this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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This was bound to happen, and it’s ridiculous

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[–] lorski@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ministers want it all for themselves! Ha!

[–] jafra@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 days ago

Yeah, they want VPN for themselves to watch their CSAM. And to fight CSAM you have to let government sedan all your data and communication.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 161 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Why not just gouge out their eyeballs, it's the only way to make sure!

Oh, what's that, it's not actually about the porn, it's about getting everyone to self-submit personal info to your shitty databases? Ooh, ok, gotcha!

Edit: sorry about the non-sequitur, I'm losing my fucking mind...

[–] nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 60 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's so weird. Just don't give your kids unrestricted internet access if you're concerned about any of this...

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Just give them a flip-phone and a living-room computer.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Or, y'know... they could do some actual parenting and talk to their kids about this. Kids aren't morons, they're just inexperienced. They are actually capable of understanding, like, words and stuff as long as one offers enough context for them... Actually teach the kids to use the internet, help them develop some insights.

And if anyone's panicked about the immoral stuff going on in the porn industry (and there are plenty of things to be addressed and critiqued about a hystorically predatory domain), then address those directly! Friggin' nurture their critical thinking and empathy! Locking them up in the fucking basement isn't gonna Protect Them From Evil™, it just ensures they'll be maladapted and sociopathic once they manage to escape from fucking prison! (no pun intended)

Edit: I will say this forever and ever - it is the parents' duty to adapt to the world in which their kids have to live, not to force their kids to adapt to a world their parents wish would apply!

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (7 children)

And if anyone's panicked about the immoral stuff going on in the porn industry (and there are plenty of things to be addressed and critiqued about a hystorically predatory domain)

You're 100% correct, but I would also like to point out how weird it is that porn seems to be the ONLY industry where these religious nutjobs pretend to care about workers.

In the US, the same people who say they care about the porn industry preying upon women are the same ones rolling back child labor legislations to send 14 year olds to meat packing plants. The same ones who have kept the minimum wage where it is for decades. The same ones who want to ban abortion even in cases where the woman's life is threatened. I know this is a BBC article about the UK, but I can't help but see some parallels with the right-wing religious conservatives everywhere in the world.

They don't care about women. They don't care about children. They don't care about workers. They care about having lots of cheap labor. They care about parents being too tired, too overworked, too risk-averse for the sake of their children to dare to fight back. They want a world where peasant girls get married at 14 and start cranking out more babies immediately. Any substitute which threatens that (birth control, abortion, homosexuality, pornography, sex education) is under attack.

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[–] Coleslaw4145@lemmy.world 142 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Josh Lane was addicted to porn by 14-years-old after first finding it via a Google search when he was aged 12.

Now 25 and happily married.

Wow. Porn really destroyed this mans life. What a tragic tale.

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 63 points 1 week ago (4 children)

If jacking off constantly at age 14 doomed a person we would never have left the Miocene epoch.

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[–] synapse1278@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago

He told Newsnight the addiction caused him to isolate himself from friends and family because he was "afraid of anyone discovering that I was hooked."

Mr Lane described finding "the only place I could get, I guess, love and intimacy was from pornography" at the same time as feeling "heaps of guilt and shame"

The problem seems to have more to do with lack of proper sex education and social pressure rather than pornography. Why did he have to feel so ashamed that he isolated himself? That's a real issue here!

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[–] ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 123 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It feels like a return of the pornography/video games/rock music moral panic of the late 20th century. I wish these conservative idiots would just fuck off. We'll do anything before we tackle things that are really affecting children. Like poverty and hunger, in one of the world's richest countries. We're a joke of a country, no wonder people keep making fun of us. We deserve it.

[–] TipsyMcGee@lemmy.dbzer0.com 72 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Honestly, it feels more sinister. Sure, they say they want to eliminate this privacy tool because children could use it to watch porn, but realistically they’re not a fan of anybody using a VPN.

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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 62 points 1 week ago
[–] onlooker@lemmy.ml 60 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How about parents supervise their own kids them-fuckin'-selves?

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[–] Guitarfun@lemmy.world 53 points 1 week ago (8 children)

I'm so fucking sick of losing my rights to protect other people's kids. I don't have any fucking kids. Why don't they apply their idiotic rules to those that do and leave the rest of us be.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I'm a parent and I'm sick of it too. It's so incredibly easy to monitor your kid today as modern parental control system literally do most of the work for you. Also you can just talk and be honest with your kids - 12-16 year olds are pretty smart contrary to what some want you to think.

Literally no one likes this except the bottom of the barrel brain washed idiots. I'm not a conspiracist but I meet other parents and while I'm not based in the UK, porn access was never an issue for any parent so this just reeks of propaganda.

[–] Guitarfun@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Seriously, they build parental controls into pretty much all modern devices and there's plenty of 3rd party software for added functionality and customization. The tools are there for parents. All they have to do is enable and configure them.

I think people who support this shit and other other laws that strip our rights away are virtue signaling, neglectful/lazy, or like you said completely brainwashed. I think that those in power want to slowly work towards banning porn completely and not just in the UK. I've said it elsewhere, but politicians and rich assholes like Elon Musk are worried about birthrates falling and this is just one of many tactics to try to get people to have more kids.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

The 3rd party apps cost max 100$ a year and does almost everything for you (with plenty of good free 1st party options like Google Family Link). All you have to do is review the alerts and configure screen time and you still let your kids retain good amount of privacy. It's insane how easy it is these days so there are no excuses for any parent, period.

[–] 3abas@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Because it's all an excuse to eliminate all privacy. The empire doesn't survive if the workers are allowed to communicate freely.

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[–] menemen@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago (5 children)

It is not about the children, nor their parents. Redirect your anger towards the perpetrators, not towards the scapegoats...

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[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 52 points 1 week ago (17 children)

How about tell the parents to pay attention to what their fucking kids are doing online instead of dragging the rest of us into it?

[–] krunklom@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 week ago

How about nobody else'a fucking children are anybody else's fucking problem.

Fuck your stupid fucking kids.

Not literally of course. I'm not a republican.

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[–] riskable@programming.dev 41 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I guess it's just too late for all those children that viewed porn. The piles of their dead bodies must be enormous!

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I've been biting my tongue hard these past few months in a concerted effort not to be offensive. I'm not trying to be intentionally offensive, however, I feel there is an element in this situation that is being disregarded in favor of someone else doing your work. When I say 'You', Your', etc, I mean it in the royal sense. So, warm up the downvote finger and man the flame throwers.

If it's genuinely for the children, then when are we going to require parents to be parents? Look, you brought this service into your home voluntarily. You might say 'Well I need it for work' or 'I need it for school'. Tons of people use hundreds of thousands of hotspots daily to do their thing on the internet. This service you voluntarily brought into your house, has both the ability to be highly beneficial and highly detrimental all in the same breath. Technology always, always, always wields a double edged sword.

And what do the majority of parents do with such power? They give it to their vulnerable, under aged, highly curious, children, un-monitored, uncensored, and uninhibited. Are you insane? So when little Johnny is caught surfing porn hub, the parents freak and cry out to their government 'We need to ban porn!' No! What we need is for parents to be parents.

There are literally hundreds of services, and ways to lock down your internet. I hear parents say 'I'm not technologically inclined.' Get there. The safety and well being of your children hang in the balance. Take a class at your local Tech College. I'd be willing to bet that when little Johnny's mom was pregnant, she most likely did some reading on the topic. Some even take a class on childbirth. The internet should be no different. Access one or two of the billions of tuts out on the internet.

Now, will locking down your internet like a multi-billion dollar enterprise with a Brinks Kit keep little Johnny from seeing some skin? No! Why? Because it's natural for humans to want to see what other humans look like naked. Children are naturally inquisitive. The prime directive of all life is to replicate. So, have frank, open, direct, and yes, awkward conversations with your children. Let them know in no uncertain terms what is acceptable on your network. Tell them why these things are not appropriate for their age group. This relationship with your children starts at Day 1.

You have 18 years of boot camp to equip your children with all the tools necessary to make wise, prudent decisions in life. You probably taught them how to ride a bicycle, or drive a car, or any number of teaching opportunities parents have with their children. The internet should be no different. We live in a technological time line that is ever changing, so it behooves parents to know exactly what is going on with their technology and how their children are using it. Get with it.

Being a parent takes work. Being a network administrator also takes work. Anyone who is a seasoned veteran of this chan knows, to secure a network in order to be as private, secure, and anonymous as possible on the internet, takes work. I find, a large portion of parents are unwilling to do the work and would rather fob off their responsibilities as a parent, to the government having jurisdiction. I'm not painting all parents with this brush. Kudos to parents who are very involved in their children's lives. There are enough of them tho, that are not, and this is a big issue. It gives governments the justification they desire to surveil their citizenry.

Let the roast begin.

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[–] ideonek@piefed.social 36 points 1 week ago

Stop blocking Wikipedia

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 week ago

ministers told

By a bunch of religious assholes that want more power

By a bunch of corporate assholes that want more money

By a bunch of politician assholes that want more power

Did I forget anyone? Nobody wants this, none of this has to do with child safety, it's all transparent lies to get more for them and less for us. Let's break the entire internet so that a very small group has more

Fuck all of you assholes, o hope you all die soon, the world would be souch better and nicer.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 35 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I know none of this is actually about protecting kids... But even if it was, their reasoning and methodology sucks.

some of the 16 to 21-year-olds surveyed saying they had viewed it "aged six or younger".

So there may have been a problem at least 10 years ago. Does that problem still exist? (never mind the obvious "is the problem parents ignoring their kids on a tablet"...)

Josh Lane was addicted to porn by 14-years-old after first finding it via a Google search when he was aged 12.

Okay, now let's address the parents being the problem. By default, Google's "Safe Search" is on, and the kid actively searched for porn. So no parental supervision of the 12 year old kid on the internet. Someone setup a google account, and changed the default settings to show those results. (oh, but that person is 25 now, so that was also 13 years ago...)

Almost all of the big websites have parental control settings that would alleviate the vast majority of these "problems" if parents actually used them. Parents being willfully ignorant isn't going to be resolved by legislation. They know that. This is all a smoke screen to put the entire population behind a firewall and control the narrative. It isn't even a very thick smoke screen.

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[–] pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This is so fucking stupid, you cannot stop VPNs, because things like ShadowSocks exist. When will they learn that the only way to stop VPNs is to disable the internet completely. As long as the internet exists, VPNs will too. Ask your friend Xi Jinping about that.

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[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

vpns being more regulated than guns aren't politicians awesome

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[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

children figuring out VPNs in a week while these bumfucks (state that they) didn't manage to understand it in the years they've been given just goes to show the many orders of magnitudes of difference in their intelligence

[–] AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 1 week ago (4 children)

No, this is intentional, the ultimate goal is a censored internet a la China. This was just the easiest gateway to doing that.

They are coming for VPNs next.

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[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

[Find in Page:] "Parent"=0 "Parents"=0 "Father"=0 "Mother"=0

It's their job to guard their kids from this content first and foremost. It's their job to put it into context for their children. But the article doesn't even mention that any of this is a humongous failing of parents.

Next this commissioner will want to outlaw computer mice because they're used to click pornographic content without verifying the age of the finger on the button. And roads because adult content actors use them to get to jobs.

The way forward is not banning or making worse all sorts of useful tools as collateral damage in this "think of the children" campaign. It is to get all adult content everywhere behind a barrier toddlers cannot break. We were fine with porn mags partially obscured on the top shelf at a news agent when that was a thing. And the salesperson making sure the customer wasn't a minor. The solution isn't closing all digital news agents.

And it's quite telling that the existence of VPNs didn't play a bigger part in this UK online safety initiative. Like it wasn't obvious that when the west entrance to porn central was closed off, people wouldn't naturally look for the ones in east, north, and south.

Edited typo

[–] DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Same religious garbage they've been trying to pull for the last 75+ years.

"Someone think of the CHILDREN!!!".

They scream, as they take away your rights to information, privacy, and anything else that they possibly can. They don't want you to have rights.

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[–] commit_aarson@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

This pisses me off so much. They don't give a single solitary fuck about kids OR their safety online. If they did, they wouldn't do it like this. If/when I have kids, they're not getting a smartphone until they turn 14. Until then, they'll be using a flip phone to contact me. THAT'S how you create a safe online environment for kids, not by banning VPNs which takes away privacy rights from everyone else. They just want to control us and take our right to privacy away but they don't realize that a strict government creates the best liars. If they ban VPNs, people WILL find a way to consume whatever content they desire regardless of what the government says. This can only end badly and make life hell for everyone below a certain tax bracket. Although, I guess that was their goal at the very beginning so I'm just being redundant.

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The theme throughout my entire life is more and more control. I can't even go from point A to point B in my city without being recorded every step of the way.

Starting to look like a Big Brother future.

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[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I have a great job lined up in the UK, I'm not sure I can take it up considering that is turning into this kind of shit hole.

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[–] Hauntology95@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

A friend recently told me that palantir has some sort of stake in this data management for the OSA? Is this true? I know they’ve had a deal with NHS England for a few years

If so, our world is taking a very scary turn

If anyone hasn’t I’d advise to do research on palantir, Peter thiel and Curtis Yarvin for a window into the psychology of the people pushing us down this road

Here’s a great video on the subject

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[–] uhdeuidheuidhed@thelemmy.club 18 points 1 week ago

Is it still legal for parents to cut up baby dicks there?

"Think of the children" is always bullshit.

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Talk more openly about how none of these people give a fuck about protecting kids, and just want to ~~make life shitty for everyone including them~~ grab power.

Point out bad faith and don't let it be about anything else, until it actually is. We can't get anywhere because nobody's actually dealing with the actual situation, which is people lying publicly.

Stop going along with that shit. Every time you talk about the fake issue, you're helping them by pretending they're telling the truth when they aren't.

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[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Even if kids see porn the lessons they learn are directly a result of how their parents approach the topic with them. Public education can't functionally provide useful sex ed due to politics.

I guess if you can blame your kids for breaking the law you never have to have "the talk" with them.

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