Comment by entuno
1 day ago
Those petitions aren't really worth anything - governments have ignored ones with over six million signatures before.
And they also ignored this one a few years back that had just under 700,000 signatures to "make verified ID a requirement for opening a social media account":
https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/575833
Ironically, the primary reason they gave for rejecting it was:
> However, restricting all users’ right to anonymity, by introducing compulsory user verification for social media, could disproportionately impact users who rely on anonymity to protect their identity. These users include young people exploring their gender or sexual identity, whistleblowers, journalists’ sources and victims of abuse. Introducing a new legal requirement, whereby only verified users can access social media, would force these users to disclose their identity and increase a risk of harm to their personal safety.
The other point is that recent polls suggest the British public are overwhelmingly in support of this legislation [0], which is not reflected in most of the narrative we see online. Whether they support how it has been implemented is a different matter, but the desire to do something is clear.
[0] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...
It's sadly an example of terrible leading question bias, to the point where I'm surprised that it even got a 22% oppose rate.
The percentages would change dramatically were one to write it as, "From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring adults to upload their id or a face photo before accessing any website that allows user to user interaction?"
Both questions are factually accurate, but omit crucial aspects.
I live in a country where 91.78% of the population voted for a referendum that bought back hard labour in prisons.
As one of the few who voted against it I have yet to encounter a single person who voted for it who both supports hard labour and realised that was in the question being asked.
27 replies →
There’s a classic yes minister skit on how dubious polls can be: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks&t=45s
This doesn't quite cover what you're looking for but I think a previous survey led with a question that mentioned uploading ID - https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202....
I can't find the survey it's entirety, but I think the above question was followed by (this is based on the number at the end of the URL, which I'm guessing is quesiton order) - https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...
1 reply →
"Do you want CHILDREN to be MURDERED by RAPEISTS online or are you a good person?
Y/N
3 replies →
Yeah. It's the "foot in the door technique." The same is being done with Chat Control.
It's very difficult to oppose a law ostensibly designed to fight CSAM. But once the law passes, it'll be easily expanded to other things like scanning messages to prevent terrorism.
See also:
> Concern over mass migration is terrorist ideology, says Prevent
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/06/concern-over...
2 replies →
People constantly cite this poll as it is proof that British people want this.
You cannot trust the YouGov polling. It is flawed.
> Despite the sophisticated methodology, the main drawback faced by YouGov, Ashcroft, and other UK pollsters is their recruitment strategy: pollsters generally recruit potential respondents via self-selected internet panels. The American Association of Public Opinion Research cautions that pollsters should avoid gathering panels like this because they can be unrepresentative of the electorate as a whole. The British Polling Council’s inquiry into the industry’s 2015 failings raised similar concerns. Trying to deal with these sample biases is one of the motivations behind YouGov and Ashcroft’s adoption of the modelling strategies discussed above.
https://theconversation.com/its-sophisticated-but-can-you-be...
Even if the aforementioned problems didn't exist with the polling. It has been known for quite a while that how you ask a question changes the results. The question you linked was the following.
> From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring age verification to access websites that may contain pornographic material?
Most people would think "age verification to view pornography". They won't think about all the other things that maybe caught in that net.
All polling has problems like this, but YouGov has the same methodology for everything and usually gets within a margin of error of +-8. Even if they have an especially bad sample, the UK probably really does support the law.
Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40.
34 replies →
It seems like some things always remain the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
1 reply →
As always, the devil is in the details. Very careful wording:
>do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring age verification to access websites that may contain pornographic material?
"may" is doing the heavy lifting. Any website that hosts image "may" contain pornograohic content. So they don't associate this with "I need id to watch YouTube" it's "I need ID to watch pornhub". Even though this affects both.
On top of that, the question was focused on peon to begin with. This block was focused more generally on social media. The popular ones of which do not allow pornography.
Rephrase the question to "do you agree with requiring ID submission to access Facebook" and I'd love to see how that impacts responses.
It's funny, I actually interpret it differently; by using "may" vs omitting it would actually imply to include sites like YouTube and Facebook. Without the "may", to me it would imply only sites that have a primary intent of pornographic material, not sites that could include it accidentally.
“Why yes I do either support or oppose those rules. Thanks for asking.”
Odd - they also believe it wont be effective
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...
The moment the Russia Ukraine war hit, the top 10 apps in Russia was half VPNs.
As long as websites don't want to lock out any user without an account, and as long as vpns exist, it'll be hard to enforce any of this. At least for now, that's one line big tech won't let them cross easily.
3 replies →
Yes it's quite possible for people to hold both those views.
> Whether they support how it has been implemented is a different matter, but the desire to do something is clear.
Isn't this the whole story of government policy? The stated policy so rarely actually leads to the hoped-for result.
That’s because the bedrock principle on which modern government is based is…
drum roll
Lie whenever it’s convenient because the public are children anyway and won’t or can’t understand.
Through this lens many things make more sense. They’re comfortable with lying because there are zero repercussions for lying.
4 replies →
They always name it the exact opposite of what it does.
If they name something the "Protect Children Act". You can be sure that what it does is put Children in Danger.
That means that on the face of it, it is difficult for someone to oppose.
Follow-up question is big lulz: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...
"And how effective do you think the new rules will be at preventing those younger than 18 from gaining access to pornography?"
-> 64% "not very effective / not at all effective"
Ok and how about if it was phrased;
"Are you in favour of requiring ages verification for Wikipedia and other websites"
"Are you in favour of uploading your ID card and selfie each time you visit a site that might contain porn"
Why are we conflating pornography and Wikipedia?
Wikipedia hosts pornography.
3 replies →
The curtain twitcher/nanny state impulse is pretty strong
The Home Office is full of fascists, many of whom may - allegedly - have questionable personal habits and interests.
None of this has anything to do protecting the public. If that was the goal there are any number of other ways to manage this.
A good reminder that certain circles are just the vocal minority and under the surface society is mostly just NPCs.
Not a great lesson to take here.
1. Policy by default will always be planned and implemented by a minority. As well as those who comment to policy, or online.
2. You'll have some 20-30% of people who will say yes to anything if you phrase it the right way.
Would-be democratic countries should have petitions with actual teeth - that is ones that get enough signatures mean the issue is no longer up to the representatives but will be decided in a referendum.
>These users include young people exploring their gender or sexual identity
And who would they need to hide from?
School bullys, parents, friends, community members, church leaders and many others I imagine. The idea was that it would have your real name and it was verified by your ID.
>parents
You do understand that there are creeps out there grooming children, right? Parents definitely do need to have oversight over their own kids.
Children should absolutely not have privacy on the internet.
The ID requirement is terrible, but saying that children need privacy to explore their sexuality on the internet is very problematic.
If this is the position the UK government holds then that brings into question their desire to protect children online in the first place.
14 replies →
From people who would harm them?
Oh you're that anti-games, anti-porn guy, best to ignore anything you say.
I'm not anti-games.
>From people who would harm them?
Like who? I really hope you don't mean the kids' parents.
3 replies →
I wish that we didn't always have to phrase things like this. Yes, it's true that the aforementioned folks may likely have more of a need for anonymity than I do as someone who isn't a member of any protected class; but that doesn't mean I don't have a legitimate right to it too. And, if this is the way we phrase things, when a government is in power that doesn't care about this (i.e. the present American regieme), the argument no longer has any power.
We shouldn't have to hide behind our more vulnerable peers in order to have reasonable rights for online free speech and unfettered anonymous communication. It is a weak argument made by weak people who aren't brave enough to simply say, "F** you, stop spying on everyone, you haven't solved anything with the powers you have and there's no reason to believe it improves by shoving us all into a panopticon".
Totalitarian neoliberalism sucks; your protest petition with six million signatures is filed as a Jira ticket and closed as WONTFIX, you can't get anyone on the phone to complain at, everyone in power is disposable and replaceable with another stooge who will do the same thing as their predecessor. Go ahead and march in the streets, the government and media will just declare your protest invalid and make the other half of the population hate you on demand.
Every totalitarian regime sucks, be it corporate, religious or socialistic.
It's quite right that petitions are (mostly) ignored in Parliamentary matters, IMHO.
MPs are elected to Parliament, they get input from their constituents. Bills are debated, revised, voted on multiple times. There are consultations and input from a board range of view points.
A petition is in effect trying to shout over all that process from the street outside.
It's a good deal more complicated than that.
MPs belong to political parties - consider what happens if an MP's constituents and an MP's party disagree?
They might be allowed to vote against the government, if their vote will have no effect on the bill's passage - but if they actually stop the bill's passage? They're kicked out of the party, which will make the next election extremely difficult for them.
MPs are elected for reasonably long terms - and that means they regularly do things that weren't in their party manifesto. Nobody running for election in 2024 had a manifesto policy about 2025's strikes on Iran, after all!
That flexibility means they can simply omit the unpopular policies during the election campaign. A party could run an election campaign saying they're going to introduce a national ID card, give everyone who drinks alcohol a hard time, cut benefits, raise taxes, raise university tuition, fail to deliver on any major infrastructure projects, have doctors go on strike, and so on.
Or they can simply not put those things in their manifesto, then do them anyway. It's 100% legal, the system doing what it does.
Don't be ridiculous. MPs get their input from their party superiors, and their party superiors get their input from the people who buy them.
It's been decades since the UK had any genuine bottom-up policy representation for ordinary people.
Petitions are the only mechanism which produces some shadow of a memory of a that.
Is it quite right that the public gets ignored all the time?
How do you force your representatives to actually represent their constituents?
I have just described how the public drives the democratic process to ensure everyone gets a voice, not just whoever shouts the loudest. That's the opposite of ignoring the public.
3 replies →
Yeah who do these peasants think they are?
You vote for someone who says "I will create more jobs"
They instead propose a bill that will cut jobs
There's deliberation, but a lot of other people want to cut jobs
Is you shouting "hey, that is not what I voted for!" yelling and disrupting process, or calling out the fact that you were lied to and your representative is in fact not representing you?