- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ca
The UK’s Online Safety Act doesn’t just age-gate porn; it blocks material deemed “harmful” to minors. Days after the law went into effect, reports of non-explicit content on social media getting blocked in the region started to crop up. Subreddits from r/IsraelCrimes to r/stopsmoking are now walled in the UK. Video games, Spotify, and dating apps have instituted or will institute age checks.
Given the SCOTUS age verification decision [June '25], Stabile fears that people [in the US] will go “mask off” in the fall and spring, when state legislatures start getting back together. “People are going to attempt to restrict the internet even more aggressively,” Stabile said. “I think people are going to work to restrict all sorts of content, particularly LGBTQ content, but also content that is broadly defined as any sort of threat or propaganda to minors.” Other experts Mashable spoke to agree with him.
“I’m going to jump to the end step,” [Eric Goldman, law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law] said. “The end step is that most online users are going to be required to age authenticate most of the time they visit websites. That’s going to become the norm.” In a paper he wrote, Goldman called these statutes “segregate-and-suppress” laws.
The stated reason behind these laws is to “protect children.” But as journalist Taylor Lorenz pointed out, in the UK, age verification is already preventing children from accessing vital information, such as about menstruation and sexual assault.
“When we see crackdowns on spaces on the internet, we’re essentially stripping away that potential for self-actualization,” Goldman said. We’ve reached the dystopian stage of the internet, he added.
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“Think of the children!”
-Fascists
It’s not even age verification - it’s identity verification.
They’re not just asking you to recall the lyrics of tv theme tunes from the pre-2000s, or showing you a few photos and asking “which one of these people is the footballer 'Ronaldo?”. They’re asking you to upload your passport, or let their “totally trustworthy” software record photos and videos of your face.
Ban people underage from the internet. Or create a system that limits under 18 usage. Or shit just ban social media as we know it today. Ban algorithms. Ban targeted ads.
If people actually gave a shit about community things would probably be different.
Yeah, that’ll learn 'em.
“When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.”
Oh, that. Damn.
So, can we finally please start up a side internet that just bypasses all of the normal internet?
The basics of the internet were designed in the 70s, it was Designed to be a network that couldn’t be destroyed, even if entire sections were blown up. Now all it takes is breaking a single backbone and half a country is without internet for a day.
Most new "rules"regarding the internet are either great for a few politicians or business owners and fuck everyone else
I’m kinda done with this internet. I can’t do the commercials anymore. I just read a story on rawstory.com and I don’t make this up, without ad blocker there were 2-3 lines of text, then a phone page sized ad, then 2-3 more lines of text, with ads left and right and another page sized ad. This went on for the entire unreadable article. Then of course there were the various pop-ups.
I was viewing this within the native connect browser that doesn’t have ad blocker, mind you. Opening the same site up in Firefox already made the article barely readable instead of… Whatever the fuck it was designed to be.
Fuck the current internet. It was supposed to be humanities crown jewel, everybody from every country could finally speak to eachother, we could finally listen to eachother, solve conflicts before they started, have unlimited access to all information in the world
And instead we got this shit. Every site spies on me, tracks me, tries to screw me over, lies to me, gives me less every day while taking more. The internet has become a cesspool thanks to politicians who are more interested in short term wins for themselves than long term wins for humanity.
I’m done with it, I want less and less to do with it. Governments literally are controlling who we can talk to and what we can talk about, and all I want is just to… Have internet. We no longer have internet.
Check out i2p.
I agree about everything said about it being a gateway to authoritarian measures, digital feudalism and all that. But there’s a silver lining
Porn censorship is going to destroy the entire internet
Yes. And this is our chance of building a better “parallel” internet. The tech exists (BitTorrent, Tor, Bitcoin, Nostr, Reticulum, Radicle, and myriad others), people need to start using it.
P> people need to start using it.
More likely you’ll end up on a watch list because you use them, to then later be fined or arrested. Parasocial freak, don’t you know you live in a society? Now let us watch you watch these ads!
I mean, of course. Porn is þe primary reason most media even exists; remove it, and þe entire façade of non-porn collapses.
All is porn. Except for þorn.
The breadcrumb is just 🤌🏼💋
Although, I must ask: what about the non-þorn, though? 😱
Do you mean ðe ð?
Ironic then, that this is what killed BetaMax (vs the shittier VHS format)
Oh, how doth the history rhyme.
“ID verifications of users age” is nothing more but an excuse for tracking users personal data and training their AIs.
s/porn//g
Maybe tor will be fast in the future as a result
They saw from the cancelling movement that started a few years ago that people are generally OK with censorship. Just making explicit what was done implicitly.
