Hacker News Reader

Comment by Doches | Hacker News Reader

Reading between the lines, this is actually one of the side-goals of the zombie Online Safety Bill. Require all apps with user-created content to use a UK-approved 'identity provider' for age verification, and only issue approval to a handful of home-grown companies. Et voila, a whole thriving tech /sector/ where the UK can legitimately claim to be world-leading, even if they did invent the whole thing out of whole cloth and pointlessness.

View on HN

The assumptions underpinning that legislation are from about 2016. A Tory government apparently can't achieve much in six years but the Internet changed considerably. The technical mechanisms described (DNS blocking to force UK users to use UK approved sites) are no longer achievable, which means the budgetary impact goes up very considerably, for this programme which would be unpopular.

Now, if a government thinks a few decrepit Tory voters picking a new PM counts as a fresh mandate for radical economic strategies, maybe they also think a $10B pa budget line item for "Block Facebook?" is a good idea. So maybe they'll do this anyway. But it won't work.

I'm afraid "it won't work" is not something British politicians care about very much, as we can see today.

> A Tory government apparently can't achieve much.

You could just stop there. I've yet to see, in decades of Tory rule, much but decline, neglect, and scandal. Tax cuts and service cuts. That's all everyone needs apparently. Unfortunately, labor seems so incompetent at gaining power that it seems almost like a "managed opposition." Maybe I'm being too generous to their electorate as well. The UK is a tourism attraction at this point, a historical relic found in a curio shop or flea market. Or soon will be at its current clip.

I don't think there's ever been an industry created by government nationalistic policies that hasn't eventually led to stagnation of said industry

Reply on news.ycombinator.com