and fuck the UK goverment
If any service requires me to send a photo of myself to use it, I ain’t using it.
EDIT: lol wut, Facebook and YouTube want photo ID now?? I must be old enough to have missed out. My comment stands though, if I wasn’t already a member on either of those I guess I wouldn’t become one!
It’s a UK law, you either comply or get banned. Obviously everybody now has a VPN subscription.
Italy made VPNs practically illegal. The UK might soon follow. And surfing the web with a VPN is a painful torrent of capchas. And email addresses you can get without revealing your phone number to identify yourself are becoming sparse too.
If you’d want to actually address the issue (insofar unsupervised teenagers watching porn is an issue) you’d need something like a U2F security key that can be used as anonymous age verification and be bought anonymously in a physical shop for cash, just by showing your ID to a clerk (without your details being stored). Keys being stolen or misused could then also be flagged in a public database.
I think it’s better to reject these sites rather than work around it. Especially for major platforms. Make it hurt financially.
Many have done that for decades, but the tend remains that the internet is getting less and less free.
My VPN for about 7-8 years is run by Italian hacktivists (airvpn, it’s a nonprofit, they’re good people), I haven’t heard about this ban. Perhaps it only applies to Italian citizens using VPNs, not to Italians running VPNs. Wait, that doesn’t make sense… I’ll check out their newsfeed.
Yeah, afaik airvpn basically can’t offer VPN to Italian citizens any more because they’d be forced to keep logs. But they can still get customers from outside Italy. And presumably Italians can still use VPN outside Italy. I think, let me know if I’m wrong.
That’s terribly disheartening. I’m sorry, Italy.
Facebook does that,
Youtube does that
Age verification is insane in it’s entirety and no payment processor, corpo, government, or think-tank has any right to enforce their puritanical views on sex and Orwellian techno-fascist policies on everyone.
That is, I believe, a British law that they’re following for users that appear to be in the UK. Not like they’re going to just disregard the law.
kagis
Yeah, the Online Safety Act 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
The Online Safety Act 2023[1][2][3] (c. 50) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate online content. Designed to protect children and adults online, it passed on 26 October 2023 and gives the relevant Secretary of State the power, subject to parliamentary approval, to designate and suppress or record a wide range of online content that is illegal or deemed “harmful” to children.[4][5]
The act creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content, or legal content that could be “harmful” to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher. It also empowers Ofcom to block access to particular websites.
So that’s what they’ll be aiming to do.
Some websites and apps stated they would introduce age verification for users in response to a 25 July 2025 deadline set by Ofcom.[47] These include pornographic websites,[48] but also the social networks Bluesky and Reddit.[49][50]
Probably should be mostly irritated with Parliament.
I expect that using a VPN that terminates in another country will avoid it, though I bet that then you can’t do things like buy Reddit Gold, if that’s still a thing.
I’d add that if you pick Ireland as the VPN exit country, it will have notable benefits:
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Sites that pick language based on IP will probably do English.
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It probably won’t add much latency.
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Ireland isn’t too bonkers and hopefully won’t have any large collection of online laws of their own that become an irritant.
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Because Ireland has a considerably smaller population than the UK, if people in the UK do this at scale for pornography, it will make the Irish statistically look like absolutely indefatigable horndogs, which I think will be pretty funny on visualizations.
the Irish statistically look like absolutely indefatigable horndogs
What did you think that “wild rover” they keep singing about was? 😉
Indefatigable horndogs best band name calling dibs now
Please make the music ska. A band with that name, playing literal horns, creating a fast, upbeat tempo? It would be beautiful.
Pornhub stats: Irish +28572%
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If you don’t mind my hijacking, I’ve seen the term “kagis” used a number of times on Lemmy, possibly only by you but I think also others. Based on the usage, I assumed it was a Latin word to indicate some sort of transition or side-bar, but it seems to just translate to “you are”, which doesn’t make sense in context. Can I ask what it means?
Kagi is a new-ish search engine that is popular among Lemmy users. Those users are trying to get it to catch on, and have started using kagi as a verb, the same way people say “let me google that really quick.”
It honestly feels a lot like when Microsoft was trying to get Bing and their phone OS to take off, and started slipping product placement into popular TV shows. There was a brief time period in American TV, where characters had the disgusting line of “Bing it!” Usually while showing the Bing home page on a Microsoft Phone. It was just blatant ham-fisted cringey product placement.
Yeah I’ve noticed this user basically inserts a “kagis” into like 2/3 of their comments, it always slightly irks me because it makes me feel like I’m getting advertised at. I’ve never felt the need to proclaim which search engine(s) I’ve used to research any particular comment on Lemmy, and I find it odd that the one person who does so regularly is doing it for a paid service.
Apart from that, their comments are usually pretty good, so I’m not accusing them of shilling or anything, but I find it super peculiar.
Does “googled” make you feel advertised at?
Not particularly, and while I admit this can seem hypocritical, the verb “to google” has just become a generic trademark.
When someone says band-aid, or kleenex, or jello, I think of bandages, tissues, or gelatin desserts, not of a specific brand of these products. Same goes with “googled”, it just means “searched the web” now rather than specifically using Google.
What about ye olde “googles on ddg”?
It makes me sad when I see the name because Kagi used to be a payments processor for shareware and essentially a predecessor to modern app stores…but before enshittification.
There’s a search engine named Kagi. It’s basically the equivalent of “googles” but for a different search engine.
Thanks. The usage now makes sense, albeit superfluous.
Upvote for the verbification of Kagi :)
In this one instance I’ll give Reddit a pass. This is 100% a fuck the UK government moment
What I don’t understand is that there are ways to prevent kids from looking at porn that don’t rely on crazy shit like this, even if they do involve some government action. Having to send a picture of your face to a porn provider to view porn is the dumbest possible way to fix this. I suspect the real reason for all of this is people want to effectively ban porn altogether and dumb fucks are letting them.
Having to upload your ID anywhere is already sketchy as-is, let alone a porn site. What ever happened to the days of “never use your real name on the internet”? Computer class teachers would drill that into students’ heads all the way through K-12.
When Facebook came along, I thought people were insane for posting things under their full name with their photo attached to it. I thought MySpace was asking for too much personal info as-is! Fast forward ~20 years, and not only are you expected to provide your real identity on several websites, some American states even require it now!
Honestly blows my mind how willingly we gave up our online anonymity without even the slightest bit of pushback. We all just accept it as normal now.
FB has a very aggressive data mining verification for making an account, they don’t even let you use some obscure emails to registet
@markovs_gun @Abraxas Kids are being banned from all social media here in Australia soon. Including, it seems, YouTube lol.
Expensive and completely unworkable. Reminds me I must spin up that Mastodon instance for my kids and their mates :mastodondance:
It’s absolutely not about making sure everyone signs up to DigitalID.It’s going to be interesting to see if, after Britons become accustomed to letting websites take pictures of their identity documents, whether there will be interesting fraud attempts made on the British public from other websites who claim that they are conforming to British law.
“Estimate age from selfie”
fake beard sales dramatically increase
Works in real life too. Grew a beard when i was 17, and never got carded for booze again after that.
As someone with long hair and a long beard I haven’t been carded in basically 10+ years.
Last weekend I got carded buying a beer with my parents-in-laws. Of course one of the very few times I didn’t have my ID.
Two 65+ people order a beer and then like, oh we’ll get your beer on our tab to make things easier. Bartender “I’ll need to see his ID”
We all couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t upset or anything, it was just kind of absurd feeling. I’ve been drinking for almost 20 years.
It’s one of those situations where common sense should be allowed to be used.
Yeah how tf is that supposed work??
Are there any women here today?
The stuffed bra has deferred many an ID check.
Don’t be sexist. Gray is gray.
It was a Life of Brian reference.
Are there any women here today?
My deepest apologies sire, I know I lack familiarity with the greatest comedies. I know it is my duty to know them, especially when I listen to them out of my mind on laughing gas.
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle don’t grumble, give a whistle. And this’ll help things turn out for the best.
Oh shit, hopefully god can’t see through my tin roof.
Yeah I hate this. Glad I’m not using it much anymore anyway but damnnnn. I’m convinced they’re rolling this out under the guise of child safety but with the profit motive of data harvesting for their donors
Basically what FB does, and you already know they use it to sell your data and train their AI
Yeah abandoned that platform long before
Lol yeah I’m not doing that. VPN all the way.
Today I’m french.
Tomorrow, who knows?
The possibilities are endless.
Too bad VPN server addresses are on-sight to reddit’s IP blocking strategy for years now. For whatever good internet choice you make, reddit reciprocates with an equally bad one
What’s funny about that is the VPN I use I saw advertised on Reddit. I wonder if these companies know that they ban users for using their products? Well I guess they don’t really don’t care.
Other companies: Thank you for buying from our sponsors! Here’s a code for 15% off!
Reddit: You bought from our sponsors? Lol, you’re banned.
Remember when you didn’t even need an email address to sign up for reddit?
If I need to look at that site, my LibRedirect extension sends me to a privacy focused mirror
Mullvad has couple of USA exits that don’t get blocked by Reddit. Texas and D.C., I think.
Blocking VPNs from posting or vviewing content too?
if you’re not logged in and using a VPN server that’s not in the US. If you want to post, it’s not an issue but if you want to browse logged out they block you.
It is fucking mental that an industry plagued by data harvesting is being asked to harvest more data.
Anyway, I’m now in Belgium according to my VPN.
Yeah I already left Reddit because (one of the reasons) they wouldnt let you open NSFW content without downloading their app on mobile. Having to submit ID is just way too ridiculous.
I was forced out of reddit, as are many through their schemes of removing accounts that doesn’t adhere to propaganda standards
They permabanned me claiming that I had posted the Alligator Auschwitz video and called it Bullying ( violating rule 1). Their evidence when I appealed? A screenshot of the video with “deleted” as the poster. Thing is, the only subs I ever posted to were niche hobby subs. I would comment in politics subs and news subs, but not post. I can’t even lie, it hurts to lose access to some of those subs since Lemmy simply doesn’t fill the void yet.
reddit has bots running the site mostly, i wouldnt be surprised its used in some form to report anti-faciscst sentiment. the only protected spaces are the subs, that the user has been on for a while.
I voiced anti-fascist sentiment all over the place, but I never posted the thing they banned me for. I had been behaving myself, so the ban was quite a surprise.
VPN, friend
people will not let this become the norm (aka persona hq bombings, im predicting that)
They will. People tolerate shitloads. They doubly tolerate it if you tell them to think of the children and point out the only reason they could possibly be offended by this is if they were some kind of pedophile.
If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear. Now submit to increasing orwellian surveillance.
Discord is the same now. Wish more communities used something else
Unfortunately they require “proof of liveness”, you have to open your mouth or tilt your head or whatever. There are ways around it but I too have nuked my Reddit account and returned to Lemmy today.
Gross
Why dont they just offer some government id api service that Reddit can use? Giving away ur id and shit for everything is insane
Every country has their own, and they usually have pretty strict guidelines with who can access it.
its much easier to outsource this process to llms (or, much more likely, people manually checking it somewhere in Philippines)
Britain is the one to enforce this, so Britain should provide a way to do it imo, fair if the government has a partnership with a private actor to do it. But the government should absolutely have a stake and do oversight.
