Next up is “Stop children using custom linux distros and unique radio setups to connect to access points outside the nation”
I know that this is all just theater to just destroy any semblance of free speech and privacy on the internet but if I’m completely honest I also don’t even understand people who freak out about kids looking at porn. Like, I get protecting children obviously from predators (fucking Roblox), but also I saw hardcore porn on the internet super early when I was like 8 and the only trauma I ever felt was the fear of being caught looking at it by my parents, who were otherwise pretty chill about me seeing really violent media.
And before me and the internet, kids were looking at their grampa’s/dad’s porn magazines or finding it in the woods or getting some 18 year old to buy it for them. It was harder but I’m telling you they found it.
I feel like a bigger concern for kids right now is microplastics, lead poisoning, and climate change and you don’t see nearly the same hysteria about that shit in mainstream politics.
Ministers, stop watching them watch porn…
Stop ministers from using children.
You ban something, and people will always find a way around it. Always.
Yup, and that’s how the US got the Mafia. We banned alcohol, but people wanted to drink, so the Mafia made that happen.
All a ban does is hurt law abiding citizens and businesses.
Not all bans are bad or hurt law abiding citizens. Slavery and gambling come to mind, both still exist illegally (or, in the case of gambling, semi-legally, what with the deluge of sports betting and online casinos HQd in shitty countries), but I would say them being illegal is a net positive for society.
Eh, I disagree. Slavery being banned is obviously a good thing, but that’s because it’s immoral to own someone else, so it’s essentially just kidnapping. Gambling, on the other hand, shouldn’t be banned for the simple reason that consenting adults should be able to do it if they choose.
Basically, I believe there are two types of rights:
- negative rights - restricts others from preventing individuals from doing things to you (e.g. freedom from slavery, freedom to gamble, etc)
- positive rights - forces others to provide goods or services to you (e.g. free healthcare, right to counsel, etc)
I believe nobody should gamble because it’s a poor financial decision and very addictive (and I choose to avoid gambling), but I also believe you should be allowed to gamble, and the government should ensure that companies that provide gambling services do so fairly (i.e. advertisements about win-rates and whatnot are accurate).
So yes, if gambling wasn’t allowed, people w/ addictions would be better off, but those who aren’t at risk of gambling addiction would be harmed due to restrictions on their freedom. So the question is, do we want government to protect us from ourselves, or merely provide a safety net for when we screw up? I’m absolutely in the latter camp, and I think we should use taxes to fund recovery programs for addictive behaviors in lieu of banning them. In general, I think a tax is way more rights-respecting than a ban.
Gambling between two people or very small groups is mostly ok and something humans have done since cave times.
Now, because real life has profit seeking corporations in control of gambling that know and abuse all psychological tricks available to maximize profits, I don’t think allowing them to exist is good for anyone except the owners. Casinos are also perfect for money laundering, so that’s another reason to not allow them to function, although with the internet they can just pick and choose a country to exist in.
I agree that gambling is bad and nobody should do it, but that’s different from the government preventing you from doing it.
Something being “bad” doesn’t mean it should be banned, it means it needs closer scrutiny to make sure both sides of the transaction are fully informed of the risks and can meaningfully consent.
money laundering
I don’t like this reasoning because the underlying assumption is that violating people’s privacy is okay if it helps catch criminals.
That said, there are typically rules that limit this. In most areas, casinos have to ID you and report any transaction over a certain amount (usually $10k or so per day, many casinos have a lower threshold) to tax authorities specifically to combat money laundering, just like banks do. That seems to limit money laundering for larger players, but obviously doesn’t do much for smaller players. To do better, we either need much lower limits, or much higher surveillance, and both would violate innocent people’s privacy.
Instead of that, we should take a hard look at policy and policing. For example, a lot of money laundering is by drug dealers, and they exist due to drug bans. Maybe we should consider legalizing and regulating more drugs, which would give people safer options, reduce incarceration rates, and reduce laundering from illegal drugs since more people would go for the safer options. On the policing side, we can improve training, reallocate people from ticketing to investigative work, and build community trust to improve quality of reports.
At the end of the day, I think personal liberty and privacy is more important than preventing harm or catching criminals. I also think we can do both, but we need to start from the perspective of maximising liberty and privacy.
When you think about it, most of the work of catching criminals (or gathering evidence) involves invasion of privacy, I guess it becomes a question of how much we’re willing to part with
I disagree. The only time the police should invade your privacy is with a valid warrant, and only to the extent of the warrant.
The police shouldn’t be able to monitor transactions at large for illegal activity, nor should they be to attain a broad warrant to check for illegal transactions if you’re merely suspected of an unrelated crime.
If that means more criminals go free, I’m okay with that. But it should also mean we train our police better to account for the higher difficulty of police work given the protection of our rights.
This is a fairly revisionist history version of the mafia, they were here for decades before prohibition. One might say that they profited greatly from prohibition, but to suggest they began with it is incredibly incorrect. I hate to be the actually guy but I find organized crime fascinating and I can’t let this one go
Eh, not revisionist, just overly simplified. Prohibition massively increased their power and relevance.
Dead drop USBs for file sharing?
Ya! Let them watch all that violence on Netflix instead!
Seriously though. We’ll legislate anything to keep them from seeing stuff they might reasonably expect to see and do one day and glorify things nobody should ever see or experience in person.
Yeah, is the next step to ban games like Free Fire, Counter Strike etc.?
I’ve always been fascinated by the lengths puritans will go to prevent kids from seeing mammary glands, while simultaneously being ok with them watching blood and violence.
I’ve thought about this at length, and the conclusion I came to is that violence about self-sufficiency, while sex is about cooperation. With violence, you take matters into your own hands and you’re in control regardless of what others feel. With sex, it’s the exact opposite. You’re at their mercy and they have power over you.
It makes sense in our hostile culture to teach kids about self-sufficiency and taking power for themselves. If they give that power up to others, then it opens them up to manipulation and exploitation.
I’m not making a judgement call on what’s right or wrong, only what is.
How much you wanna bet the ministers use VPN to watch porn as well?
Who needs to watch it when you can live it
You joke but people who live porn still watch porn.
Market research?
Why are the kids technologically illiterate and undersexed until it comes to matters of government control? I’m not usually into tin foil hats, but this doesn’t feel like the kids are the primary concern here.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory if everybody already knows it.
What you said there, that was just a fact.
I know, it just bothers me how little they’re trying to hide it.
They aren’t.
But Dame Wontsomeonethinkof-de-Children saw a government report which says 65% of children under 5 have seen explicit videos of kittens being raped to death using power tools! Surely this constitutes an emergency which requires us to abandon online anonymity
Stop fucking but make children.
Religious fundamentalists famously love being the only source of sexual “education”.
The irony is that despite being a confessional state, the UK is 100x more secular than the USA.
Almost like you didn’t think this fucker through.
Yeah, it’s just all these children with their bank accounts paying for their VPN subscriptions doing it all… Do they think we’re that stupid? Don’t answer that. 😔
It’s the free VPNs that are the problem. They are privacy nightmares.
If only there was some way the government could have predicted this would happen and maybe not rushed a poorly thought out law in the first place!
maybe then they would not have:
- forced big tech companies to withdraw service to the uk
- forced uk-based small forums and message boards to close
- given free vpn providers tons more data to sell
- reduced the overall cyber resilience of the country by forcing people to choose between giving photos of their passports to some weird online service or signing up for a free vpn which sells their data, may inject their own unregulated adverts etc
- reduced uk based advertising effectiveness and thus investment and marketing spend
- pissed everyone off while doing it, scoring yet another win for the far right
absolute roasters the lot of them
Well, hold your beer because Brazil is just passing a similar law at this moment. Expect other countries to follow.
It’s happening due to a big child sexualization/adultization scandal that took forever to blow up[1]. When the deputies came up with a law that was ready and just sitting in a drawer, my mind immediately went “Oh, fuck”. I still gotta read it, because it was approved recently.
While instagram itself has some “moderation”, they’ll happily turn a blind eye to anything that could hurt engagement. 10yo girls doing extremely sexual dances with pornographic music in the background? Boost that shit, look at the engagement!!! Tiktok is equally at fault for the same reason. This shit has been going for years and predates Hytalo and Felca. ↩︎
Which is worse, the free VPNs or the UK government?
I mean I don’t think I could pick right now 😂
we could have arrived at this argument before this whole data stealing conundrum
When they effectively make the internet a dangerous place, Usenet will rise from the darkness. P2P will also always exist and these politicians dont understand computer math, so a lot of what they’re trying to accomplish is bound to fail.
As someone who just read the Wikipedia article on Usenet and doesn’t know anything else about it: Would this be pretty much the equivalent of the internet before search engines? Because if so I’m really intrigued
Never mind search engines, Usenet was being used before people were using web browsers.
I’ll read up more on it, seems interesting
From my small understanding, usenet was like several forums loosely connected to one another, many servers are used mainly for filesharing. Every time I’ve checked some servers, all of them had a paywall to create an account.
Think fediverse less features more text
I remember when my step-son was a teenager. I didn’t care that he watched porn. I cared that he infected the family PC with viruses and malware trying to watch porn.
Stop ministers using VPNs to watch child porn.
Told!
Yeah, never forget how the people in power routinely gave Epstein a pass because they were participating in raping kids.
All this “for the children” is performative bullshit to take more power away from the average person.
Pidof files aside, them implying they need to watch children watching porn is not much better.
