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OpenRightsGroup on TikTok: “These Are My Private Parts, Protect Your Digital Bits!”
This sound will become a classic for privacy and security people:
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Britain’s online safety law is running amok | The Washington Post
Toby Young speaks to the USA: Ironically, our best hope might be the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance has expressed misgivings about the erosion of free speech in Britain, lately his vacation destination. Let’s hope Starmer is listening, not least because any expansion of Ofcom’s powers enabling it to fine U.S. tech companies for
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Charlie Hebdo covers the Online Safety Act | …there is a paywall but this is above the fold, via translation:
Internet Censorship: “The instrumentalization of children’s rights has always served interests that go beyond the simple protection of minors.” https://charliehebdo.fr/2025/08/societe/tech/censure-dinternet-linstrumentalisation-du-droit-des-enfants-a-toujours-servi-des-interets-qui-depassaient-la-simple-protection-des-mineurs/ To be found in edition 1725 of August 13, 2025Published on August 13, 2025 at 3:45 p.m.Modified on August 13, 2025 at 3:45 p.m. In the United Kingdom, the debate is raging following the introduction
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Please: at what point does it cease to be “stumbling across porn” for a teen (or indeed anyone) to install & enable a VPN and type “PORN” into a search query or URL?
The threat model which drove the online safety act was quite clear, and some of the minds behind it have already declared victory – so why is anyone trying to extend it further? Perhaps the regulator can explain at what point “parenting” is meant to come back into play?
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Amazing: it turns out that some UK schools mandate the use of VPNs by their students in order to put student traffic through a centralised filter; others ban them entirely
https://www.reddit.com/r/BritishSuccess/s/kzY7P0SPSv And:
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Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told | BBC News
We need to start making the point that secure, anonymous communication is not the problem. The problem is parenting. Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: “Of course, we need age verification on VPNs – it’s absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that’s one of my major recommendations.” She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs “to
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![Afterthought re: Beeban Kidron’s “…It’s really an important part of childhood to transgress … [Using a VPN] is like a child climbing out the window at night when you’ve grounded them”](https://alecmuffett.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-18-at-13.23.51.png.pad_.1200x628.png)
Afterthought re: Beeban Kidron’s “…It’s really an important part of childhood to transgress … [Using a VPN] is like a child climbing out the window at night when you’ve grounded them”
I’ve written at length re: the above quote, but on a personal note: Kidron’s mental model appears to come unreconstructed and straight out of Boomer authoritarian parenting of the 1970s-2000s. From 2017 to 2023 she says: “a child is a child until they reach maturity, not until the moment they reach for their smartphone” and
age verification beeban kidron censorship online safety online safety act surveillance teenagers VPNFediverse reactions
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Ban-Happy Kid-Ban Baroness Beeban Kidron thanks self & peers, stabs Ofcom, declares BOTH “mission accomplished!” AND “…kids *should* rebel, at least we’ve taught them to use VPNs…”
…as if they didn’t already know how to use VPNs. Fucking something over and then running away whilst blaming the middlemen you appointed is *not* considered success, unless you’re a politician. Compare and contrast the following quotes: “No one a year ago believed that you could redesign the digital world so it didn’t splurge self-harm,
age verification beeban kidron censorship feed ofcom online safety online safety act privacy surveillance VPNFediverse reactions
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Someone asked me to describe the circumstances which brought about the Online Safety Act
About a decade ago a bunch of porn company executives who want to make additional advertising streams of revenue, found common cause with evangelical anti-porn Christians and prescriptive post-second-wave radical feminists, inflated as a group by a cohort of ageing boomers who are scared of technological change and some reflexively anti-capitalist (and possibly anti-semitic) middle
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“With only 4 votes against, the continued opposition to the Online Safety Act is now overwhelmingly a Young Liberals policy”
It’s a start; check out other retweets on that account for commentary.
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Dicing an Onion, the Mathematically Optimal Way
When making 10 cuts into a 10-layer onion, the smallest standard deviation (29.5%) occurs when making radial cuts aimed 96% of the onion’s radius below the cutting surface! https://pudding.cool/2025/08/onions/
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