Comment by kypro
7 days ago
I was thinking last night how many in some ways these age verification laws might actually have some upside for those of us who were fond of the early internet...
Ultimately what these laws will end up doing is pushing internet traffic towards the "normie web", create a separation between sites which refuse to implement these measures and those who will.
Ultimately for this filters to work authoritarian countries like the UK will need to ban sites like 4chan which do not comply with their age verification demands despite hosting adult content. As it stands until the UK do this the age filtering may as well not exist because kids (and adults) will just go to other sites.
Additionally search and content aggregators will likely come under increased pressure to blacklist these "rogue" sites so slowly both the ability to access non-compliant sites and the ability to find non-compliant sites will diminish.
Like in the old days when cool sites and blogs spread more by word of mouth than social media and search aggregators, we're likely heading back to a world where those who are savvy enough to work around the filtering of authoritarian states will have access to a new kind of "semi-dark web" or a "rogue web".
I almost like that idea. If the internet bifurcates it might actually become a more authentic place for those of us in know. I suppose the only question then is whether authoritarian countries like the UK will ultimately come after private VPN users as well, but I feel like that would be impractically costly to enforce.
> the UK will need to ban sites like 4chan which do not comply with their age verification demands
They will not hesitate to do so, the UK has the power to quickly and easily blacklist sites.
Oh for sure. I personally think this was the whole point of the bill.
We've seen from online bans in recent years that it doesn't really matter if someone is still technically able to access a the banned content, at some point if you make the content hard enough to find its influence becomes increasingly irrelevant.
This new legislation basically gives the UK government an excuse to ban large sections of the internet from UK ISPs since they can say they weren't complying with UK law and shift the blame/responsibility in the eyes of the public – "it's not censorship, they're breaking the law!"
In doing this it will likely be enough to reduce UK traffic to those sites by 90%+. While it might technically be possible to buy and install a VPN to access them realistically most people won't bother.