The system of self-identification for adult verification accepts a single click as proof of competence, making it patently ludicrous. Any user—human, child, dog, or bot—can claim adulthood and gain access to restricted content. The UK's Online Safety Act proposes measures that will not remedy verification weaknesses and may exacerbate problems. The Act's rollout involved melodrama and politically charged accusations. Practical bypasses, including not needing a VPN, render enforcement ineffective at protecting children. Moral policing by authoritarian politicians risks chilling artistic freedom and producing harmful side-effects for society, business, and national security.
Yet, here's the shocker: you don't even need a VPN to override UK's adult verification. For all practical purposes, this system, unveiled with huge public fanfare, is completely useless from stopping children from getting access to age-inappropriate content. Worse, moral policing by bumbling, authoritarian politicians threatens to chill artistic freedom and have some nasty side-effects for society, business, and scarily, national security.
On the face of it, the system of self-identification for adult verification on websites is patently ludicrous. It doesn't matter if you are human, child, dog or bot - a click is accepted as proof of competence. However, bad as this system is, attempts such as the UK's Online Safety Act threatens to make the situation much worse.
The Act was unveiled with huge melodrama, including an apology to generations of children for failing to protect them and accusations by government ministers that anyone opposed to the Act was on the side of people like the notorious paedophile, Jimmy Saville.
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