Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
“Safety” meanwhile these same mp’s can’t budget can’t run critical public services like bloody hospitals.
But don’t worry, your thoughts and activity are policed.
Democratic failure to prioritise and run a country at its finest on display for the world to see. The waste is astounding.
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(NOTE: Any links to politician tweets in this comment are from Nitter mirrors, not direct links to Elon Musk’s nazi bar.)
The Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, pretty much called Nigel Farage a paedophile in a news network interview earlier today because he opposed the Online Safety Act, by saying he’s on the side of sex offenders like Jimmy Savile.
He then went to Twitter and doubled-down on this stance:
If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that.
This of course generated a lot of fury among the site’s users.
For context, the Online Safety Act has been used to censor and age-gate anything and everything deemed “illegal content” under Ofcom guidelines. Any social media platforms must comply, else risk getting fined up to 10% of your annual global revenue. This is so broadly worded that it includes anything related to illegal immigration and people-smuggling (literally quoted in the GOV.UK page I linked.)
Twitter had genuinely been forced to censor all coverage around anti-asylum seeker protests behind age verification requirements, which has riled up a lot of right-wing politicians here. The reason for these protests is that the previous (Conservative) government had been paying exorbitant amounts of money to house asylum seekers in hotels, effectively lining the pockets of hotel chain executives - all while we deal with a massive housing and cost of living crisis.
This was meant to be a measure to give asylum seekers temporary accommodation which was put in place at the start of COVID, but has been government policy since 2020 with no end in sight.
Labour have also done jack-shit to resolve our skyrocketed (legal) immigration levels since they got into power, except for scrapping the Rwanda Deal which would have deported any illegal migrants to a third country for processing (which as the name obviously suggests, is the East African state of Rwanda.)
Zia Yusuf (head of Reform’s DOGE division, yes they’re ripping off Trump and Elon Musk) had this to say about the OSA on Twitter:
Britain is now a country which you can enter illegally without ID, but need photo ID to watch a protest against people entering without ID.
Let that sink in.
Labour have fucked up so catastrophically hard with how they’ve handled this legislation, that they’ve straight-up generated bipartisan sympathy for the leaders of a right-wing populist party - who are the only political force that have vowed to repeal the legislation because it is being used for mass surveillance and censorship.
Also, if you’re thinking of voting Reform UK in 2029 (and it has honestly crossed my mind because age verification checks are a major sticking point for me), then you should take the pledges from Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf with a grain of salt. Richard Tice (the party’s deputy leader) openly tweeted support for pushing through mandatory ID checks on social media four years ago.
If Labour don’t get rid of Keir Starmer, do a full cabinet reshuffle and reverse course, we are going to see a Reform landslide in the next election…
i don’t trust a hair on Farage’s little head lol
Banning VPNs is quite a serious move.
“We will force you to do what we want”, democracy in action
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
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So, nothing will ever meaningfully improve?
Just adopt a CCP style social credit system already. Why all of this pussyfooting around being a totalitarian, censorship focused, surveillance state? Just do it. Give the good people of UK a solid reason to be a little bit more French again.
There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit “score” based on individuals’ behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[4][5][6] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.
What about all the people blocked from air travel due to low Social Credit? Are you saying that never happened?
People can be banned from airlines but they get banned for the same reasons they do in the US, like getting drunk on the plane and punching someone. Or like how the US bans people who owe child support from getting a passport, judges in China are allowed to ban people with unpaid child support or big enough unpaid fines from state owned airlines until they pay.
As an American, it always made me laugh when we made fun of China’s “Social Credit Score” when we literally have one already that determines whether we can buy houses/cars/etc lol
This is, if true and accurate, delightful news! And has improved an otherwise troublesome day.
labour really doesn’t want people to access lgbtq safe spaces and resources huh?
Come on UK, just skip all the boring parts and make unremovable collars for everyone fitted with GPS, cameras and miniature bombs that can be remotely detonated. After all, that’s the only way to make sure nobody is doing bad, very bad illegal stuff and to PROTECT THE CHILDREN, isn’t it? Fucking hell, these fucks really are trying to create a bloody dystopia…
They think 1984 is a manual.
Oh, wait, no, that was about the evil communists.
for those in the UK and/or Other places in Europe just know it’s so painfully easy to either set up your own VPN or just use something like Mullvad.
I set up my own VPN this morning for the first time on my server and it took less than 10minutes. plenty of guides online on how to do it.
How is this even feasible? People need them for work, business, school etc. The UK is going nuts with the attempts to regulate the internet.
The Collective Shout Out must feel envious of such power… Think about all what they could ban, you know, for you and your children protection of course.
Labour was supposed to destroy the Tories, not join them!
Labour has already spoken out and said they will make no attempts to ban VPNs.
Funny how its always so important to ban useful and empowering things for citizens in the name of safety but someone we can’t ban business practices that cause mass extinctions, change the climate, impoverish the working class or kill enough of us to only be seen as a statistic instead of people. If they actually cared about safety, they would be banning the things that cause mass suffering and death, not VPNs. We should be opposed to these kinds of bans on the principle that it further disempowered us so we are less able to deal with the threats of all the mass suffering and death that they refuse to keep us safe from.
The UK is the testing grounds. After they figure it out, they’ll be rolling it out everywhere else.
I don’t think it’s that centralized. Just some elite somewhere pushes through what elites everywhere would want, and they try to do the same around it.
Like spread of a disease.
I think the way to fight it is similar. Unions, customer associations, parties (not for election, but for having as many people as possible for mutual aid and actions ; it might even be counterproductive to get into government, since that breeds expectations which are not delivered upon, which hurts the party ; better to do volunteer projects without using state power as much as possible).
Yeah, I don’t think it is, but it’s the end result that concerns me.
