this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
52 points (98.1% liked)

United Kingdom

4083 readers
250 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 23 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 31 points 11 months ago

In 2022, Daniel Pryor, then head of research at the Adam Smith Institute think tank, warned that any tech-savvy teen would likely be able to circumvent restrictions, while adults entering their details stood every chance of being exposed in the event of a data breach.

Can't believe the Tories have got me agreeing with the Adam Smith Institute.

[–] Bassman27@lemmy.world 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Pretty sure the last thing anyone wants to do is upload a picture of their face to a porn site…

[–] BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 7 points 11 months ago

Imagine working as a porn age vertivicator

[–] peter@feddit.uk -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well some people want to do it or porn wouldn't exist

[–] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

People! You missed the joke!

[–] snaprails@feddit.uk 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"Ofcom also states that sites must not provide information about or links to Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers." That's every other YouTuber fucked then.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That’s also just impressively authoritarian. Banning the tools of dissent to “protect children from porn”

[–] obelix@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Let’s be honest, that’s what it’s really about. Controlling the flow of dissent and information on the internet, so that the despicables can continue robbing us and fucking us over.

[–] peter@feddit.uk 16 points 11 months ago

We need age verification for social media more than we do for porn

[–] Magnus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's sad that we need to pretend to be french to have equal internet freedom in the UK.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 7 points 11 months ago

That's how they get you - the French are too busy making le sweet sweet amour to watch porn. Probably. Better to pretend to be Dutch or German.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Digital identity wallets and, our favorite, facial age estimation, where the features of a user's face are analyzed to estimate the user's age.

Well that could be "fun". Poor George Dawes - he's just a big baby.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

Ah yes, facial analysis, someday people will stop thinking this is even possible to get to the error rates they want

[–] zemja@programming.dev 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Requiring age verification for porn is such a stupid idea. Firstly, what's the definition of "porn"? Should people be blocked from looking at Michelangelo's David? Where precisely is the line between what's porn and what isn't, and why should anybody have the right to impose that? Secondly, it's unenforceable. On any website where people can submit content, they can submit porn that children might see. Should we block them all, then? That goes for all social media. It goes for anywhere people can leave comments/reviews. It goes for every basket-weaving forum. Since it's obviously impossible to make a dent, why bother at all? And what about Google Images? What about sites with generative AI? Websites aren't the only porn on the Internet either. I torrented porn when I was 13. Discord exists. Video games exist. What's stopping people just making their own and sharing it? Absolutely boneheaded idea. It's so stupid, that it makes me think the real reason is more nefarious, and "saving the children" is just propaganda.

[–] Ummdustry@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago

I think the propaganda is the nefarious reason.

Tories have been talking about this since at least the coalition, if they had really wanted to impliment something like this they would've. The fact they haven't implies:

  • They don't actually want it. Judging on recent scandals any chaste puritans in the tory party are so far in the back benches as to be blind to any goings on up front.
  • They want to keep talking about it. See also: immigration. They know they have shit policies in every other area, so they need 'vote winners' among their core demographic (50 and over). Hence: save the kids, stop the boats, shag the flag. Labour and Lib-dems are never going to be able to present themselves as credible in these areas because of their historical leanings, so the tories don't actually need to back up their promises with any actual 'progress' on these issues.
[–] BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's a good point. I was dating a girl who said her ex would only get off of feet. Feet fetish is kinda huge (i think) so feet IS someone's porn, while for other people it's just feet, or more so just gross.

[–] zemja@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago

Reminds me of this YouTube channel (@Flocflocus), where a guy soaks himself in water while clothed. It's not explicitly sexual, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't a fetish.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Reddit is full of it, or so I'm told, and there's a few NSFW Lemmy communities out there, allegedly.

[–] zemja@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

I'll have to make sure I keep an eye out for them so that I can avoid them.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 6 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


However, service providers will likely be stuck between a rock and a hard place in implementing the guidance without also falling foul of privacy regulations.

It doesn't take a genius to imagine how a determined teenager might circumvent many of these restrictions, nor the potential privacy nightmare inherent in many of them if an adult is forced to share this level of info when accessing age-restricted sites.

In 2022, the UK government threatened the requirement of handing over all range of personal data to access social media sites.

The previous time around, the idea of allowing certain firms to work as information collaters / age verification service providers was floated, with critics correctly surmising this would create huge jackpot targets of citizen data.

In 2022, Daniel Pryor, then head of research at the Adam Smith Institute think tank, warned that any tech-savvy teen would likely be able to circumvent restrictions, while adults entering their details stood every chance of being exposed in the event of a data breach.

"Regardless of their approach, we expect all services to offer robust protection to children from stumbling across pornography, and also to take care that privacy rights and freedoms for adults to access legal content are safeguarded."


The original article contains 561 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] lemonflavoured@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If they actually do this then a list of people watching will be hacked within days and will quite strongly backfire on MPs...

[–] DeathWearsANecktie@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

Ludicrous, authoritarian, outdated bullshit.