent their children as to which devices they can use and what they can do with those devices. And that process needs to be as simple as possible and devices need to have the functionality to actually do it.

Hitchens razor can save you hours on MN ....

Ah well - let’s give up on all regulation then

I mean hardly a week goes by without some sort of massive data leak being on the news.

And the government no doubt on these issues telling everyone their data is safe and a data breach is never going to happen.

You'd have to be a total idiot to believe that.

If you put controls on phones and PCs some kids will get round them.

Then of course the holes will be reported and the OS suppliers should patch them, and the circle goes on. That's how it works for hacking etc.

It has to be a dynamic process that is constantly under review. That's why government action is often pointless. Because it moves so slowly in a world where tech moves quickly.

State control of individuals. Through digital means.

Do you remember the Canadian protests? And access to banks.

People seem very keen to trust the state, it might not always be aligned with their views.

ETA just read the rest of your post, I feel similarly re your phrasing tbf

What? I haven't heard this
I despise Starmer but this seems... potentially slanderous at least.

So was Bibby Stockholm and the Rwanda Plan. Labour reversed those.
Don't forget Starmer requested access to our icloud accounts. One can only imagine why....

I can remember the RIPA being introduced and promises that it would be carefully used. Until councils discovered they could use it to fine people for putting bins

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/jun/23/localgovernment.localgovernment1

More local authorities than the government I admit

I use the term "Starmer's Labour" purely because the Labour party has gone through so many iterations over the past 30 years that it no longer resembles the Labour Party of Corbyn's time, which didn't resemble the Labour Party of Blair's time, which didn't resemble the Labour Party of Kinnock's time, etc etc, so simply using "Labour Party" doesn't express the fact that it has become something unrecognisable compared to what it was previously.

Despite the fact they've leapt at the chance to fill the centre-right void vacated by the Tories since Brexit, even most pre-2019 Tories would be utterly appalled and ashamed by Starmer's authoritarianism. It's abundantly clear he sees censorship and oppression as perfectly justifiable tools to deal with dissent. Not just public dissent, but within his own party. 11 Labour MP's suspended, whip withdrawn, or effectively ejected by the party in little over a year, for nothing worse than voting against government policy which punishes the poor and disabled, a LABOUR PARTY persecuting the poor and disabled, and one which has such an enormous majority that a handful of dissenters barely matters in any case. He's a thin-skinned, reactionary, authoritarian twit.

The last two certainly have, since the legislation being abused came about because the last lot were too intellectually challenged to figure out how to deal with JSO any other way.

And no, I don't accept that all governments abuse anti-terror legislation in the exact same way.

@EasternStandard more state control of what? All states control lots of things. It’s what makes a state civilised. That’s why we have democratically elected councillors, MPs and governments. They all control our state. That’s what we democratically agree is their job. What’s the alternative? Feudalism? Governance by the church?

It’s silly to use the term state control as if it’s sinister. Anyone who uses it in that way sounds ignorant and immature. It reminds me of the way teenagers in my time used to refer to anyone (parent, police, teacher) who had any kind of rule as a ‘fascist’

Verification and validation are not censorship, anymore than asking someone to buy a book is.

I'm not a massive censorship fan - quis ipsos custodiet cusodes ? and all that. But classifying, labelling, sorting, arranging ... seems fair enough.

I think it's a good thing. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Not sure about that. He seems quite keen on more state control.

Is age verification on gambling sites internet censorship?

Starmer's Labour are already abusing anti-terror legislation to attempt to silence any group that causes potential embarrassment to the State

All governments do that.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX it’s interesting that you use the term ‘Starmer’s Labour’ as if to suggest a kind of awful autocracy like ‘Hitler’s Germany’ or ‘Stalin’s Russia’. You may not like Starmer (I’m not his biggest fan either) but he’s a pretty mild character, some might say that’s his flaw. His leadership certainly doesn’t herald heavy handed state control. It’s more like traditional British bumbling and compromise.

There is a fairly significant difference between security services monitoring people who are already a concern, the illegal content they access, and spaces where dangerous people and groups coalesce and exchange ideas or formulate plans, and what we have right now which is a reactionary, authoritarian government censoring and monitoring people who wish to access content which is not only perfectly legal, but by use of a medium which is also perfectly legal.

Starmer's Labour are already abusing anti-terror legislation to attempt to silence any group that causes potential embarrassment to the State, we really shouldn't be encouraging them to begin censoring legal content on the internet because that will inevitably lead to a China-like situation where anything remotely critical of the State is then considered fair game for blocking. Thankfully ISP's largely want no part of State internet censorship because any who comply stand to lose significant custom compared to those who resist, and we can still make use of VPNs, however, once UK Government figures out what VPNs are actually about I suspect they'll embark on a crusade against those as well.

It doesn't have to stop all children to be of value. And (men's) privacy isn't king.

OP I find it so weird that you assume this is to do with women being repressed prudes. I enjoy sex very much indeed and I think everyone of every type of (legal) sexual preference should get as much of it as possible. But that is really, hugely different to the argument that children shouldn’t have access to every kind of porn at any time. Can’t you see that ?

You're the one calling women repressed and prudes.