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Lio

> You believe all children know how to operate a VPN

Yes. That’s exactly what we believe.

Do you believe that 77% of UK Pornhub users suddenly stopped wanking?

Seems pretty implausible to me.

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This all or nothing mentality is so disconnected from the real world. Of course some people started using VPNs, of course some children even started doing it. No law can prevent all occurrences of what it tries to prevent. But it can make it more difficult, and heighten the barrier of entry for children that are introduced to the internet.

Kids don’t start out knowing that you type pornhub.com to get porn.

One of their friends sends them a link. Now they just send them a different link, one that goes via a free VPN.

You don't need any new skills for that and it's not a "speedbump".

All this law does is make it harder for adults to use non-porn websites like Reddit, Spotify or Bluesky.

It’s not a good law.

At the next election some portion of Labour voters will remember missteps like this and will vote for someone else because of it.

> At the next election some portion of Labour voters will remember missteps like this and will vote for someone else because of it.

Personally, I think their prosecution of peaceful protestors (Palestine supporters) whilst giving a free pass to right wing violent protestors will alienate their traditional left-wing base.

I don't think the traditional left wing base is too enthused about their intifada brothers to be honest. And a specific subset of those probably would want to ban porn too.

As far as I can tell, the purpose of the law is to push children to use either free VPNs and proxies (which will likely make them less safe using the internet) or to visit less famous porn sites that are too niche to be targetted. So, we're pushing children towards the most dodgy porn sites possible and encouraging people to upload identifying information to the less dodgy porn sites.

This law is not fit for the declared purpose at all.

> Yes. That’s exactly what we believe.

So all minors in the UK have their own banking account and credit card? You know, to pay for the VPN.

Why would they need any of that when free to use VPNs exist?

Why do you think free to use VPNs exist when both servers and bandwidth costs money?

Fact is that they do exist. Whether that meshes with your personal beliefs about economics seems beside the point.

They exist because they are either proxying networks that resell residential IPs (aka your internet connection) ...or because they are harvesting credentials.

The former will now make less sense as a business model, since UK isn't a good location to proxy traffic through anymore.

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