The Labour Party wanted to put forth an amendment to ban VPNs for the then Online Safety Bill. It failed but Labour could be in power this year with a majority so it would be trivial to bring in a new bill to ban them.
I fear VPNs are on borrowed time. AirVPN recently blocked Italian residents from service because of the new Piracy Shield.
Tinder evokes the way that humans used to operate prior to civilisation - as a tournament species. This is why a small percentage of men have all the options while most men have little to none. What annoys women using dating apps is that the highest status men won't commit. In tribes, these men would have had multiple wives and these women would have married him while the rest of the men would have nothing other than be within a group survival strategy.
Humans adopted pair bonding because it was advantageous to do that to advance the species. Now we seem to be seeing the beginning of a transition back to a tournament species, not just through Tinder but other social and political consequences that hoe_math, Stardusk, Colttaine et al have covered in their videos.
What were we told by proponents of age/ID verification? "It'll only be for pornography, it won't spread beyond that, stop being hyperbolic and scaremongering". Anyone who said this would be a slippery slope and engage in mission creep was proven right.
It will get worse. The UK is proposing not just Government photo ID but also live (ongoing) facial recognition to verify that someone accessing something not "safe for kids" is of age. That will be implemented next year. Their rationale is that they need to verify that someone physically at a device is who they say they are based on their photo ID.
Cloudflare's stance didn't save it from the Italian Government's telecom regulator who promptly blocked its services and therefore websites on February 24th using them through its Piracy Shield to which all ISPs and VPNs must obey by law (it's why AirVPN no longer serve Italian residents).
You'd need to be hosted in a friendly country and you'll struggle when every country in the world wants to move to a system where they have digital border controls for Internet data going in and out of their country and a regulated national Intranet for residents.
If anyone thinks bending the knee to Hope Not Hate will get them to leave them alone, despite the Conservatives recently launching a new extremism definition which you would think would sound heavenly in their ears, the Conservatives were still defined as part of the "radical right" in their recently released report.
Appeasement does not work. You are forever branded and there is no redemption in their eyes.
You may have noticed all the political parties have pretty much become one Uniparty with just different coloured rosettes and ribbons. Reform have joined them. Despite Tice rallying against the establishment, he has become one of the establishment. I guess it may be down to the recent redefinition of extremism and not wanting to face consequences for stepping out of line with the Government. Even Labour have pretty much become the Red Tories now. The SNP has more to lose than anyone else because their advocacy of Scottish independence looks to breach that new definition and they've suddenly gone quiet about independence recently.
Sounds like Kotaku is in trouble. Their shift to predominantly producing 50 game tips and guides a week will be their downfall and I expect more staff to leave soon. Not what the staff want to write and not what readers expect.
Hopefully not long before the crabs get to dance on Kotaku's grave. 🦀🦀🦀
You saw that in the lockdowns that were instigated around the world. It was concerning to see how quickly people welcomed totalitarianism. It also showed how much they wanted a tough, decisive individual to lead the country and leave no mercy to dissenters.
We're seeing the same attitude that was applied to Covid now being applied to Internet "safety". There is serious consideration and activism in the UK to ban phones for under 16s, restrict devices for the rest and introduce a national Intranet. The Scottish hate crime law that will have a chilling effect on free speech that will impact JK Rowling and Count Dankula is only days away from being enforced.
Two things I have noticed as of late. First, the state wants to treat us all as children who can't be trusted and can not consume vice. Second, the state wants the Internet to be treated as private land accessible by the public where the threshold of what is tolerated is lower than in a purely private setting such as a home or factory.
They have powers under the Online Safety Act to fine Steam £18m or 10% of their global revenue, whichever is higher, if they fail to take down the curator group worldwide. They could also demand the shutdown of UK servers and blocking of Steam in the UK by all ISP's, VPN's and other networks if Steam (rightly) tells them to get lost.
That however would be a massive escalation and would result in both mass protest and worldwide condemnation. Because every PC gamer in the UK will have lost access to all their purchases. I expect Ofcom to not intervene.
Everyone knows the point around the political compass where anyone to the right of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin is far-right. Potentially controversial opinion but we may now be seeing the concept being pushed that anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher is a Marxist.
It used to be a niche, geeky and limited social hobby when one to two players was the norm, anything more was relatively rare and it was all in one physical place. Humans are a social species and women in particular have and spend social capital. That's why social media is popular with women.
The second that the industry became a billion or more dollar industry is when things changed. That comic of the masses wanting to remove those who made that space is relevant in this case.
And the Halo Effect is a thing. Attractive people can get away with more behaviour compared to most people and particularly so compared to unattractive people.
Building things or fishing, sports, working out or hunting...
Masculine trait, masculine, masculine, masculine and masculine. It all forms part of intrasexual competition which improves her exposure to others, boosts her respect from others and provides something for her.
But he still has to make her the centre of her world. This is why you can get complaints about fishing when it's done all day to escape from the situation at home and get some peace.
I think I heard it on a hoe_math video (don't quote me on that) that women like to live life as if they are the starring actress in the movie that is their life. The husband/boyfriend is the main man who makes that happen. It may also be fuelling the concept that men should do everything and the frustration recently at younger men who are not earning as much as younger women.
The problem with video games is that the main character is the main focus of the man at that time. Escapism means escaping from your duties. And that's probably why the right has an issue with it.
'Long COVID' was just the rebranding of long term fatigute syndrome or long viral syndrome which you can get with a number of infections, including flu. But it did work to make it more scary and allow authoritarian Governments to ramp up the fear, public guilt and measures.
I was saying that back in 2020.
In the UK, we've had a scandal involving a Tory donor that happened in 2019. They waited until now when the new definition of extremism was announced for that to come out. It would not be out of the realm of possibility for a Government in power to log the web access to certain websites and then use that to discredit an opponent when the time comes.
I'm casually listening to the radio and right now, I just heard a segment "can we protect children from 'harm' on the Internet". They're not just targeting pornography. Activists for online safety in the UK if they get their way would love the idea of locked down devices and a national Intranet where everything is licensed and deemed safe for children by Ofcom while the gateways to the Internet are monitored and regulated in the same way Border Force do with physical border crossings (not that it stops migrants getting in).
Sadly, these activists are the ones who are invited into Parliament and have the ear of the main party leaders while civil liberty campaigners are dismissed as threats to children.
The whole point of these age verification laws being in the way they are is to allow the state to ban pornography without facing the charge of banning it because they're written and implemented in such a way that it makes it impossible for such websites to continue to function in that state. Even if they went ahead with it, it would be long before "hackers" leaked all the users of that site as a "perverts database" as a final measure to deter people from going to those sites.
Next year, the UK will introduce even stricter age verification than being implemented in US states where the favoured requirement will not just be Government photo ID (passport or driving licence) but also live, ongoing facial recognition. And the criteria for who will need to comply will be any site or service that is not "safe for kids". On the basis that they need to see who is accessing a website at any time in the same way you're in person when showing ID for age restricted products in a store. It also stops an adult showing ID and then handing their device over to a child.
That's exactly the direction the UK is heading with their requirement for Government photo ID and live facial recognition system they favour for implementation next year for anything not "safe for kids". People have mistakenly believed this is just for pornography but they'll be in for a shock when a wide range of websites will have to comply.
Tim Pool, The Quartering and many Conservative commentators - 'It's only TikTok getting sold off or banned. They're not coming for your websites and apps. You're being paranoid, hyperbolic and alarmist'.
Apology when?
This direction is how we are going to end up with a national/state level Intranet and device restrictions, never mind age/ID verification. Because anything less won't be deemed safe enough for children if a child could accidentally or intentionally access or see anything an adult can.