VPN signups from UK surge 1400% after Online Safety Act goes into effect | Hacker News Reader

VPN signups from UK surge 1400% after Online Safety Act goes into effect

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35 pointsnomilk8 comments

What is the online safety act? Sounds like government approved spying on their inhabitants. Whenever there's the word safety in combination with government, it usually means spying on users.

No porn for kids. Not sure on the spying.

UK seems to totally lost it ways? The politicians seems to be doing everything they can do to harm normal people. Anyone know why UK have chosen this direction?

It's less the people of the UK have chosen this and more of general apathy towards the state of the world today. The lack of unity and mobilization of the proletariat class to secure our rightful share of the productivity gains of recent decades has left us in a terrible bargaining position, and technology these days is such a huge force multiplier that it feels hopeless to go against governments, and to a lesser extent the huge corporations and elites that influence them (or totally control, according to some). Sometimes I wonder if we've already crossed the point of no return and that they've won and just nobody realizes it yet, and we're doomed to descend into some flavor of corporate dystopian hellhole future.

The Online Safety Act enjoys high support with the UK public, because it targets a range of things that the average voter agrees should be restricted, to name just a few: online scams, pro-suicide content, cyberbullying, and allowing under-18s to access adult material.

There are issues with the legislation as it covers so many things, but many of the aims of it are popular.

The funny thing is that none of those aims will be achieved with this act. The only way to make the net safe is by turning it into a heavily-sanitized cage, where only government-approved players are allowed; an outcome that the average voter would likely not support (but who knows - fascism is back in fashion, after all).

All legislation will have "issues" until it's made physically impossible for a website to be accessible unless the government approves it. Until then, it's just a way to promote VPNs across the general public, which will have a bunch of collateral negative effects (since it will become much harder for the security services to actually monitor actual bad guys).

Brit here. I'm ambivalent about it. We'll have to see how it works in practice. I don't think the idea is that it's impossible to access harmful content, just that it's trickier so kids see less porn, self harm advice and so on.

So far the only thing I've noticed was Reddit asking how old I am. We've had a 'ban' on piracy sites for years which remains trivially circumvented.

We also ban online paedophile networks but I think all countries do that? That one you go to jail for.

> just that it's trickier so kids see less porn, self harm advice and so on.

how about making it harder for them to stop a nicotine addiction, or get support after experiencing sexual assault?

https://x.com/Menkvi/status/1948688664919245153

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