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.
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 density of CCTV than Shanghai) is wasting their time competing for the gold medal at International Totalitarianism Olympics, even the the world's current undisputed loser 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.
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.
"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 :("
* well, many of them are. But not in the particular way that would be needed for a simple rename to work.
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.
LOL are you talking about the US? With their "don't put the cat inside the microwave" stickers and the "coffee is too hot" lawsuits?
not sure what this means, my microwave does not have such a sticker
> "coffee is too hot" lawsuits
I'd encourage you to look into the case you refer to[1] and decide for yourself whether the lawsuit feels frivolous given the facts. My read is that the lawsuit was justified.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...
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?
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?
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.
But then you'll have HN: NOOOO it's not effective, people will just use VPNs nanny state! Oppression! Freedom of speech!
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.
ChrisArchitect•1h ago