I've been having a look at the report, the conclusion is, bizarrely but predictably, that the legislation being completely ineffective means that they need to restrict things even more:

"We will shortly be publishing our rapid assessment of what highly effective age assurance could look like for determining whether someone is 16 or over and are working closely with the government on the implementation of the expected new restrictions. We will continue to drive compliance with the Online Safety Act for services that fall outside the social media ban and to improve the experience of 16–17-year-olds."

Yeah, most people don't even seem to realise this is happening. I sometimes think people treat me like I'm wearing a tin foil hat for even talking about this kind of stuff. I've written to my MP and she basically just gave me the party line and didn't reply to my arguments against it.

Very true and that's a thought I have had with some governments. With the current government I am not entirely sure whether they are actually as malicious with this legislation as they appear or whether they are just stupid enough to think that they're actually doing something good here. It's hard to tell sometimes, either is possible. But it doesn't matter really because like you say, they could start doing this kind of thing and before you know it, Nazis are in charge and start using this legislation maliciously or just extend it once people are used to it.

Agreed - very disturbing how common it has become. That's actually why I joined Lemmy and I'm getting more and more into open source and distributed systems. I'm not going to be giving my ID to random tech companies just to use the internet. If there is nobody to threaten, there's not a lot they can do to restrict these services, short of outright banning them. But I don't think that would be possible to enforce.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I must have missed it at the time. It is certainly disturbing how it seems that increasingly authoritarian control of technology and the internet seems to be favoured by almost every political party.

These certainly aren't the big issues that governments should mainly focus on, but I think there is definitely something in this. A lot of people seem to feel the "death by a thousand cuts" that modern life seems to impose on us. Just small inconveniences, annoyances and costs we experience every day that are unfair and make our lives slightly worse. I think this is an opportunity for small things that are highly visible that actually make people's lives better in small ways but don't cost a lot. So I'm broadly in favour of this as long as it does not take up too much government effort.

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.

Fundamentally, they cost way, way too much to run. LLMs are useful tools (I use them a bit for data analysis and coding help) and the people who use them for that kind of thing might pay the full cost in some form (not as individuals but their companies might). But they're trying to push them into everything and people who can't think for themselves and want them to help them write emails and such are not going to foot the bill. Not even close.

I think they've realised that forcing universal adoption is the only way that this could work, to get everyone hooked on it then jack up the prices. But regular consumers will never, ever be the ones paying the enormous costs of LLMs. Even companies will start to realise that there is no point paying huge amounts just for everyone to be able to outsource writing emails and basic tasks to LLMs. And short of any huge breakthrough, they are incapable of doing most jobs.

This idea is insane, it's like these people have never been in a pub before. They seem to want to wreck the West End by making pubs take fewer covers. Pubs are already struggling. I'm glad this is getting a lot of attention, including from the government because it's such a stupid idea.