Parental controls: exist
Law makers: But what if we made people submit really sensitive information instead of requiring websites to identify themselves as adult for the purpose of content filters?
What, parents actually parenting and monitoring what their children do? Talking with them about being online?
Granted I say this sarcastically and then mom and dad both fall for AI garbage on Facebook yet again so maybe I should rethink that they are even capable of having a discussion on critical thinking
The irony being this sort of thing will make people more used to sharing very sensitive information online and more likely to fall for phishing attempts. Like the parents who couldn’t figure out parental controls in the first place probably are.
The problem is that once it will be normal to request IDs for porn, the same will be extended to everything else with excuses like “let’s do it for the kids” or “if you don’t have anything to hide…”.
VPNs… yeah sure, until there will be a crackdown on those too.
Good luck. Even China isn’t able to fully crack down on VPNs or Tor.
Just them trying hurts a ton tho.
China doesn’t want to
Just like the US gov not catching drug lords when they do stupid stuff
it kinda confuses me that china couldn’t restrict VPN and Tor if it wanted to. i rather suspect they turn a blind eye, for some reason.
IIRC it’s mainly that many corporations depend on VPNs for security - blanket banning would make it pretty hard for multinationals to work in china
Remote work/administration too. I work on servers one of which is behind the chinese firewall, via ssh. ssh can carry socks natively, I could build a crude throttled but working vpn in seconds.
China is also slowing transfers in general, I guess to push domestic providers and servers. Even with that if they don’t want to sever all economic and scientific connections it will remain possible, though cumbersome to most.
They don’t turn a blind eye. It’s just that the VPN’s that work through China’s firewall do so over ports that the entire internet uses, like 443 (https). They could filter everything, but it’d be a loooot more resource intensive to filter all internet traffic by destination/content instead of only doing that with extra ports that extra services like VPNs normally use.
… and as others have pointed out, there ARE valid reasons to allow some VPNs. Forcing them to jump through hoops to function is no skin off their back, while properly filtering all traffic would be disasterous for them beyond the expense.
My VPN is in Switzerland, they have strong protective laws, for now.
Guess we’ll all have to download and prepare to share!?!
I hope it stays private, I read an article similar to this one that I hope doesn’t go through.
To save costs on VPN services, Rsync the wank bank for all your mates to share. This month it’s Daves turn so expect lots of scat but I did put in a request for incest too.
Alabama or West Virginia?
What’s the difference between Alabama style and West Virginia style incest?
Pretty much just the side dishes: Alabama dunks it in sweet‑tea BBQ sauce while hollering “Roll Tide,” West Virginia soaks it in moonshine, hands you a pepperoni roll, and cranks “Country Roads” on repeat. Same brochure; just different tailgate menus.
Is there a joke I’m missing?
I think the UK recently enacted a law requiring photo ID for accessing porn sites. A VPN can get around this.
“Footy”?
Short for football
Which is long for soccer.
Footy?
Football.
Fussy
What are you, German?
It’s the category that some will search once they buy VPN access
Insert meme of calendar guy turning 2020 page to 1984.
I’m all for VPN services, but I seem to recall some sketchy things about Proton in particular - anyone have any alternatives they like?
Mullvad
mullvad is good for most casual users but if you want to do anything technical i’d steer clear.
you can’t forward the ports anymore in mullvad. don’t get me wrong, they did it as a measure to reduce the volume of CSAM and other trauma-inducing imagery their administrators had to deal with and i totally respect that reasoning. people get legitimate PTSD moderating and administrating certain platforms/services.
just a shame torrenting gets made harder for everyone because of a handful of despicable individuals.
The reason they disabled this was it was a possible privacy leak. This means if you are using a VPN that enables port forwarding, you might be at risk.
As a new user of proton… Id like to hear what you think is sketchy. I haven’t heard anything negative.
Their CTO made Twitter posts praising Trump for some of his appointments
Thanks for replying. What do you use instead?
FYI it’s not like he’s pro-MAGA or anything. He’s a known liberal supporter in fact. All he did was tweet that Gail Slater was a good nomination. Personally, I think it’s a good thing to praise one’s political enemies on the rare occasion they do something good. Here’s an article with a deeper look.
Well, thanks for the context. I still hate the tweet. The tweet itself didn’t promote a specific nom – it promoted Republicans
Okay, thanks for the context. I caught the initial blowup when I was looking at VPN options originally, but never heard any of the follow-up.
I’m going to switch to Mullvad. Just need to sit down and do it. Maybe this weekend.
And sorry, it was the CEO, not CTO. Here’s a source
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
Here’s what I was remembering; the Proton CEO had praise for some of the new Trump admin’s anti-trust statements last January, and seemed to support them more generally.
What ended up happening with that? It looked like he tried to walk it back, and maybe didn’t intend for that to use the official Proton account?
Listen man. There are no non sketchy VPN there never has been there never ever will be. Period. All you can do is the least worst one and that is proton today. Might be someone else tomorrow. If anyone tries to tell you anything different they are a liar or ignorant.
Saw a comment saying the ID process accepts any ol’ ID sample pic you find from a quick image search online.
1 million McLovins beating their meat while the government watches from the cuck chair.
Oh yeah I should try that. Wanted to try an AI image for the selfie and discord failed to load the service to verify age. Lost interest at that point.
More interested in things that blocked the UK than things that demand ID tbh.
Some ask you to move your eyes or turn your head so a blender model is better for that
For most of world history UK has kind of been among the worst countries in the world. They were committing atrocities in the name of preserving religious ideals before nazis were even a thing. Their leadership has been starving their citizens while the monarchy lives with lavish excess since before north korea ever existed. Committing war crimes used to be as commonplace back in the day as afternoon tea.
How the UK somehow fell into public favor online seems like an anomaly to me. They got attacked during WW2 and then weren’t communists during the cold war. Big woop-de-doo. People usually speak highly of UK online but any time they’re in the news it’s because they’re doing something truly awful (recently moving towards establishing a regime of online censorship on par with that of China’s).
I am shocked whenever I see people reacting to something shitty the UK is doing like its some kind of unprecedented unexpected event. They’ve been doing this type of shit for THE LAST THOUSAND YEARS. All I’m saying is they deserve A LOT more hate than they currently get.
while all fair criticisms, name a country that hasn’t? it’s pretty much just the history of people.
and then weren’t communists during the cold war
Neither was Russia /hottake
What about all the footy fetishists? 😌
The punchline is porn.
But VPN to the UK is one of the best ways to watch football.
