My position is very simple. I believe that most of the world is fine with age checks on the Internet. I think that the U.S. free speech laws and attitudes are unique and because English speaking internet culture is U.S. culture, these discussions always end up with an assumption that U.S. values are the values shared by the subjects.

I don’t think my view on the law matters, I haven’t shared it. I am speaking specifically about how everyone here is talking as if people in the U.K. care about “draconian” surveillance. People in the U.K. are not people from the U.S. Age verification is not a philosophical issue for U.K. people as it is for people in the U.S. People from the U.K. are not principled free speech absolutists. Ask a person in the U.K. if porn should require age verification and they will not think nor care about the free speech or surveillance implications of voting for such a law.

And people in the U.K. are not unique. People in the U.S. are. Spend any amount of time outside of our U.S. Internet bubble and you’ll discover nobody cares about any of this.

Whether I care and whether you care is not relevant to the British voters. Not the Australian voters. Nor the Swedish voters. Or the Thai voters. Or the Japanese voters…