Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/PJapz

The irony of the chancellor announcing today that they are promoting innovation in the UK tech industry while simultaneously implementing the innovation-crushing OSA is fucking baffling.

Hey small group of people who want to communicate online to organise things, you'd better be monitoring everything that's been said on your forum or face a crippling fine that you cannot survive. Oh cool you've moved to Facebook and now everyone needs a Facebook account to interact with you in any meaningful way because god forbid you read emails.

Next think you know, the UK will defederate and put up their own great firewall.

I'm just waiting for the flood of user-friendly pseudo(/techie)-mainstream I2P/Tor/Katzenpost apps. With how bad censorship and spying is becoming, and the constant enshittification of websites&apps, I feel like it's only a matter of time before people reboot the internet.

Political persecution in the UK makes personal VPN use mandatory.

This has not gone unnoticed in the halls of power. Murmurings have begun that something needs to be done, that the UK’s flagship child safety law has been made a mockery, and that VPNs are the problem.

Who could have predicted that this would be the outcome for a stupid, oppressive, corrupt, illiberal law?

By the way, Tor just updated their encryption. Now it's using something called Counter Galois Onion.

Link

One has to wonder to what lengths the free-speech-hating UK government will resort after they have outlawed VPN's and realized they can't shut down all VPN's without shutting down the Internet entirely.

Call it what it is: "the erosion of online privacy is only getting started"

I don't have kids, but if age restriction did come for VPNs, I honestly think I'd subscribe to one for them. Or at least bring back the idea of having a "family computer" in the main living area, where they can use a VPN with supervision.

I know everyone's kids are different, but surely it's better to at least attempt to teach them how to use the internet safely and in a healthy way (adblock, security, privacy, bots, scams, the perils of social media, discussions about porn and when it is and isn't healthy/exploitative etc.) rather than keeping them on The Pretend Internet till they're 18 and then unleashing them on the world. 😬 So they can fall for every scam and get "hacked" every few days and argue with AI bots like old ladies.

Privacy erosion will do that.