Frankly this is a comically brilliant and absolutely outstanding example of engineering malicious compliance
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physically im in the uk mentally im literally anywhere else
become digitally estonian: https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/become-an-e-resident/
this would be great because according to kerli estonia is made of ice cream mountains and chocolate skies.
How does a digital residency do anything...
even australia? or germany?
i'm not sure australia is a real place tbh
You're confusing it with New Zealand, which is clearly made up.
Agreed, they are confused.
Australia is where the spiders and kangaroos are.
New Zealand is where the hobbits are from, clearly imaginary.
Nah, oz is cooked already, in this case 'social media ban' for under 16s, same identity/privacy issues no doubt once they get their shit together but this time you're giving ID to meta and tiktok instead of pornhub, significantly worse IMO. Germany's going after adblockers. Shit's bad out there...
Appropriate that being in the UK is the negative option here
UK has been on a killing small businesses streak since Brexit
I recently looked through the requirements on Ofcom's website, and to me it sounded like every email service falls well into their "user to user communication" category, which would have to "assess the risks". It's not really different than communicating in an internet forum, except it's not public, but that's not really a factor i think. Sending porn via email is probably as old as email itself.
Email providers cant moderate their users' mails (i mean they could try, but that would likely be the end of them for the obvious breach in privacy). And having people have to age-verify for an email account would be ludicrous, especially considering children need emails for school, etc.
I wonder if they ever clarified anything about email services and how they would or would not be affected by this bullshit law.
You can get porn in a google image search, even in the UK. No ID or login required. I did see a comment about it not applying to search engines, which really does make you wonder what is the fucking point!!
So a company can collect copies of everyone's ID cards.
Are you sure about that?
The UK seems to have passports and drivers licenses. Screenshots from the age verification dialog boxes on websites allow you to verify your age with an ID card, because they do exist.
Door to door mail could be considered user to user too. Oh wait, I shouldn't give them ideas.
Are you over 18?
- Yes
- No
This isn’t considered verification in the UK from what I can tell. Companies are now implementing AI face scans, ID checks and credit card verification to comply with the UK law. I’m not a lawyer or even British, but it wouldn’t make sense to me that companies would spend money to turn away their UK customers otherwise.
How are they checking that your website’s face scans are actually ‘working’ and not just passing everyone?
Also what stops someone just getting OBS virtual webcam and just feed it stock video of some old geezer...?
They make you do things like open your mouth and smile
You'd have to use a video game... Which people are doing
New business idea, renting out your face via video feed to let people bypass age checks.
You're not thinking big: Rent out other people's faces!
Instead of an actual click farm where slave workers click phones all day, you make an app.
The app works like this: When the users (or let's call them: "Partners") get a notification from your app, they just have to smile at the camera, sometimes do other expressions. They are then rewarded with points which they can trade for for actual real life discounts on real online stores. Something like 1 cent per picture.
You now setup a service for people who want to bypass facial age verification and feed their requests directly to the app for a small fee of 5 cents per verification.
Rough business model to compete with free
The video game trick doesn't work everywhere. I don't know about deepfakes and such, both how easily available they are and how good they are at tricking the age verification.
Even if 3D images are required, surely there are 3D deepfake faces people can wear. But anyway, we're being distracted by the part of this law that stops kids going online. The quiet part is the part that gets every adult to show their real face to some website. Those adults need deepfake faces just as much if not more so.
I have an idea. Cardboard cutout masks.

I know about Online Safety Act, I was making a comparison between the system shown in the screenshot and the one I mentioned
It says in the description that ID is required.
If they have no infrastructure or legal presence in the UK they are not required to do shit. The UK can block them but that's about it.
The UK does not have extraterritorial jurisdiction! Whatever stupid shit they do on their shitty little island does not affect foreign firms that do not operate there.
kinda… if you never plan on visiting the UK or any country with extradition agreements with the UK, sure… not sure exactly how extradition works, but if you ever come to a country and have big fines etc pending then they can do whatever they want
if you were like.. the CEO of reddit or something, and just chose to forgo ad revenue etc from the UK but still remain operational, i’m pretty sure they’d be able to get you
So extradition varies greatly. But generally (extremely generally, treaties vary a lot) countries will extradite if what the person is accused of is:
- A crime in both countries
- Carries a penalty of at least 6 months prison in both countries
However basically no country will accept extraterritorial claims of another state simply because it impinges on their own sovereignty. It makes the UK somehow more soviergn than the country where the supposed crime was committed, in this case the US.
The exception to the above rule tends to be crimes against humanity and war crimes. But obviously that is irrelevant to this case.
You are correct that were they actual charged with a crime for violating this act they could not go to the UK.
TOR. The answer is TOR
Bandaid to a gunshot wound.
The answer is to make all those politicians (and that person who wanted to profit off from facial recognition) defending this law to regret even existing.
Ironically, you can just lie to get past it.

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