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The UK’s Online Safety Act is a licence for censorship – and the rest of the world is following suit
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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FWIW, Denmark has had this digital infrastructure in the last 10 years and it’s been the foundation of a huge transformation in terms of how people interact with the government services.
It’s also extremely privacy preserving and while Denmark is actually moving forward with an age proving infrastructure like Britain, it’s designed with zero knowledge proofs so literally no-one knows where you have proved your age.
I don’t have a problem with the infrastructure. I have a problem with how Britain designs and uses the infrastructure.
I don't think anyone has a problem with an ID you need to interact with government services. They know your identity anyway, and for obvious security reasons it's necessary that they properly verify that you are who you claim you are.
What people have a problem with, is needing to provide an ID to simply access whole categories of content across the wide internet that are not related to your identity in any way.
I totally understand that. And FWIW, I used to sit squarely in the camp that this wasn’t just foolish, it was nefarious.
But the challenge is really in how the UK has decided to implement this - zero knowledge proofs should have been a legal requirement like it is the the EU infrastructure regulation.
If there really, truly was no way to tie back proving your age to who proved their age, then surely this is a good thing? The slippery slope argument I understand but it is, at heart, at fallacy. “Well, if you start putting people in prison for murder, then pretty soon you’ll start putting people in prison for breathing”.
I’m obviously against having to prove your identity to access some content. But can I not support having to prove your age (in a fully anonymous way) without automatically saying “let’s know exactly who is accessing what and when”?
Still nope.
The government shouldn't be putting up mandatory barriers for what adults watch in the privacy of their own home. It's a huge overreach.
Imagine being an adult in your 40s, living alone without a minor anywhere near you, and having to prove you're an adult with a fucking Android app every time you want to open your liquor cabinet. That's how this feels to me, and I find it extremely offensive. Like, get out of my life.
And then this age gating crap doesn't even solve the problem, and has the potential to make things worse, because only the major players like pornhub and reddit will comply. For shits and giggles, I set my VPN to UK the other day, and was able to find non-age gated porn in no time. So this is just driving minors who want to view porn to more sketchy, less moderated sites.