Comment by phatfish
4 days ago
"people under 16", you mean children right?
"who also have the rights to freedom of expression and privacy", plenty of outlets for people to be expressive in the UK (more so than in the US for example, where the right wing will obviously attack any social media restrictions) that don't involve being fed junk divisive content from mainly US tech companies.
Privacy != anonymity.
Feel free to route your traffic via Wireguard. As long as it is not setup as a service for the mass evasion of age gates by children.
Nice try ! But the fact that the solution to protecting children comes with the maximum boost of government powers in the online world (across the set of all possible ways to protect children) is not a coincidence.
> Privacy != anonymity.
Exactly. You can have your own misgivings about the UK government at home, in private, and share them with no-one. Or you can share them on the online public square, knowing the UK government will know exactly who wrote them. Good thing they never abuse their power of prosecution!
The government literally doesn't prosecute anyone.
It is done by the CPS, which operates independently of government and the police.
If I were a betting man I'd place a bet that you are further misinformed about the prosecutions you believe are happening and why. But I am not.
The government literally doesn't prosecute anyone. It is done by the CPS, which the Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, was head of from 2007 to 2013.
> It is done by the CPS, which operates independently of government and the police.
I should have written "state", not "government", you're right. Does that change anything? But, article 35 of the Chinese constitution guarantees their citizens freedom of speech and of the press. You're beyond naive if you believe they're independent.
> If I were a betting man I'd place a bet that you are further misinformed about the prosecutions you believe are happening and why.
UK politicians admitted the Online Safety Act was: “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse” - https://archive.md/2025.08.13-190800/https://www.thetimes.co...
Even viewing "terrorist" material carries a potential 15 YEAR jail term: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41479620
It's OK to be white and similar stickers landed a man in jail: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51zn2l33r9o
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/04/the-tyrannical-jail...
I don't know how much worse you need it to be.
2 replies →
> Privacy != anonymity.
In practice, if you lose one, then you also lose the other.