I always thought political parties were very sensitive to electoral issues and therefore played everything overly safe, in terms of attempting to avoid consequences for their potential electors. So this legislation actually getting to this point today was very surprising.
I think it speaks volumes of a strong bias in their analysis teams, as well as indictating they're even more out of touch than expected. What they've done is given direct negative consequence to millions of electors in exchange for indirect and mostly imperceivable positive consequence to concerned parents. Personally I don't see a way that ever makes electoral sense, especially given how close the last election was (in raw votes, not seats) and where opinion polls are today (Reform seemingly being considerably ahead, albeit opinion polls are _not_ reliable).
Obviously there's a lot to say about consequence, how the use-case of authentication is at odds with the desire of users to be incognito, how VPNs are considerably better UX; but their use undermines previous legislation like recording host names to help combat extremism, how encouraging users to dish out sensitive id documents online isn't the best habit, how id verifiers are not regulated and often are services hosted abroad. Obviously the biggest negative is that sketchy websites who don't care about being legal will gain considerable traffic, at the expense of websites who are trying to be legit. Children will still probably be able to access pornography and it may just be the case that the pornography is even "worse", yielding the most counter-intuitive outcome.
I'm particularly alarmed that many websites are responding by blanket age-verifying NSFW content. So now reddit resources on mental health, drugs, suicide, domestic abuse, etc are locked behind age verification.
I think you'd be surprised how many people are actually in favour of this bill. Mainstream press totally fell for the "think of the children" angle pushed by a mixture of legitimate children's safety organisations, anti-porn activists, and intelligence apparatus. Meanwhile the privacy argument got little to no lobbying or public discourse.
It's how the (previous) government was able to look like it was doing something about the mental health crisis caused by social media, even though this bill won't fix that at all.
I appreciate that it has a lot of soft support, however concerned parents won't stop being concerned as a consequence. I struggle to see it as being a vote winner but its clear how its a vote loser to many. That the mainstream press have published many positive articles about it, just demonstrates the bias IMHO. Fleet street is become less and less of a proxy of public opinion over time but our political parties still treat the press like they did in the 90s, which I think can often be a mistake given how different the press is since the advent of the internet and how much more fragmented news now is, and how the electorate now receive it.
IMHO the argument for "doing something" is one of those things that people are noisy about but ultimately care little about at the ballot box. The risk is that the typically politically apathetic are driven to the ballot box as a consequence of disrupting their habit in order to protest. Most governments do very little that actually directly interfere with people and their habits, COVID was a very rare event and Boris Johnson fell in no small part due to circumventing the rules his own government imposed on the populace. There's huge electoral risk in giving so many people consequence.
Given the numbers at play, I just don't see how you can square the huge internet traffic for pron and the intrusion into their "workflows" against some presumed other number of electors that will suddenly vote for you because you allowed this bill to take effect. Irrespective of the ethics of the subject it just doesn't feel like good electoral statecraft in a democracy. This is particularly surprising given that most UK political parties generally veer away from doing things that might lose them any significant amount of votes.
This is what happens in a low-trust society. More people start to believe more should be monitored and controlled. Meanwhile society doesn't get better, low-trust continues and so does the loop.
British voter here who voted Labour and could change. I'm not wholly against nerfing the web a bit to protect kids. I haven't read the bill or analysed the details to try to figure if it'll work. I think that's not so atypical for voters. Grown ups can always VPN etc.
It's hard to know how it'll work in practice without trying it.
I feel like the law should change to prevent children from having devices that can freely access the internet. i.e. they can still access devices but not own them. Then its about parental supervision. We're only here because parents give their kids smartphones with zero oversight.
until they can't because they're also made illegal
don't forget this is also the same government that has effectively tried to ban e2e encryption by forcing companies to install backdoors into their algorithms under gag orders
it is no longer (if it ever was) about the children
This is just a corporate land grab disguised as "safety measure". It just shows government corruption at work. If corporations want something, they will get it.
People no longer start their own forum, but create a Facebook group etc.
it is very easy to get around it on bing, just go to settings, change region to Germany, then you can switch safe search off. It will ask for age verification, but you can simply click "ok" and that's it.
I always thought political parties were very sensitive to electoral issues and therefore played everything overly safe, in terms of attempting to avoid consequences for their potential electors. So this legislation actually getting to this point today was very surprising.
I think it speaks volumes of a strong bias in their analysis teams, as well as indictating they're even more out of touch than expected. What they've done is given direct negative consequence to millions of electors in exchange for indirect and mostly imperceivable positive consequence to concerned parents. Personally I don't see a way that ever makes electoral sense, especially given how close the last election was (in raw votes, not seats) and where opinion polls are today (Reform seemingly being considerably ahead, albeit opinion polls are _not_ reliable).
Obviously there's a lot to say about consequence, how the use-case of authentication is at odds with the desire of users to be incognito, how VPNs are considerably better UX; but their use undermines previous legislation like recording host names to help combat extremism, how encouraging users to dish out sensitive id documents online isn't the best habit, how id verifiers are not regulated and often are services hosted abroad. Obviously the biggest negative is that sketchy websites who don't care about being legal will gain considerable traffic, at the expense of websites who are trying to be legit. Children will still probably be able to access pornography and it may just be the case that the pornography is even "worse", yielding the most counter-intuitive outcome.
I'm particularly alarmed that many websites are responding by blanket age-verifying NSFW content. So now reddit resources on mental health, drugs, suicide, domestic abuse, etc are locked behind age verification.
I think you'd be surprised how many people are actually in favour of this bill. Mainstream press totally fell for the "think of the children" angle pushed by a mixture of legitimate children's safety organisations, anti-porn activists, and intelligence apparatus. Meanwhile the privacy argument got little to no lobbying or public discourse.
E.g.:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/15/digital-g...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/19/online-safety-ac...
It's how the (previous) government was able to look like it was doing something about the mental health crisis caused by social media, even though this bill won't fix that at all.
I appreciate that it has a lot of soft support, however concerned parents won't stop being concerned as a consequence. I struggle to see it as being a vote winner but its clear how its a vote loser to many. That the mainstream press have published many positive articles about it, just demonstrates the bias IMHO. Fleet street is become less and less of a proxy of public opinion over time but our political parties still treat the press like they did in the 90s, which I think can often be a mistake given how different the press is since the advent of the internet and how much more fragmented news now is, and how the electorate now receive it.
IMHO the argument for "doing something" is one of those things that people are noisy about but ultimately care little about at the ballot box. The risk is that the typically politically apathetic are driven to the ballot box as a consequence of disrupting their habit in order to protest. Most governments do very little that actually directly interfere with people and their habits, COVID was a very rare event and Boris Johnson fell in no small part due to circumventing the rules his own government imposed on the populace. There's huge electoral risk in giving so many people consequence.
Given the numbers at play, I just don't see how you can square the huge internet traffic for pron and the intrusion into their "workflows" against some presumed other number of electors that will suddenly vote for you because you allowed this bill to take effect. Irrespective of the ethics of the subject it just doesn't feel like good electoral statecraft in a democracy. This is particularly surprising given that most UK political parties generally veer away from doing things that might lose them any significant amount of votes.
This is what happens in a low-trust society. More people start to believe more should be monitored and controlled. Meanwhile society doesn't get better, low-trust continues and so does the loop.
Mainstream press is owned by the same rich who own corporations that benefit from OSA.
British voter here who voted Labour and could change. I'm not wholly against nerfing the web a bit to protect kids. I haven't read the bill or analysed the details to try to figure if it'll work. I think that's not so atypical for voters. Grown ups can always VPN etc.
It's hard to know how it'll work in practice without trying it.
I feel like the law should change to prevent children from having devices that can freely access the internet. i.e. they can still access devices but not own them. Then its about parental supervision. We're only here because parents give their kids smartphones with zero oversight.
[dead]
"grown ups can always use vpn"
until they can't because they're also made illegal
don't forget this is also the same government that has effectively tried to ban e2e encryption by forcing companies to install backdoors into their algorithms under gag orders
it is no longer (if it ever was) about the children
This is just a corporate land grab disguised as "safety measure". It just shows government corruption at work. If corporations want something, they will get it.
People no longer start their own forum, but create a Facebook group etc.
Interesting that you can watch p0rn directly on Google without any age verification (you don't need to be logged in or anything).
I noticed that google and bing don't appear to return pron in obvious image searches but duckduckgo still does.
If I turn Safe Search off it does (doesn't require age check).
for me, bing refuses to turn off safe search. Lowest it lets me go is "moderate". Google does but doesn't show me pron.
Probably it depends on your geolocation? I'm not in UK and Google image search shows me everything in a Private Window, after I turn off Safe Search
I am in the UK, with UK IP. I get age check on the pr0n websites, but Google doesn't do any age check when browsing incognito and not signed in.
it is very easy to get around it on bing, just go to settings, change region to Germany, then you can switch safe search off. It will ask for age verification, but you can simply click "ok" and that's it.