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Holy F*ck, if you're on the UK internet or have a website that serves the UK read this


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I may have read this wrong, but the UK government looks like it's going to try and force age verification on every website that provides a service to UK citizens under the guise of removing cookie consent pop ups & preventing children accessing porn

They're doing this by asking you to prove your identity, not you age

Given the content of some of the missions in TDM I'm pretty sure that will include this site

So if you want to access pretty much any website from the UK you'll need to prove your identity with some government approved identification

For UK based websites there's a list of approved age verification services you can use at a cost of about 10p per check and if you don't have a credit card/passport/driving license etc they're thinking of using an AI & your webcam, hello phrenology

That's 10p for every access to your site even if your site is free or funded by donation, so if someone closes their browser & comes back later that's another 10p because there's no proof it's not a different person, I'm not entirely sure why websites outside the UK are going to go along with this idea, a cheaper way for them would be just to block access for every UK based IP address

The bill is extra-territorial being located offshore isn't good enough to save you, I have no idea how they intend to enforce that, too busy picking my jaw off the floor so I may have missed it

A few highlights

Quote

Preamble: you’ll be aware that the UK’s Online Safety Bill has been promoted as a piece of big tech/social media legislation, but it is not. It will impact any company or project of any size, nature, location, or business model which has user-generated content on it or allows humans to interact with other humans. So if your site, service or app is anything other than a promotional portfolio web 1.0 site, or a blog like this here blog that only allows comments, you’re in scope. If you weren’t aware of that, you are now. Enough of the preamble, let’s amble.

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The use of third-party age verification systems is intended to ensure that the service provider, e.g. you running your site there, never sees nor accesses the personal data – meaning the identities – of the people accessing your service. The fact remains, however, that age verification is still being mandated onto you, and that your users will hold you – not the third party provider – responsible for the hassle.

So how’s this going to work? The simplest way to explain this is that it’s going to be like cookie popups, mandated onto every site and service, at the point of page load, regardless of any subsequent interaction with the service. Except that instead of asking you to confirm your choices, it’s going to be asking you to confirm your identity.

No passport? No driving license? No credit card? No internet for you. Digital exclusion a go-go.

Quote

And keep in mind that the UK also envisions this Bill to be extraterritorial, meaning that businesses outside the UK will be expected to comply with it – meaning age-gate their visitors – as well. How that’s going to work in their own domestic privacy contexts is one question; why they’re going to spend that money on the likes of you is another.

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The UK is also planning to shout at browser manufacturers to nerd harder require browser manufacturers to create UK-only versions of browsers to deal with  consents, while the heart of the issue – the use of cookies and data harvesters in the first place – isn’t actually dealt with by either government or the regulator; in fact, today’s publication signals an intention to “move to an opt-out model of consent for cookies placed by websites. In practice, this would mean cookies could be set without seeking consent.”

"UK-only versions of browsers" - that can die in a fire for a start

https://webdevlaw.uk/2022/06/17/data-reform-bill-cookie-popups/

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This is both discomforting and hilarious to me. It's hilarous because I don't like children, and I don't want them on the internet, making it seem like Sonic tapping Tail's kneecaps is some kind of popular new porn. Would this restore sanity to the internet again? ...and what will happen to the children? Imagine suddenly waking up into a world you've never known, and you open the front door by physical VR-like controls you have to get used to, and you step out into a world where you're not allowed to kill people, and where you can't slap the kneecaps of Tails, because he doesn't even exist in this dimension. What will you do? What will all the children of the UK do, if they were suddenly thrust into the real UK? Will there be a revolution? We'll just have to wait and see, I guess. ...or protest. Whatever.

Edited by Nort
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I already knew that the Online Safety Bill was probably the worst technology bill ever envisioned outside North Korea or China, but I hadn't heard about this particular pile of horseshit.

If what that site is saying is true, the bill is actually so idiotic that I almost want it to pass just to see how hard it fails. "Extra-territorial jurisdiction" (doesn't exist), "forcing" open-source browsers to implement certain features (not going to happen)... what other abject stupidity can Nadine Dorries and friends come up with? I'm guessing "magic encryption that only law enforcement can unlock" will be in there somewhere too.

It's actually embarrassing that even in 2022 politicians still don't understand that they can't control the worldwide internet.

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We laughed at the first censorship laws and said that they'd never be able to enforce them, and they've been quite successful at driving away childporn and mass shooting videos. Don't underestimate the government.

Edited by Nort
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Brits are just cattle without anything approaching Internet freedom or free speech. Brexit hasn't changed their fate, so nothing will.

I don't think TDM needs to do anything to the site. People living in the UK need to start looking at some tutorials and VPNs. Better yet, leave.

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If you'll allow me to take a bird's eye view of this ... remember back in 2016, when they nutcakes were campaigning for Brexit in the UK and Trump in the US? The joke back then was, no matter how crazy one side got, the other had to outdo it. And I was wondering which flavor of crazy was going to be more permanently damaging to their respective country.

At the time I thought it was going to be Brexit, since that's "forever" and Trump was only 4 or 8 years, but I underestimated how deeply Trump's admin could undermine all of our institutions., even after he's left. But then I also underestimated the wreckage that was going to be left in Brexit's wake.

-------

Fast forward 6 years later and I'm still not sure who has the worse deal. Even if this law doesn't pass, it seems like it's putting on display how dysfunctional UK politics is now, like the ultimate exercise in dissociation -- trying so hard to ignore how shambolic the post-Brexit political & economic situation is by hyperfixating on problems that aren't problems with truly batshit legislation. (You can correct me if my reading of it is off.)

But if you've been paying attention to the Jan 6 hearings in the US, you know the US still won't be outdone. The problem isn't that the hearings are bad. The problem is that they're a slam dunk case against the previous administration and GOP, but it's only (apparently) making the whole GOP circle the wagons and double down on their insanity. Not to mention the SCOTUS decision that's going to allow the criminalization of abortions, the arguments behind it could just as easily apply to criminalize birth control, or gay or transgender behavior, and I have to imagine in some states there's a sizeable part of the population chomping on the bit to do just that.

-------

On the topic of this law itself, of course it's a mess. It's weirdly chauvinistic. UK-legal-compliant browsers & the extraterritorial bit? Didn't the UK just go to a lot of effort to tell everybody it was done with multilateralism and would be much happier as a fading second rate power? It's a tall order to follow that up with this.

But the big problem is the part about net neutrality. The more control the state wrangles the Internet into, the more it's just going to whip it into some propaganda mouthpiece for megalomaniac & tyrannical demagogues (& not the benevolent kind like me).  I'm all for strict measures to protect children from child pornography, get it off the net, and punish anybody uploading it or any server or site hosting it. But forcing people to maintain their identity for sites is asking for people to be targeted, tracked, and coerced, or putting in the architecture to do that when the bad guys get into power. The problem is even if this law fails, I think they may keep trying until they make it work. This is all a stupid road to dystopia we're on.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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On 6/18/2022 at 3:21 AM, jaxa said:

Better yet, leave.

It's too late for that. Maybe if you have a high education and a steady job, you can leave for another country, but if you just hang on the internet all day, then they're going to direct you to the back of the line, and you will discover that it is a very, very long line at this point, full of highly educated people coming from Ukraine, and people who don't want to be cooked to death down in India, and basically half the world is now risking their lives on little ocean crossing dingies, trying to move to everywhere except Africa. ...but you're always welcome to try to farm in Africa yourself, I guess, if you don't like your current country of residence.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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It is a common problem that in our society, commanded by certain lobbies, not the fittest get the government, but apparently, the most idiotic, helped by the related media. 

An informed, educated and sovereign people would prevent this system from working.

The result is an increasingly restrictive freedom, as the saying goes about, how to cook a frog, to do it starting with warm water
 

FxcgpXp.jpg

(https://www.stevecutts.com)

Edited by Zerg Rush
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13 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

It is a common problem that in our society, commanded by certain lobbies, not the fittest get the government, but apparently, the most idiotic, helped by the related media.

I don't know - I've seen some pretty idiotic people on YouTube trying to make political careers, and usually they need lawyers just to keep themselves out of prison. Every week they make their fringe political live streams, and all they amount to, is Alex Jones at best. Alex Jones is the sane man among them. I think the main difference is that politicians don't play computer games.

Edit:
I mean I have seen things. There's this guy, still up on YouTube, who talks about the kabbalah, and numerology, and how he's some incarnation of a US founding father, and it all amounts to him showing his penis, in most videos. He's written a book, about how his penis is the chosen penis, and so he just shows his penis in his book. ...and that guy is pretty far from political office, let me tell you. You underestimate the stupidity of the common man.

Edited by Nort
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I don't underestimate the stupidity of the common man, I am aware of it. It is the result of manipulation and brainwashing by self-proclaimed leaders, aided by religions since thousends of years. Nowadays adding the mass media, certain 'influencers' on YT and social networks, turning people into submissive herd animals and persecuting, defaming and even killing those who want to change this situation, also since thousends of years.

The 4 horsemen are greed, ignorance, fanaticism and stupidity.

 

 

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I really don't understand what you're talking about, but at least you seem to agree that we're not living in a complete idiocracy.

I've heard all of this bitter jargon before, though, from a lot of pseudo-political people. Has it ever occured to you that you might be the one who's been brainwashed into thinking what you're thinking about politicians? ...and into thinking that you can't simply walk into one of the political offices and ask to join up at the entry level? It will take abandoning your comfortable internet lifestyle, of course, and actually working to make a change, instead of just slouching in your couch and being passively outraged.

Just as these "stupid" people have built this child-worshipping outrage culture, you can start some sort of child emancipation movement, if what you really want is the giant "I gender-identify has a female rabbit anime avatar who gets aroused by kneecap slapping Sonic." identity crisis that I see as an inevitable consequence of allowing children access to everything on the internet.

I am of the political opinion that if these children don't learn how to sow potatoes, or learn how to eviscerate a cadaver properly, right the f*** now, they might starve to death very soon, and they can't sow potatoes on the internet. They can watch all that anime porn later, idgaf.

 

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 I remember very well my militancy in the 1969s, when by then they beat us to the punches and waterthrowers and it was better for us to shut up and obey.

Now, being retired, I can only follow my principles and try to influence the people around me, my children and grandchildren, apart from trying to be consistent with my maxims.

I don't think about keeping quiet in the face of obvious injustices and the gradual decrease in freedoms and a clear advance towards fascism (again), every time when the economic bubble bursts.
The current war in Ukraine, I already predicted it 2 years ago, seeing that we are approaching an economic crisis, this time due to a pandemic and not because these riffraff played Monopoly with money that was not theirs, like the last one, although this one also ended in a war, the same in the previous two world wars, which also started with an economic crisis and the flourishing of populists calling for patriotism.
Now in my chair in front of the computer, because my body is no longer what it used to be to run in front of the henchmen, although it does allow me to talk to others and maybe I can change some opinions from this position.

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1 minute ago, Zerg Rush said:

 I remember very well my militancy in the 1969s, when by then they beat us to the punches and waterthrowers and it was better for us to shut up and obey.

Now, being retired, I can only follow my principles and try to influence the people around me, my children and grandchildren, apart from trying to be consistent with my maxims.

I don't think about keeping quiet in the face of obvious injustices and the gradual decrease in freedoms and a clear advance towards fascism (again), every time when the economic bubble bursts.
The current war in Ukraine, I already predicted it 2 years ago, seeing that we are approaching an economic crisis, this time due to a pandemic and not because these riffraff played Monopoly with money that was not theirs, like the last one, although this one also ended in a war, the same in the previous two world wars, which also started with an economic crisis and the flourishing of populists calling for patriotism.
Now in my chair in front of the computer, because my body is no longer what it used to be to run in front of the henchmen, although it does allow me to talk to others and maybe I can change some opinions from this position.

Oh. I apologize. I mistook you for a 20-something youth with the time available to build a political career.

I guess my own stance comes from being used to fascism. They once raided my home, and took me and interrogated me, and it was all very friendly, but I knew that few people made it out of their prison cells alive, and that there was no witnesses around if the interrogator would decide to beat me a little. ...and so I was very clever, and they let me go, and I survived that day.

To me that's just life: You don't make waves, so that the government won't come for you, and then you live, and that's "politics" to me. If they'd decide to take my internet, I don't need it to live. It'll be gone soon enough anyway, along with the power and the food and the law, and all that shit. That's why I train when I'm not mapping. That's what I care about.

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I'm sorry to hear it, but I think the internet is very important, it's the best tool available to the people to get out of ignorance (if you know where there is reliable information between memes and cat videos).
There are more and more movements of people who want to escape this government and commercial surveillance on the networks and there are certainly alternatives in decentralized networks that escape this surveillance. Of these there are many, from Mastodon, Friendica, Diaspora, Lemmy, Raddle and many others, to private blockchain networks.

Age is a mental state, although the physical inevitably degrades.
Old those who have lost the illusion and curiosity with an open mind, the only thing that must be lost is the innocence and naivity of youth and replace them with experience.

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Protecting children from pornography?
Don't believe that shit!

That's exactly how internet censorship started in Russia: forbid child pornography, drugs, and suicide info online.
By this moment they just ban and disable everything they want for whatever reason.

Parents can protect their children themselves using parental control features. There is no need to ban websites or block everyone in order to protect children.

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Yes, if used correctly, and responsibly, the internet can be a great tool, but how many of us are responsible? Even adults, are just using it for cat videos and games and porn and internet friends. We live and die in front of our computers. Is this something that we want children to be part of?

I'm not saying that the internet is good or bad, because as you can probably tell, you (or at least I) can't make a blanket statement like that. No matter what is decided politically, if I had a kid, I'd teach him how to sow potatoes, and then we'd sow potatoes. (Well, actually, I don't eat potatoes, and neither would he, but whatever.) We can still go to the store and buy sowing potatoes, without using the internet. There is so much that you can do when you're not in front of the internet.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, or right. I just don't understand what you're saying, and I'm sorry. I talk too much. I spend too much time on the internet too.

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I'm not sure what any of this has to do with Brexit. Internet censorship in the UK was increasing long before Brexit, and it is widespread in mainland Europe as well. There's the infamous NetzDG law in Germany (against "hate speech"); France has a law restricting criticism of abortion ("protecting women's mental health"); numerous people in Sweden have been fined for publicly opposing immigration policy ("hate speech" again); in Finland a serving politician was prosecuted for quoting a Bible passage ("homophobia"); in Switzerland a man was even prosecuted for blaspheming against Islam (you guessed it — "hate speech").

Brexit did not cause this problem, neither did it prevent it. Governments on both sides of the English channel are in total agreement that a censored internet is necessary.

48 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

That's exactly how internet censorship started in Russia: forbid child pornography, drugs, and suicide info online.
By this moment they just ban and disable everything they want for whatever reason.

The irony is that the very concept of "hate speech" originated in the Soviet Union some time in the fifties, and was at that time opposed by the West who rightly saw it as an excuse for open-ended and arbitrary government censorship. Now, Western governments are frantically trying to leapfrog one another by passing the most restrictive hate speech laws without even trying to conceal the fact that the aim is blatant ideological censorship.

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1 minute ago, OrbWeaver said:

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with Brexit. Internet censorship in the UK was increasing long before Brexit, and it is widespread in mainland Europe as well. There's the infamous NetzDG law in Germany (against "hate speech"); France has a law restricting criticism of abortion ("protecting women's mental health"); numerous people in Sweden have been fined for publicly opposing immigration policy ("hate speech" again); in Switzerland a man was even prosecuted for blaspheming against Islam (you guessed it — "hate speech").

Brexit did not cause this problem, neither did it prevent it. Governments on both sides of the English channel are in total agreement that a censored internet is necessary.

The irony is that the very concept of "hate speech" originated in the Soviet Union some time in the fifties, and was at that time opposed by the West who rightly saw it as an excuse for open-ended and arbitrary government censorship. Now, Western governments are frantically trying to leapfrog one another by passing the most restrictive hate speech laws without even trying to conceal the fact that the aim is blatant ideological censorship.

Oh. You believe that nazism is an ideology, and not a meme cult. Lol.

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Fascism is not an ideology but a system of oppression, it is the highest expression of capitalist liberalism, directly an heir to feudalism. 

They don't deserve memes, they deserve rejection, they are dangerous

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4 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

Fascism is not an ideology but a system of oppression, it is the highest expression of capitalist liberalism, directly an heir to feudalism. 

They don't deserve memes, they deserve rejection, they are dangerous

Another reason why I'm staying clear of politics, is that it often leads to bitter arguments and feuds, and violence. In South American countries, talking politics with your neighbor, could lead to him fetching his gun from the kitchen countertop and killing you. People are very passionate about what's fascism and what's not.

It's also something that I've seen mods here warn users against before, in the interest of maintaining a friendly atmosphere where people cooperate. I understand that speaking out and influencing, is the whole point for an idealist, but perhaps there are better places for it, even on the internet.

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