Digital Identification

[Dirty Duck]

So it was just announced that in the UK children under 16 will be banned from social media. This includes TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. This means that to access these services we in the UK will have to upload our identification to prove we are over 16. Last year the government did something similar with pornographic websites, requiring anyone in the UK to upload their ID to spankbang. The whole thing is very clearly just a slow rollout of making digital identification all but compulsory, thinly veiled as an attempt to protect kids. Regardless of what you think about kid's social media usage this has to be one of the most totalitarian moves the UK government has made in our lifetime (I but "one of" in brackets as it is certainly not the only one of late). Whether these sites will implement such measures like the government requests or just flat-out ban traffic from the country like imgur did remains to be seen.

They are also trying to force phone companies to implement the ability to scan every photo, video, and message on our phones without us having any control over it. What can we even do about that? Do we still have any rights as citizens because this certainly just feels like a wheel they are determined to keep spinning.

[Wayno]

Andy Burnham opposes the Digital ID nonsense. When he ousts Starmer before Christmas (winning in Makerfield dependent, obviously) it'll be dead in the water. Hopefully he has the same attitude towards the phone scanning "idea."

[Aragorn]

UK is too sizable of a market to just kill traffic from. Platforms will comply and most UK folks will have to use VPNs. What a great time to be a Nord VPN shareholder!

[Jassassino]

UK is too sizable of a market to just kill traffic from. Platforms will comply and most UK folks will have to use VPNs. What a great time to be a Nord VPN shareholder!

Honestly if it had public trading I'd buy £5k worth of those shares in a heartbeat lol.

I wouldn't be surprised if this never actually happens though. Social Media already lobbies every Government enough to prevent any real action on bots/election influencing, this will probably be stopped at the gate and as Wayno noted, Burnham opposes it, so even if it goes through, he'll take a note from the Trump playbook with TikTok and repeal it and secure almost an entire generations vote for the next GE.

Digital ID though? Yeah fuck that. Also weasels out all of those nasty Tory opinions of coworkers whenever this shit comes up with the "Oh I have nothing to hide" argument.

[Wayno]

Burnham won, to no one's surprise. Toodles, Keir.