Ofcom is issuing industry guidance which sets out the tech adult websites must use to check ages.

Summary

Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, all websites hosting pornography, including social media platforms, must implement “robust” age verification methods, such as photo ID or credit card checks, for UK users by July.

Regulator Ofcom claims this is to prevent children from accessing explicit content, as research shows many are exposed as young as nine.

Critics, including privacy groups and porn sites, warn the measures could drive users to less-regulated parts of the internet, raising safety and privacy concerns.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    If by that you mean that some out of touch MPs can be easily swindled by members of the security apparatus working together with other MPs and higher level politicians who are smart enough to know what they’re doing, I don’t disagree with that.

    What is less likely is that a majority of British MPs, repeatedly and over the course of 2 decades, have been deceived like that.

    Maybe I’m wrong, but most British MPs don’t come out as stupid (though some definitely do) - incompetent at anything but salesmanship and power-games, crooked, greedy, ethics-free, unprincipled salesmen types and people driven by objectives which do not at all match what they state, sure most of them come out as that, stupid, not most.

    I mean, your point would make a lot of sense if this was some kind of one-off event rather than a repeating pattern of measure after measure increasing surveillance of Civil Society, for the last 2 decades, and if Civil Society (or at least the Media) had been silent about it or even supportive of it, but as things stand the theory that a majority of MPs are stupid as an explanation for this bill passing Parliament really stretches the laws of probability.

    As the saying goes: “You can deceive some people all of the time or all people some of the time but you can’t deceive all people all of the time”.

    PS: I accept that I might be wrong. I just don’t think that given the Historical track record the odds favor the “they’ve been swindled” (a majority of them and again on a subject that has been steadily going in just this direction and with not so long ago exposés on the press of how previous legislation has been abused for surveillance) explanation over the explanation that at least the ones in leadership positions acted with full awareness and possibly the active intention and purpose of crafting and passing a bill that expands Civil Society Surveillance in Britain.