Not in the UK mysef but man have i see so much happen within a day then i have ever seen within a year.
Its like the whole internet landscape just changed overnight.

The instant discord asked me to verify my age I connected to France on the VPN and everything worked again.
I was able to circumvent the "robust" security measures of other sites in seconds by simply not appearing in the UK anymore.

This is largely what I wanted info on. The knee jerk is "lol, just use VPNS", but the knee jerk to THAT recently has been "lol no, the government will block the this time. Even though they couldn't the last time." So I've been hoping for some in-the-field reporting on how VPNs are holding up so far. Of course some people have reported trouble using UK BASED VPNs, but I think those people have porridge in their head rather than a functional brain. Of course there's nothing to stop parliament just outlawing paying for VPNs in the country, or collecting the bank of IPS the major ones use and firewalling those, but that would require competence in government, which...yeah.

Also I think this largely got through because no one can be bothered with politics. Now that it's actually in effect and no one can use fucking ANYTHING online where a tit might be, I think there may be a bit of a large backlash. Normies probably won't even think about the hideous privacy implications, they'll just go "wtf why do I have to do all this this is a huge hassle I just wanna jerk off?" The petition to parliament is already sky-high, and unlike worthless Change.org petitions, that's actually structurally a part of government and requires a formal response, debate, etc. They can't just send a form letter and tell people to fuck off.

Also the timing of the "Tea" app hack is dead on, because now people can gesture that way and go "See, SEE? You collect this shit, it will get hacked, it will get spread everywhere. 'Deleted after verification' is a fucking lie and you know it!"

But good luck over there. You'll need it.

I'm fully expecting this whole policy to implode very soon because there so many ways to get around it. Interestingly furaffinity always seems largely unaffected by many age verification methods such as the ones imposed by ISPs and phone contracts though that was during Dragoneer's time so I don't know if that'll change or not. I hope not.

For now VPNs are working well enough to get around the initial government bs though I firmly believe that if the governments of the world keep trying to police us we'll all just move over to the deep web and let the normies have their sterile gated community of an internet.

It was pretty funny to see Death Stranding's photomode obliterate the age check, even as they went on TV to brag about how it totally couldn't be beaten. Never change power-hungry-but-inept-bureaucrats.

Reaching my breaking point, that's how I'm doing.

I know using VPNs are an option, but I fear it's only a matter of time before that option is taken away too...

Technically there are ways, but I question whether the UK government is up to actually implementing them. China is, but they've got a lot of experience being an authoritarian regime. UK's kinda new to all this. They're not even running the verification themselves (lol). Also hopefully the backlash means a lot of backtracking happens before long out of fear of having political careers burned to the ground. "Nobody will come to the defense of porn!" Friend, brother in Christ, no one can use DISCORD without SHOWING A FUCKING ID. People are going to lose their shit. It's not just a porn ban, it's a "you can barely use internet services now" ban. And the financial implications of walling off the country from the rest of the internet are going to be catastrophic, in a way I don't think they understood. China can do that shit. The UK cannot.

My biggest concern right now is FurAffinity getting geolocked. Twitter and Bluesky have too many UK users for them to do that so I can at least still check up on things there, but this is my main hub for a lot of stuff, and I'm worried I'm just never going to be able to access it at some point in the future.

I would get set up with a non-uk VPN regardless, if you can afford it. Yes, they're all backdoored by 5-eyes, but if all you wanna do is look at legal porn, pirate stuff and have access to ALL the internet they're basically essential at this point, just like an adblocker is.

See? SEE? I tried to warn you. You jinxed it with the whole 'something else crazy happens' comment in the last post. LOL
I didn't realize anything else was amiss until I saw this post. What exactly is going on over there in the motherland?

Ha, I thought of your comment while I was posting this. But there's no saving this month anyway Khevor, it's burning regardless.

All my twitter bookmarks are gone so I’m doing… not good

I've heard just changing your location to another country is enough to placate Twitter/x (even though your registered phone obviously doesn't change). Can confirm?

Nope, told it I live in Paris France and there’s zero change

I've been told that everywhere in the EU has the same thing happening, so if you change it to a non-EU country it should work as long as the country doesn't also block anything on X.

Can't personally verify because I don't have an account, sorry if this is wrong.

Nothing seems to work, tried France, Spain, South Korea and even Russia. Seems the only way past this is a VPN which I’m almost certain will be made illegal sometime soon so I guess I have to start using my imagination haha

Sorry to hear that...

Someone told me that they were able to get around it that way, but I guess they were wrong or mistaken.

I reather fight for my freedom and get allies than use VPN. I even made a journal to help get all the sign ins as possible and to get the world to see whats going on

Hey, two things can be done at the same time. But yes, the ideal outcome is that this (and many other authoritarian moves in the UK) get rolled back. Ofcom in general should not exist in a modern, free country, and it's an abomination that it has, and continues to.

There’s a bill in US Congress now, they’re trying to copy and follow UK’s example of censorship. It’s House Bill 1748

Saw, but I'm not especially worries. Systems made to estimate bill feasibility give it a fairly low chance of passing.

That’s good to hear

So a fun thing I learned recently, the US does have a *similar* bill circulating. It hasn't passed yet, but it is known as the Kids Online Safety act. It previously passed the Senate but then died in the House, but the bill has been reintroduced again this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_.....ine_Safety_Act

Not sure if it is the same thing, but it is a similar bill.

I want to stress again...Yes, it's good to keep an eye on this, but I think a lot of the stuff that's being brought up now is people being worked up, and news/drama channels digging for anything they can use for their next video on this fiasco. For people not familiar with congress, probably...5% of proposed bills? Something like that, ever even get close to becoming law. There are many, MANY wacky bills proposed every session, to posture or so congresspeople can look like they're doing something. Thus, it's important whenever a new one surfaces to do some digging and see what estimated chances a given bill has of getting anywhere. KOSA in particular has very poor chances by most estimates. Which is great!

This is not to say people shouldn't know, they absolutely should. There is DEFINITELY an element that wants to enact this in the US, and the political winds are always shifting. But at the same time, energy and time is limited. It's important to save resources for the real threats, or at least focus on them.

Found it: One of the tools I've been using for this is GovTrack. Gives you a lot of info on a given bill, including its guestimation of its chances. For example: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr987. Or, more directly: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/s1748. Not perfect, but helps put things in a ballpark context.

*nods* I was mostly sharing it to share. I actually when I first read about it believe it was dead dead, but the fact it has been reintroduced this congressional session and has passed the Senate before leaves it as something more to watch and monitor, even if it isn't quite the same (though with those in charge right now that might not matter given what is in the legislation)