Websites often use click-based self-identification to verify adults, allowing humans, children, animals, or bots to gain access simply by selecting a button. Click-only verification is trivial to bypass and fails to prevent minors from reaching age-inappropriate content. The UK's Online Safety Act introduces high-profile measures that remain vulnerable to simple circumvention and may therefore produce little practical protection. Political dramatization and moral policing accompany the law, including inflammatory accusations against opponents. Authoritarian enforcement risks chilling artistic freedom, disrupting businesses, harming society, and creating potential national security vulnerabilities.
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. 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.
Collection
[
|
...
]