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VPN companies reporting spikes in UK signups, part 1/n
I have the feeling there will be a lot of this over the next few days:
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Probably the funniest age verification meme ever…
“UK users when Reddit asks them what their location is today.” (sound on)
Fediverse reactions
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Age Verification chills key political speech & satire; this will be interesting when the UK voting age drops to 16
Soon there will be key election communications and discussion which part of the electorate cannot access because (e.g.) they exist in age-gated (but not necessarily pornographic) NSFW Reddit groups and similar. Age verification & gatekeeping is being done to audiences, not content, so the UK Government has just made people old enough to vote but
Fediverse reactions
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Reddit appears to be mildly struggling with a sudden influx of traffic over Tor; hopefully they will make some tweaks to help it real soon now
See the image; similar overloading also seems to be affecting the Reddit Onion site. I can’t think why it’s happening, but I’m sure they will sort it out soon. Vulnerable people are being prevented from accessing any content which is labelled as NSFW, including: alcoholism recovery, bulimia, domestic violence discussions… Oh, and porn.
Fediverse reactions
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Perhaps someone can ask #Ofcom about children not “stumbling” but bodily throwing themselves into adult material online?
This tactic will alienate our children, make them harder to guide, not be effective, and they will still not receive necessary education in consent: UK porn age verification stop children seeing adult content? | BBC News Ofcom, which estimates about 14 million people watch online pornography in the UK, says tougher age checks will make
Fediverse reactions
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Anyone offering opinions on whether AI reconstruction of text from a bunch of statistical weights is a violation of copyright, should first write an essay explaining their thinking in the context of the Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance affair
This has all been argued before in different contexts with different facts, but it has all been argued before: “Will Marty Abegg Ever Find a Job?” | The BAS Library Each word in the fragments had its own three-by-five card, noting where it appeared and what the adjacent words were. But the concordance was available
Fediverse reactions
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Hacker Plants Computer ‘Wiping’ Commands in Amazon’s AI Coding Agent
WOW, $TOOLCHAIN VULNERABLE TO $TROJAN_HORSE WHO EVER WOULD HAVE EXPECTED THIS? https://www.404media.co/hacker-plants-computer-wiping-commands-in-amazons-ai-coding-agent/
Fediverse reactions
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“…the president is frustrated with his staff’s inability to tamp down conspiracy theories they once spread…” | Perhaps it wasn’t wise to build a political base of fearful, dogmatic, uncritical dependant conformists to whom you lie about everything
‘POTUS is clearly furious’: White House is frustrated by all-consuming Epstein coverage – POLITICO https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/23/potus-is-clearly-furious-white-house-is-frustrated-by-all-consuming-epstein-coverage-00469547
Fediverse reactions
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[ai-control] prevent robots.txt entries from becoming law | Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, weighs in re: legally enforceable statements in robots.txt
Having anything in robots.txt reflected in law is such a bad idea, that I suggest we, the Internet standards community, do our best to make it not happen. (I do understand the temptation to think we should make law, but others might disagree 🙂 ) So let’s not add any AI features into this standard.
Fediverse reactions
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If HMG & NCSC want “to make the UK the safest place to live and work online” perhaps they can drop age verification and instead teach companies to back up their own data?
Weak password allowed hackers to sink a 158-year-old company | BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gx28815wo
Fediverse reactions
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Reality bites the UK government’s push to undermine end-to-end encryption | Element
The UK government’s bruising Apple encounter has, inadvertently, underlined the global support for end-to-end encryption in democratic countries. It makes it quite clear that the US – home to the majority of the world’s tech firms – supports end-to-end encryption unequivocally, and will protect its US headquartered firms from other governments’ attempts to undermine encryption.
Fediverse reactions
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UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US | Ars Technica
Never forget: parts of the NSA/FBI want this too, but not overtly. Nonetheless this is to be welcomed: [UK Gov’t] is seeking a way out of a clash with the Trump administration over the UK’s demand that Apple provide it with access to secure customer data, two senior British officials have told the Financial Times.
Fediverse reactions