House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
ispreview.co.uk
ispreview.co.uk
"The law we made is like super duper good!!"
> Children may also turn to VPNs, which would then undermine the child safety gains of the Online Safety Act
"The law we made is easily circumvented :("
I think you're reading it wrong. Regulations may have a provision that allows providers to apply age assurance [systems ?] if the age assurance is highly effective at determining age.
I'm always surprised how ambiguous the writing is for this kind of stuff. Maybe that's the point. If the regulations don't (may is optional) have the provision, does that mean they need to demand ID?
IMO, highly effective = our buddies' tech that we declare highly effective. The whole ID push around the world is big tech trying to set up government mandated services that you're going to be forced to pay for, either directly or via taxes.
The end game is probably digital IDs with digitally signed requests for everything you do. And, of course, corrupt individuals and criminals will somehow be able to get as many digital IDs as they want.
That money should be spent on education. We're being robbed.
That's because--
(a) The actual legislators vaguely realize that they're too lazy and stupid to get anything right in detail, so they delegate to the regulatory apparatus.
(b) Neither the legislators nor the regulators are ever quite sure what they can politically get away with actually demanding, or how fast they can politically get away with moving, so they want both the ability to grab anything that looks like they can hold it, and the ability to deny that they ever meant to ask for anything that's blowing back too hard on them.
(c) Both the legislators and the regulators want to be able to threaten various actors with draconian actions that are at least possibly authorized under that kind of vague language, in order to get concessions that they are not authorized to demand (and that would be too hot politically to give them authorization to demand).
That it has its own Wikipedia page is a sign of the abuse of this argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
A personal debit card (which requires ID verification anyway, and likely has their parents able to see activity)? A personal credit card (which definitely requires ID + 18+)? Stealing their parents' card (works for like 5 days)? Does the VPS company block VPN ports without verification, similar to how most companies handle email? Do you think VPS services have any interest, at all, in an underage clientele?
The proposed law is plenty effective - saying otherwise is like saying kids can bypass age verification at the knife shop or alcohol store by using eBay. No sane mind says that age verification is therefore useless.
Does this even matter in the age of no-fault divorces? Is any court going to sanction a spouse for having watched porn?
I don't think I'm unique for putting miscellaneous stuff like this on a credit card, and not even necessarily the one my bank offers. Not to hide the transaction, but because charging to debit/checking would make tracking my monthly expenses less straightforward. Payments online are also safer on credit in case a chargeback is required.
Also, are you sure you don't mean "proof of employment" showing the last three months of direct deposits? I've never heard of anyone asking for any other transactions. Similarly, pretty sure loan applications are based on credit reports. Transactions aren't relevant unless they got flagged for something so bad they showed up in the credit report (fraud, missed/late payments, etc).
Ive never been hit by something like this but I have friends who have:
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/12s8257/la...
(Maybe this is just the horrendous Australian market talking).
If they're too cheap to pay for a basic background check, there's no telling what kind of shady people will be your neighbors or how unmaintained those apartments are. Just find somewhere else or provide the bare minimum that will convince them (checking account only). Clearly they have no way to find what else you have, and nobody else is taking this that literally.
Or ask their parents.
The same way the kid is somehow paying for a VPN apparently.
Age gating legitimate VPN or VPS will result in the same thing. Children will end up using less safe services to view what they want to view.
When my children are old enough, if we're still in the UK, I will be providing them with enough education to avoid ill intentioned sites, and will also provide them with a private VPN.
We learn nothing from history.
The govt is a shit parent.
Or they just operate outside of UK jurisdiction, in which case they can politely decline. Any executives/directors of said company might be liable to arrest if they decide to vacation in uk, though.
The British government, for all their effort (London has a higher geographic density of CCTV than Beijing) is wasting their time competing for the gold medal at International Totalitarianism Olympics, even the the world's current undisputed champion is losing the internet censorship battle, and always has.
Central planning doesn't work and it never has. That includes central planning of what your citizens are allowed to see, hear, think, and feel.
The UK has a different flavor of authoritarianism centered on surveillance to (ineffectively) improve "safety", and general paternalism at all levels. It doesn't really intend to prevent the flow of information all that much.
I remember this phenomenon back when Facebook was less algorithmic — some days there’d just be no new content at all. Especially I’m guessing if you limit adding friends to actually just the people you’d be happy to grab lunch with.
Here in the UK we require cigarette suppliers to advertise the dangers of smoking on every package.
I'd mandate that every social media platform is required to advertise the dangers on every page, and also give a very visible option to reveal the workings of the algorithm that is feeding you the pages.
I'm not saying that drugs should be legal, only that given perverse intensives, legitimate problems are routinely used as a Trojan horse to sneak in oppressive regulations.
In the case of communications and speech, the government's incentives for censorship, eavesdropping and control are enormous - otherwise there wouldn't be a Constitution, 1st amendment or the entire Bill of Rights that depends on it. Once the routine circumvention of these becomes acceptable, any kind of true but inconvenient for Big Brother speech will become impossible - with or without a written permit.
The manner of doing it doesn't matter, the permit was a figure of speech, kind of telling that I have to state it explicitly.
Social media isn't just bad interactions, there isn't just one twitter or reddit, its about what you choose to read and interact with and most of its not toxic its just people talking on the same topic.
VPNs are not the only way around this, so if you want to ban the "method of access" you need to be much more broad, and get the parents involved.
Between this and the repeated attempts at encryption backdoors, this is something I would expect from a totalitarian regime that is preparing for civil unrest, not the UK.
How? I suppose if the VPN services all started requiring age verification that might tell you this info. But I very much doubt that'll happen, as it runs completely counter to many legitimate VPN services' missions.
It's naive of you to think this has anything to do with the child safety.
It doesn't actually matter how flawed it is. All that matters to the government is votes. Always. Governments exist to buy votes, otherwise they're not governments. Any time you see a government action, you can be very sure they think it will buy them votes.
But the government doesn't just implements things the people want.
The government passes whatever government wants, and if the STATED purpose matches the engineered demand, it's called democracy.
Tell me how much public support is for the ongoing UK participation in the genocide of Gaza (yes, participation, RAF flies spy planes and feeds Intel to IDF). How much public support is for human hormones treated beef/chlorinated chicken? How much public support is for the ongoing assault on freedoms / liberties? For the continued enshittification (literal!) of our rivers, lakes and beaches? For another Heathrow runway, for the ongoing, stealth privatization of NHS.
Policing bill (2022) had a significant opposition, recent upgrades to sentencing bill causing environmental protesters planning an event go to the prison for more than may be handed out for rape,
Legacy Act in 2024 shuts down all inquests and civil cases pertaining to the British Army alleged crimes during the Troubles.
The government legislates whatever government wants to legislate.
And I don't think the majority of the people want THIS exactly, they've been brainwashed by the overwhelmingly rightwing and pro-state media.
If you are a parent then I'm very surprised you have a different experience.
Nothing will result in the stated goal except for the complete ban of ALL platforms other than licenced/blessed by the UK government (meaning full 1984 and no privacy at all).
Notice looming VPN bans and advanced approach to banning private communications.
And conversely parents have second thoughts if they hear how their intimate photos will all be scanned, every conversation effectively bugged, and sometimes I'll sprinkle with a story of an innocent parent with blocked Google account and reported to the police because he had a private conversation with a GP (or so he thought).
Social media ban is a COMPLETELY different thing.
something I find myself saying often lately watching BBC News every morning
How about Cloudflare Warp? And don't some browsers like Opera have builtin VPN?
What about tunnels like Hurricane Electric?
Easier to enforce, you don't have to rely on the very same companies that peddle the thing you're trying to ban in the first place. It can disrupt the network effects that could hopefully be enough to let people voluntarily cut it out of their lives. People are primed to get rid of it, but can't because it is so addicting and said network effects.
Oh, and I'm also reading on Amnesiac and other stealth VPN protocols. The only thing this will achieve, is kids' deep understand the government is hostile cluster of entities lying through their teeth.
Nothing suprises me anymore in the UK. It's been extremely dystopian for a long time.
But then you'll have HN: NOOOO it's not effective, people will just use VPNs nanny state! Oppression! Freedom of speech!
Because I'm addicted like everyone else.
What needs banning is the combination of "behavioral personalization + infinite content/scroll". HN's feed has neither of these elements.
* well, many of them are. But not in the particular way that would be needed for a simple rename to work.
And then every time a country actually tries to ban children from the internet, they cry "but my privacy!!!" As if having to hand your id to the state to use the internet isn't exactly what you asked for. As if the regimes most interested in "protecting the kid" aren't exactly the ones who puts you in jail for a meme too spicy.
You reap what you sow. Congrats on making the internet worse.
I find it utterly frustrating to read the "think of the children" mockery here on HN.
I argue that this is good.
There's many reasons why children having unfettered access to the internet and different campaigners care about different aspects, so I'm going to talk about the one I care about: addiction, destroyed ability to focus, and dopamine desensitization. In the UK (and elsewhere in the world, I imagine) there's a huge problem with people addicted to phones and children are especially vulnerable. I don't care if adults are vulnerable, they have to make their own decisions. But I care that parents that do everything right in terms of educating their children on how to be healthy with respect of phones (like me and my partner) then have to send their children to schools where they're given ipads. It's not fair to say "banning doesnt work you should just not give your children phones", but then force you to send your children to schools that give them ipads and other distractions.
It's a matter of network effects (something that HN loooves talking about). In addition to the fact that phones are engineered to be addictive, you have the fact that in many schools EVERY child is on social media, and so any family that wants to stay away has to decide between isolating their child from society, or selling themselves into the "engagement industry".
I think that banning is a valid approach. It won't be 100% effective, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that it will introduce friction (another thing that HN looooves talking about) and so will reduce the total number on children that is on social media and therefore reduce the social need for other children to be in.
So, we're adding friction to break or weaken the network effects that keep these cancer companies harming children in schools.
Are we talking about VPNs or phones in general? Because somewhere in this we jumped from VPNs to phones in general, and these things are not equivalent.
A phone ban in general for children, maybe I could agree with you on. But, a VPN ban on those grounds alone is utterly pointless: it's not like there aren't millions of other bits of internet crack children can easily find without a VPN.
Not addressing the actual concerns and instead pointing fingers at a totally different, larger issue reeks of "won't somebody think of the children". All with the convenient downstream effect of revealing which citizens own VPNs.
It’s better to be more to the point and straight up identity social media platforms as addictive or otherwise harmful and block them altogether or at least kill the algorithm and endless scroll.
What's more hacker than experimenting to get the results you want?
What are you going to ban after that?
Ignore the other idiot. If you want to have a rational conversation I'm open.
Taking away VPNs didn't work? We'll take away ALL THE COMPUTERS!
This is the path of the fanatic.
> but then force you to send your children to schools that give them ipads and other distractions
What does the online safety act (OSA) or this VPN age check do to prevent this? Are the "ipads" at school giving the users "unfettered access to the internet"? That seems a bit irresponsible, however I would think that your ire should instead be directed towards the schools? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding?
> In addition to the fact that phones are engineered to be addictive
Is it the phones or the content? I interpret your views as someone who should be campaigning for phones and other "distractions" to be restricted in a school environment, however the OSA and this VPN age check do not appear to tackle this.
> there's a huge problem with people addicted to phones and children are especially vulnerable
I will assume this is true for the sake of conversation. Similar to my previous query, how does the OSA or this VPN age check tackle this problem? Will banning certain types of content prevent this, or perhaps shift it? Instead of social media, would it be preferable if children were playing games on their phone? If they were then "addicted" to gaming or socialising around a popular game, would the proposal be at that point to ban children from playing games on their phone? To me, it seems the problem is less the content and more that the environment is setup in certain ways that allows this. It is unclear to me how banning and gating certain content will prevent this.
> different campaigners care about different aspects, so I'm going to talk about the one I care about: addiction, destroyed ability to focus, and dopamine desensitization
What kind of things are you pushing outside of banning material and gating access? Is there a push for educating parents of the dangers of this "addiction"? Perhaps informing people about how to use parental controls to limit the access their children have? Is there a push on companies to provide robust, and easy-to-use parental controls? I feel that parents should have the tools, yet it seems that we consider the problem out of the parents control. Why is that? If parents make an informed choice and choose differently to you, should they be allowed to do so?
> I don't care if adults are vulnerable, they have to make their own decisions.
I feel that if you are caring about children accessing "addicting" material that you should also care about your fellow citizens accessing the same. How would those adults know that this material is addictive? Are they being informed by the state? What avenues are there for them to get help? It seems that the OSA and this VPN age check do not provide any assistance to people that are perhaps already addicted, or preventing people from falling into that trap. Does the care only extend to children and no further? Should we care about building sturdy adults regardless if they are currently children or not?
My general thoughts on this is that there appears to be a lot of restriction and preventing people from accessing certain content, however very little on informing people on what those perceived dangers are. The UK government is especially keen on this restriction, yet I am seeing no push towards informing people, or providing assistance for those afflicted. To me, the proposed motivation and the implementation are incongruent with each other. The perception of safety, as opposed to an improvement in real world safety.
But your methods are flawed. I'm not even sure I can follow the logic of your post. You're talking about doing school work on iPads at school, so we must make everyone give their personal identifying information to VPNs? How does that follow?
The main problems I have with your methods:
1. You're forcing everyone in the UK to expose their personal identifying data to third party companies who *will* leak the data at some point.
2. You're forcing children to work around this and they *will* work around it and end up on websites that definitely do not have their best intentions in mind. I think your hammer approach is going to partly work, but have some extreme negative outcomes. Will you raise your hand for the harm this causes?
I'd suggest digesting what I'm saying here, really looking strongly at your aims and think if there are better alternatives.
Here is what I would like:
Whenever a UK citizen browses a social media site, I'd mandate banners that advertise the harms of social media, and also mandate that they can view the algorithm that is being used to feed them.
I plan on providing safe ways to browse the internet for my children when they're old enough. I'll give them their own VPN if needed, again with necessary precautions and education.
So ignorant pop pseudo-neuroscience. Got it.
> It's not fair to say "banning doesnt work you should just not give your children phones", but then force you to send your children to schools that give them ipads and other distractions.
Books can also be distractions. Ask me how I know. And I notice that you're just silently shifting back and forth between "social media" (ever notice how there's no single agreed-upon definition of that in the world?) and "just anything you can do on an iPad".
> in many schools EVERY child is on social media
Yes, because the world at large uses social media for some things. And for that matter uses things other than social media, things you or your coalition want to deprive children of, for other things. What you are effectively asking is to stick everybody who's not officially an adult in a curated sandbox that will never match the richness of the rest of society. That is unfair, unreasonable, and basically a guaranteed way to fail to prepare them for actual adulthood.
Its amazing how this censorship was brought on rapidly and precisely after Netanyahu demanded it at the start of last year. No surprise as half of Starmer government was funded by zionists.
Not watching any genocide videos means not seeing anything related to the genocide either. And that provides the basis for propaganda to make the genocide disappear, or turn it around by inventing realities. That was how the Iraqi WMDs were made happen.
This is happening for no apparent reason, other than Netanyahu personally requesting it at the start of 2025.