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

Yep, they're constantly being set free, and that's the few that are even brought to trial. I trust judges about as much as I do politicians.

I think that sites such as mumsnet have every right to ask for ID, and then people can simply say nope and walk away. My issue is with it being government controlled and pushed by the government. If history has taught anybody anything it is that governments MUST NOT be given the power to monitor or interfere with people's conversations, comments or beliefs. Pol Pot, Chairman Mao and Hitler to name but three would LOVE this idea.

I unfortunately believe that the only way to stop online bullying is just to stay offline, or immediately block and walk away once it starts. I have been bullied and harassed online, some years ago. I responded by blocking everyone involved and having zero interaction with any of them, and it worked. This was on Twitter, where I was very active at that time, and it was open for all to see, including people who knew me in real life.

I ignored it totally. Not a single word of response and used the block button freely. It took a few months, and I was lucky I was in therapy for something else at the time and this was the approach my psychologist walked me through, because otherwise who knows how I'd have responded. But it worked. Responding - at all - always feeds the bully monster. It's not possible in real life to walk away from a punch or someone screaming in your face, but it very much is possible to completely silence it online.

Teaching, really teaching that words are NOT the same as a punch, a kick and NOT usually actually dangerous is important.

But people want not to just be safe, they want to be validated, to win, and to have everyone agree with them. Sometimes, that is an understandable want, but it's not reality.

Maybe someone could work on an app that just removes any negative or harmful comments from your timeline, comments etc, we could filter our own personal internet usage through that. It could work like an adblocker.

You cannot stop people from being arseholes, you cannot legislate offensiveness, what is offensive and upsetting to one is fun and fine to another. i

For example, I find some of the crap on this thread so far truly and genuinely offensive - but I wouldn't report them to the Politburo for it or even want them not to be able to spout this rubbish.

Mumsnet is an absolute shithole at times, there are women here who would love to see women they disagree with on a dissident list. There are always the good soldiers of the Red Army.

Bottom line, state sponsored lists of dissidents and all the censorship and fear and abuses of power that will accompany that is a far far worse concept than the problem it is pretending it wants to solve.

If I was able to be tied to this comment by the government, I would not have made it. People are getting locked up for thought crimes already.

They all think it won't happen to them, until it does.

My 16 year old DS welcomes this. He doesn’t want to look at porn and it is all too easy at the monent. He is tempted because he is an 16 year old boy and has looked at it but in his words, it makes him feel crap. We have put many controls in place, at his request. I am delighted with this coming in and am just sad it has been so long coming.

And for those of you thinking “just don’t look” when I had that conversation he very reasonably said “that is like me saying to you ‘just don’t eat crap’ you don’t want to but you do it anyway”.

@orwellwasright2025

Agree.

Look at the sentences for paedophiles and even those caught with a knife in real life.

Its a slap on the wrist for child abuse images.

And if your child is at secondary they may not be a tech wizard but they all know who the tech wizards are!

Agree it should be restricted to that area

I agree that is a scary risk. Do you have any suggestions for how to stop bullies and predators? We are seeing so many horrible things happening because people are anonymous.

(Promise I am not saying that in a goady way, I genuinely think this is an interesting topic).

It won’t change anything
a popular VPN with kids used to be Hide My Ass when it was free 😆
there are loads of free VPNs so all kids will do is get one

all the age verification will do is hide it out of site from the moral sex brigade

you get more porn on x and ticktock than on most adult sites

porn hub blocked itself from France recently
the use of VPNs went through the roof
same for Florida

the porn genie has been out of the. Bottle far to long for any effective way to get rid of it
it will just be underground & out of site

might go and invest in a a few VPN shares

Nah. Anyone who says anything the government disagrees with will be put on a database. If you don't think this is the plan you have not paid any attention at all to history.

They're not trying to do anything about kids seeing porn and pedophiles, because they don't care about that, only about strangling any dissent and preventing anyone speaking words the government doesn't like.

This.

Sexual predators/revenge porn people and keyboard warrior bullies are really the only ones who need to worry.

I personally think you should be happy to back up anything you do or say on the Internet. If you feel shame or guilt then you're probably doing something wrong.

Maybe people like the fox rescue lady wouldn't have killed herself because of online bullies if they knew there was records of who was saying what.

Yes of course there's ways this can be abused if the wrong political party starts getting scary influence (and I believe this to be a potential for both sides) but at least for the time being the good will far outweigh the bad.

I also wish they would spend more time and energy trying to figure out how to get into these anonymous messaging services and sites where people distribute child sexual assault material.

At which point people will start to improve their knowledge of tech and start to put the skids under their sprogs.

Well, you live in hope.

The governments National ID push.

The Afghan Data leak suggests the Government shouldn’t be trusted with our data.

Criminals will still commit crime.
Children will still access porn.
Our data will be at a greater risk of being leaked to criminals.

Pedophiles with child abuse on their hard drive will still get a slap on the wrist from a judge.

Nope, it is precisely the same as giving your information to a random - that's precisely what you are doing.

I hate to make you sound daft, but the point is that you should be able to have thoughts that the government does not approve of online and even be "offensive" without the government being able to track you down and add you to a Red Army database of dissidents. Particularly considering you get arrested for thought crimes in the UK now - and don't pretend you are unaware of this trend.

So I will continue to do what I have always done and use throwaway emails and VPNs when posting commentary or reading anything I wish to read, as it's absolutely none of the government's business and they very definitely cannot be trusted with that sort of power.

Porn is nothing to do with this discussion, I have been saying we need age verification on porn for 20 years, because kids should never have access to porn. So if you are panicking that your porn use is about to be discovered, you're all alone there, it's nothing to me at all being that I don't watch porn.

The point is that they are pretending to protect kids while planning to make lists of dissenting adults.

They are asking for videos now, in many places. Facebook in Aus wants you to make a video of your face before they will let you have an account. I imagine all the other good soldiers for the Red Army will fall in line soon too.

If I can't access sites without Big Brother having my info, I just won't access the site, whatever it is.

I hate to make you paranoid, but I'm pretty sure the government already have access to all of that anyway? That's how it works in Korea, bit different to giving all of your details to a random.

Trustworthy companies have data protection, so maybe don't visit any dodgy sites?

As an aside, the amount of men panicking that their porn abuse watching history may become public is nothing short of hilarious.

Ok, you go first. Name, address and telephone number, credit card details and national insurance number will do to start. You can just send it to me by DM, I promise to do nothing bad with it.

And that promise is precisely as safe as Big Brother Online Nanny Database having access to everything.

I'd go one further.

I'd like access to the Internet to requite your national insurance number, similar to South Korea.

It would be a much better place if everyone had to be accountable for their words, threats and actions.

I was reading about Reddit doing this - apparently you have to upload a "selfie" or "government ID". I might be missing something, but what's to stop an underage person uploading someone else's ID, especially the 'selfie'? I won't be doing it, anyway. If it's asked for in relation to anything I want to look at, I just won't bother.

I don't think it's prudish to not want women and girls to be shown as orifices for men's (in the main) pleasure. Most sex workers I have met have come from abusive or neglected backgrounds.
Don't feel sad that we don't get off on other's pain.
Also in a selfish level I'm up for less porn if possible. All the blokes I have slept with who are into porn have been rubbish in bed 😂

https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2023/05/Evidence-on-pornographys-influence-on-harmful-sexual-behaviour-among-children.pdf

Porn isn't sex of course, it's filmed prostitution usually and at best totally unrealistic. And kids never need to see that, of course.

I feel really sad for anybody who would pretend not to know this, in case that was a dig at anyone who doesn't want kids to see porn.

It's not prudish really. Lots of women in porn are coerced/forced etc. We don't like it.

Nope. Not using it is one thing, Big Brother compiling lists of people who have views they disagree with is another.

Sorry you're a porn addict and fixated on porn, I don't watch any porn at all.

Move on.