VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

Its because the popular press has, for a very long time, been pushing a narrative of a country under siege. It sells papers, but to keep selling papers, it has to keep steadily upping the narrative over time.

Australia is doing its best to hardline digital (and more broadly social) authoritarianism too. It’s a sad future we’re accelerating towards.

The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're seeing those with a few quid to rub together leave, but as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income.

On the NHS, I tried for years to push for improvements to switch to digital cancer screening invitations after they missed my mother (offering to build the software for free), which is now happening, but suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here. My sister who works in NHS DEI hasn't spoken to me since publishing a book on it.

Every time someone with the finances, vision and ability leaves I think the situation gets a little bit worse, it increases the proportion of people remaining willing to put up with all of it. Anecdotally, many of my friends have already left, some of the older generation want to leave but feel tied in. My flight out is in 6 weeks. Good riddance, no doubt.

In a word, division. The UK is so divided that people are too busy pointing the finger at each other to realise the root cause of the deterioration of our quality of life is entirely generations of mismanagement of the public purse.

Instead of questioning how MPs are entitled to a pay rise while your average person gets made redundant, people are questioning why people fleeing persecution should ‘be paid for with my tax money’.

Brain fatigue and mixed signals combined with destitution and desperation drastically impede the average person’s ability and desire to fact check and extrapolate. We are moving towards a society of down and out people living with no hope serving the elite and those with a bit of money behind them.

My fiancée and I have had enough and are also leaving in October. No idea where to all we know is we have a one way ticket away and will figure the rest out.

Not saying I agree with the legislation, but the UK experienced a lot of pretty bad domestic terrorism in the rememberable past (namely IRA bombs detonating in towns and cities etc, often with devastating impacts). Then there were the tube and bus suicide bombings more recently. And there has also been a constant pitter-patter of "radicalised lone wolf" type things like the Ariana Grande concert bomber, the guy who killed a load of 8 year old girls at a summer camp and so on.

None of this is porn of course, but supposedly a lot of the lone wolf's are radicalised online so it creates a lot of "someone needs to do something!!!!" type attitudes (and no public gun ownership would not work like everyone says it would because the USA had that yet no one lifted a finger when they needed to recently, and now look what's happened), and sadly the older and more little-c conservative population carriers more clout in terms of policies because historically they tend to vote in greater numbers than younger groups. N.b. that 16 and 17 year olds have very recently been given the right to vote so things may change.

And the EU is following suit. Brexit has never looked so stupid. They could have worked on expanding an authoritarian regime together.

It's making me cynical, and I don't know what to do about it.

Neither, they’re just the most convenient excuses for instituting draconian laws.

Don't believe the things that you read. Our newspapers have been openly biased for centuries, and there's some very shoddy journalism at times. See, for example:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44623091

Because the media always paints other countries in certain lights, as it helps them build a narrative for their own governments?

> complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government

I disagree with this sentiment, however it does show how bad "democracy" can be when voting for a complete government change results in absolutely no change whatsoever.

The Bourgeois love to divide the working class, typical divide and conquer. Indigenous worker vs imported worker, men vs women, queer vs straight, old vs young, car user vs bicycle rider. This is important because it weakens existing solidarities and prevent the emergence of class consciousness. It's part of their modus operandi and has been for centuries, only now they master it thanks to algorithms and machine learning. This increased surveillance also happens to be extremely useful at taming future strikes and protests, or rat out future pro-workers groups

While I appreciate the concern, it's worth pointing out that 30 or so years ago "government should mandate id checks for harmful content" was not some radical dystopian notion.

The UK was also one of the first nations to ban indoor smoking and in cars with kids. I think this is very much in that vein (politically).

This isn't about illegal sites?

I don't think many people object to blacklisting known sources of child pornography etc.

The fact is you now have to verify your identity (name and photo id) in the UK to access an adult subreddit.

It definitely seems like she’s conflating two issues: access to pornography and child grooming. I don’t see why she thinks regulating VPNs would reduce the latter.

> Sarah Champion is Labour MP for Rotherham.

Seriously? You can't make this up: she represents the town that did nothing about a massive (and completely offline) child grooming and molestation network for years and she has the gall to say, "think of the children on the Internet"?

The fact X flags protest videos as adult content is not entirely the fault of the UK government.

> “West Yorkshire Police denied any involvement in blocking the footage. X declined to comment, but its AI chatbot, Grok, indicated the clip had been restricted under the Online Safety Act due to violent content.”

I’m not involved with X or with its chatbot. Is its chatbot ordinarily an authoritative source for facts about assumptions like this one, that the law “was used to take down” politically sensitive video?

It’s a bad look either way, but I feel like there are important differences between the law leading to overly conservative automated filtering, vs political actors using it deliberately in specific cases. Bad symptom either way, but different medicines, right?

It's because this law isn't about protecting children, but about control of the Internet. They want online activity tied to real identity as a power grab.

> it wasn't just a requirement for Apple and Google to include a client side filter

I am old enough to remember when Apple proposed client side filtering and everyone absolutely lost their shit.

Because reinforcing a natural monopoly is bad? The law is specifically written to allow a range of different business models etc.

Also, because desktops/different browsers are a thing?

This is how it worked out in Russia. First, around 10 years ago, they adopted very limited laws that required ISPs to block websites. Things like drugs and suicide, with the classic rationale "won't someone please think of the children". Then piracy websites were added to that. Fast forward to now, ISPs were mandated to install black-box "ТСПУ" devices on their networks, "to protect against threats", so now Roskomnadzor doesn't even pretend to care about the law. Half the internet is broken. More if you're on mobile data. Everyone knows what a VPN is. I personally have set up DPI bypass tools for many of my relatives.

In other words, if you censor enough of the internet that your population knows ways around that, your censorship simply ceases being effective.

seems to be working in China. While many Chinese use VPN software, many don't bother with the friction and are fine just using rednote and friends.

They banned porn with choking in it. They banned toy advertising in the evening. They tried to ban client side encryption for iCloud. Make no mistake they will go for vpns too.

No they can't. Myself, and quite a few other people, need it for work.

I mean, it's a sovereign state. The government can legislate for the sky to be purple if it wants to (though obviously that won't affect actual reality).

The EU too. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...

It's just that Australia and UK tend to lead the way when it comes to authoritarianism and then it becomes "this has always been like this, you conspiracy theorist".

They're coming for AI tools next. Here in Australia they're rolling out the academic socialist activists on the public broadcaster. These experts know how to keep us safe apparently.

This morning it was all about "think of the children" in the context of banning AI tools that could potentially be used to make AI generated CSAM. Even adult nudity is in the firing line. Ban the lot was the advice from the expert. Not just banning access, but making it a crime to even possess the tools.

What next? Ban paint brushes because someone might use them to paint offensive images?

As is the next step: a slow but steady expansion of what's considered "unsafe" or "harmful" used to justify ever-increasing restrictions and censorship.

Until like a week ago there was no age checking system for porn and no reason to use a VPN really. Although your friends could have been into some very strange stuff.

> They all have VPNs on their phones apparently

They listen to podcasts and watch youtube. They know that a good VPN will stop their internet banking details being stolen, protect their family in their home and add 2-4 inches to their manhood.

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Whatever it is for, let freedom ring. These puritanical laws do nothing but empower government with the end goal of totally controlling online speech.

Do you have any examples of people being arrested for criticising a law?

Most of the time these dystopian descriptions of the UK turn out to be completely overblown nonsense when you look into them properly.