Oh the hypocrisy.. The fascists live on it, and no one bats an eye.

We are moving towards an era of a more locked down web in the UK. The main flag here is “robust age verification” - i.e. we’re moving from “you must provide ID to view adult material on social media” to “you must provide ID to use social media”.

And then from there to you must provide ID to use your device and eventually you can only run (state-approved OS) on your device, assuming thin clients tied to rented servers, which would be then tied to your ID, don't take over and kill off personal computing first.

You're right, and it's failure will be the excuse to deprive us all of more of our privacy and autonomy.

I'm in Australia and it's shit for everyone. The whole thing was basically conceived by SportsBet so they could advertise on social media with impunity.

My kids are on more social media platforms than I am. So are all their friends. It hasn't slowed anything in that regard.

I can say, none of the shady bootleg porn sites have implemented blocking. So there's always that.

I've survived so far without doing a face scan or ID check. Most of my social media accounts are over 16 years old anyway.

Next 20 years? Next year pal. Not just the police either. Just because they don't tell you about it doesn't mean it won't happen sooner. You could organize to try and stop it, just a thought.

I bought a BlackBerry in 2007/2008, and to get on Facebook I needed to show my ID in an o2 shop. This is all that is required. This is suspicious in the very least.

I tried to visit a porn site from Australian VPN server and was prompted with age verification bs.

...and certain government agencies using corporate fronts.

And that fucking Eye of Sauron.

Age verification and identification is not the same thing.

And then they get “hacked” and don’t know anything about it.

It's not just advertisers by a long shot, they aren't even the main customers in most respects now. Governments want all of that information and buy it, as do other commercial interests, including security consultants and contractors like Palantir.

Governments can use go betweens to buy the information too, China for instance, is likely getting every single piece of information sold by data brokers. The entire thing is a joke, on us, because it's not about the kids, it's about locking down the internet and crafting social scores based on everything we have said or done online and off run through half baked ai threat detection.

Starmer is a fascist cunt that will hand the government to openly fascist cunts, but yay, go team! /s

I think there’s a rational argument for saying anonymous social media is what Russia, China and other dictatorships use to undermine and affect public opinion, to be fair.

I’m not saying therefore anonymity shouldn’t be allowed. I’m just saying there’s a nuance here…