Oh so me, a 43 year old man being forced to provide ID so I can use discord and access 18+ games on Steam to protect kids online, hasn't protected kids online?

To the shock and surprise of abso-fucking-lutely nobody who has been paying attention.

And so they double down... These regulations won't stop until the open internet has been reduced to toddler content only, and all users, regardless of age, being required to compromise on their psuedonymity; in order to get some use out of it. Because surely an iPad kid playing a PEGI 18 game ("Call Of Duty") should be able to expect an age-appropriate experience...

I suppose this is just a statement that is being put out so more broader and privacy invasive measures can be put in place.

I mean, yeah, it was never designed to protect children. It's designed to increase the ease of surveillance of adults. Otherwise, the corporations would have been fighting against it. They don't make profit from protecting children, but they do from the excuse to get truly unique identifiers for people so they can track them and integrate and/or sell the more detailed data for each user.

but don't let that keep you from squelching everyone's rights and freedoms to "protect the children"

This is unsurprising unfortunately. It was never going to "work" in terms of their stated aims. What it has done is start getting people used to the idea of needing ID to use the internet. All to "protect the children" despite the fact it clearly achieves nothing in that regard.

The plan seemed to have been to scan everything on everyone's devices next: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-plans-to-stop-children-taking-sharing-or-viewing-nude-images

Although this was a Starmer plan so I don't know if it is still going ahead.

So if these laws provided no benefit, we're going to roll them back, right? Right?

To the surprise of nobody who's actually paying attention, including most of the people who wrote the laws and voted for them in Parliament.

It's always about control and surveillance, and never about protecting kids.

It was never about protecting your children, it's always about turning you into a child of the state. Beaten repressed, neglected, and locked in a broom cupboard so as not to disturb the neighbors with your loud crying.

Well who could have predicted that? Oh right,

It was to create a shopping database. The UK government has same issue as the US.

Laws that address a social problem with technology don't often work.

Let me guess, the only solution is more surveillance/police state?

Ofcom: "Am I so out of touch? No! It's the children that a wrong!"

If you don't start fining them, they won't improve. £1000 / day per person.

They've issued 11 fines since March last year. 2 have been paid. Because none of the big offenders are UK-based, so they don't give a shit. 🤷‍♂️