The “won’t somebody please think of the children” rhetorical tactic is always just a pretext for authoritarianism, mass surveillance and data privacy intrusion. Always. It’s the perfect motte-and-bailey: when you attack the actual motives, the motte becomes, “So you don’t care about children?”
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
1036 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
73193 readers
5496 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
UK is full blown authoritarian now. They have been arresting journalists who are covering the genocide in Gaza and designated a direct action protest group as a terrorist organisation.
load more comments
(8 replies)
This is a combination of terrible legislation in the UK meets awful social media site.
The Online Safety Act is an abomination, compromising the privacy and freedom of the vast majority of the UK in the name of "protecting children".
I'm of the view parents are responsible for protecting their children. I know it's hard but the Online Safety Act is not a solution.
All it will.do is compromise the privacy and security of law abiding adults while kids will still access porn and all the other really bad stuff on the Internet will actually be unaffected. The dark illegal shit on the Internet is not happening on Pornhub or Reddit.
The UK is gradually sliding further and further into censorship, and authoritarianism and all the in the name of do gooders. It's scary to watch.
The online safety act isn't actually about protecting children. That's a smoke screen for a surveillance bill. They want to eliminate anonymity online.
The solution to all of this “think of the children” stuff is that devices owned/used by children should have to be registered as a child’s device, which would enable certain content blockers.
Forcing adults to verify their identity, rather than simply activating some broad based restrictions on devices being purchased for child use, is a waste of time. Kids will still find workarounds. Adult privacy will be compromised.
Its also an easily enforceable policy to require registration of children’s devices. You can hold the parents to compliance. You can hold the carriers to compliance. Its truly the simplest way to keep kids from accessing porn without having to mess with adult use of the internet whatsoever
load more comments
(18 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Next in the news: "500k Usernames, Passwords and biometric data leaked in the latest hack"
So...coming soon: an app that can match up images of friends or colleagues with a summary of their pornography preferences.
This could at least liven up some boring meetings or dull parties...
load more comments
(2 replies)
Yeah, I will definitely trust an internet stranger with my face so they can verify that I'm not underage to access content which could, in case of being leaked, damage my reputation or even destroy my life.
DEFINITELY
Yeah, fuck all that.
Guess we're transitioning into a VPN only future.
We have the opportunity to head into a utopic or dystopic future and we're absolutely choosing the dystopic one.
A VPN future? Haha. Not if they don't want to. There are many ways to prevent VPN from operating when you're a government.
You can just plain ban encryption, which sounds really crazy, but yeah, they're trying to.
You can just say "it's illegal to use a VPN". It'll technically still work, but if there's a trace of trafic from your house to a known VPN endpoint, you're it! Great!
They can force custom proprietary spying software on your devices. Sounds equally crazy as the thing above, right? But rest assured they're ALSO trying to do that. Multiple times, even. And in some places… they did. Of course, nothing forces you to have such software on your device. Especially if your devices are not supported; it also turns into a "you have to buy this or that big name device, everything else's de-facto illegal! Fuck you, we're the government!". And if you get caught for whatever, and your phone, PC, or anything isn't "compliant"? Bam. Guilty.
Plenty of option. All of them completely stupid and would weaken both privacy, individuals, and governments at large. It never stopped legislation from being pushed forward.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Well, I guess i am going to be regularly updating the metadata on my most recent selfie.
Oh dear. What a dreadful business.
Anyway, this is mine.
If the UK is going to require adult verification it should be built into your internet contract. Yeah, I'm an adult. I'm paying my bills, of course I'm a fucking adult. I over pay for this garbage internet.
Uploading a selfie? The ai is going to determine if you're over 18? Can the ai determine if the selfie is also ai?
Yeah, it's some serious BS. They are forcing you to hand over and trust Reddit with your personal information, yet I wouldn't trust them if my life depended on it.
At the very least, someone in charge of this legisltion should learn OAuth2 and force the sites they want to comply by only let those OAuth2 accounts access their adult content. If I was in the UK, I'd just pay for a VPN over giving my photo to Reddit. That site is a lobby brigade hellhole whose "we know your dark secrets, we know everything" owner is also probably trading your account details on the side.
load more comments
(17 replies)
This whole thing is a security disaster waiting to happen.
What's to stop uploading a random picture of a person? Or even an AI generated person? I get what they're trying to do, but seems like legislative theater more than anything.
I've once attempted to open a bank account where they wanted video proof, and expected me to say a randomly assigned phrase, to solve the issue you mention.
I didn't do it. Fucking KYC is BS.
Banks are highly regulated so it is not surprising that they would be strict in this, reddit on the other hand has no business doing it.
has no business doing it.
Reddit is doing this as a response to regulation as well (1). Governments all around europe (2) are turning communications into a highly regulated environment ("for the children"), because they're afraid of people communicating and having thoughts. UK is just one of the early adaptors.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
u/spez was the lead moderator of r/jailbait, and when he was caught, he got rid of mod transparency. Ghilisaine Maxwell was likely a l lead moderator of news Reddits as well (u/MaxwellHill). Reddit has always been compromised.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Lmao when the "anonymous" online forum requires de-anonymizing, I want to hope everyone leaves
load more comments
(3 replies)
To follow compliance with the Know Your Customer Pornographic Materials Act, please use the following guidelines for your photograph:
-
The picture must be clear, at least 720x480p.
-
The picture must include your entire body, including your head and toes. Portrait only. *This helps us identify you better.
-
Please remove any articles of clothing, your body must be unimpeded by any obstruction. *Burqas and other headscarves must be removed, no exceptions.
-
If you were assigned female at birth, you will be required to rotate 180 degrees and upload another portrait photograph of your back. *Please use only your valid binary gender at birth, either male or female.
-
Further requests for identification photos are at our discretion, our board has full authority. You may be required to upload alternative photos, such as positions bending over to help us identify your genitalia to ensure it matches your birth gender.
Thank you for using Persona. For any questions or complaints, please direct them to: BigDaddyGuns6969@aol.com. Please allow up to 14 days for an initial response, and 88 hours for subsequent replies.
load more comments
(2 replies)
There's a bunch of AI face generating pictures. I wonder if you can just use those. Or maybe this is just to create a new law to arrest people of uploading fake pictures...
load more comments
(9 replies)
Just upload a picture of any politician who voted for this.
We thought the same thing about Netflix with the sharing password bans. Yet they retained more profit than ever the next year.
Who's to say if this is what will make Reddit end, or did they actually just got more successful after the end of 3rd party apps compared to the declaration of so many users back then?
Digital personal verification is just going to become a fact of life in the future for everyone born after about 2012. They will use online ID cards, biometrics, location metadata that is constantly uploaded by our devices, maybe even implanted RFID encrypted chips for account verification. Passwords are becoming outdated and outmoded for security as we speak here. 2FA is the minimum security for online today but that may soon become outmoded as well.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Fuck Reddit fuck spez
Keeping the age verifier seperate from the content host is good. Destroying the files used for verification is good. On paper it's not too a bad system for age verification, but it really hinges on if you can trust them. Given the track record of basically almost every company and government ever...
load more comments
(3 replies)
This is the facebook "show a video of your face" bs all over again. glad i don't have an account on either site bc not only is it a huge privacy concern, you know they store all that data and are going to sell it and/or use it to train AI models
Sending a dick pick. Now it's whatever is in front of these to make a though decision.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Just post on them. Two birds with one stone.
But if you do comply, double down by ringing Kier Starmer up and letting him (and your local MP) know what you've been wanking off to, since he's so fucking interested. He could have blocked this, but he let it run because he also agrees with it.
I wonder if there's a browser addon to make an itemised list of all the videos and camgirls and then I can send it to him on a regular basis. It should log when you close the browser window so it knows when you've "finished" so to speak. Maybe I could highlight those videos in bold for him, so he can skip right to the good ones.
load more comments
(3 replies)