It does feel that way. UK bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig stunting it's own commonwealth.

Next someone will try enforcing paper umbrellas as a solution for climate action. We'll all say, "That won't work". They'll still do it; it won't work. We'll say, "We told you so", and it won't get reversed because they're already aiming at the next foot to shoot.

100% Brexit quickly shut up similar movements when people saw how badly it went

I’m uninformed. What’s the reason for the porn ID thing? Is it just porn or more?

Then, we move to the socks proxy, or tor, or other options I haven’t even considered yet.

Their next strategy will be to keep a list of websites that are “government approved”, I'm afraid. Long live the Great UK Firewall!!

go back?

Just needs a Union Jack on his hat and the wrapping paper and "UK" in place of "US" on the box.

This government literally can't afford to fuck about wasting money yet here they are. Proving they are imposters failing the country.

Jokes on you, e2e encryption is already banned in some cases in the uk afaik. Hence apple dropping some cloud services

Next step: ban on remote work.

Either just banning remote work or more realistically you'll need a permit for running a vpn server. Permit pricing starting at 100k a year

They wouldn't consider such rational things

Well we just fire you, and the one you’re still using then must be your personal one!

What about the VPN I have to my home?

The problem is that content filters don't work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that's fairly straightforward ... but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.

I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn't the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they're doing exactly jack shit about that.

The new Christian nationalist orders are not so patient. Even Charles X of France rolled back rights too speedily, sparking public outcry resulting in Parisian haircuts. (a bit off the top 🪟🔪)

SCOTUS used to be sneakier, carving out sections of fourth- and fifth-amendment protections, but since Dobbs the Federalist Society Six have tossed subtlety and reason to the wind and now adjudicate away rights based on vibe and conservative rhetoric grievance.

Hopefully the US and UK both will recognize why the French public was swift to act when manarchists took shears to the Napoleonic Code.

The problem is that they're not trying to protect kids. They're trying to be like China where every user has to identify themselves so they can be tracked across the internet.

Crazy because every (isp provided) router I have used has these options. They probably aren't 100% correct all the time, but it would be good enough for children (even though you shouldn't rely soley on filters to replace watching your kid).

Exactly. This was turned on on my professional phone so that was always an option.

Still an important part. Free VPNs that spy on you are a thing, but work

All it takes is one big brother/sister that knows how to access a free or paid VPN and their 5 year old little sibling and all their friends will have it also. Despite the difficulty teaching them math or history, they DO learn very quickly and are fast to figure out new things that interest them.

Do you know what's smarter and more talented the the UK government?

14, 402, 544 kids............

.

I started using a VPN after my friends/classmates told me about them in my Sophomore year of HS, mostly to get around the Wifi banning us from accessing certain apps (social media). Now, like all the other dumb kids, I used whatever they recommended, which was some shitty "Free" VPN that was probably stalking my data. But by Senior year, I smartened up and learned about online privacy and got myself a Proton VPN subscription after using the free version for a bit.

So yeah, I could totally believe middle-school and up are using VPNs, cause that's what we literally did.

It's the populace that is wrong, not the lawmakers /s

See: the 18th and 21st Amendments in the US (Prohibition).

They think 1984 is a manual.
Oh, wait, no, that was about the evil communists.

The UK has long championed writing legislative checks that their emaciated state infrastructure can't cash.

If they do outlaw it will likely be banned solely for non-business use for this reason alone.

Honest question but what makes you think that would happen? Do most businesses use VPNs?