If there had been a free, public and verifiable Age/ID service, that wasn't tied to advertising, then I might be more willing to hand over my ID. But because the VC whispered "freemarket" in the ears of the prick who designed this, we are stuck with the worst of all worlds. A non-secure way to prove ID, and a non-acceptable way to shield those that don't or cant consent, from harm.

Originally IKEv2 and more recently WireGuard, configured like so:

https://github.com/jawj/IKEv2-setup

https://github.com/jawj/wireguard-setup

It wasn't an unintended consequence.

The goal of the legislation was to "stop children from accessing age inappropriate content" on the internet.

Ahead of the legislation it was known that there would be a significant proportion of individuals who would switch to using VPN's because without platform based verification it would be a pita for users (more logins, random age verification services, and some sites just deciding to block).

However, VPN's, come with their own minimum age 18 T&C's, as do the means of payment for those services (credit and debit).

So from the pov of "stop children from accessing age inappropriate content" similar result

Not perfect, but empirically this seems to be working well enough e.g. "New data shows no rise in children’s VPN use after the introduction of online age checks" (https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/research/data-shows-no-r...), i.e. the VPN traffic is largely adults.

As to other unintended consequences, such as making it more difficult for the authorities to snoop on their citizens, I doubt this effectively makes any difference whatsoever.

But what I'd really love (startup idea!?) is an app that let's you map websites to countries and it handles tunnelling that domain's traffic through the selected country's VPN.

For example, I'd like to view Reddit, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram and social media apps from a US IP (to avoid Australia's "age verification"), dailymail.co.uk from a UK IP (since it's blocked in Thailand), predication markets from a country that allows them, Imgur from a country that allows it, Spotify from any country so long as it's fixed (to avoid it randomly stopping mid workout with a 'your country has changed' notification).

Until something automated like this exists the current best solution is a VPN and manually switching countries when something you want isn't available from the current country, which isn't great UX.

For your own personal sake, you may be selfishly wishing it’s as few people as possible. Eventually they’ll outlaw VPNs too and by then you’ll have little recourse. You can’t hide behind them forever, deeper change is needed.

Localization was supposed to be a browser thing, using headers like Accept-Language, but alas.

Given the rate at which those sites are hacked, that's basically the following, simple procedure:

Step 1: Share your identifying information with the entire Internet.

> Proton VPN, an app offered by Swiss privacy tech firm Proton, told the BBC it had seen a 1800% spike in UK daily sign-ups over the weekend after age check rules took effect on Friday.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn72ydj70g5o

I caved, bought a 3 year PIA plan, had my router configured within about 2 minutes (actually impressed how straightforward Unifi made it) and now my browsing experience is fixed.

Lots of people using Brave's Tor or Opera's VPN in their browsers, and free VPNs like Proton (which seems like a negative security outcome for the country to me).

I'd have thought the intel agencies would be pissed at all that data going dark, but haven't heard a peep in the media.

I notice that some tech companies claim they are "trusted" or have "trusted third parties", I don't trust them at all, I'm not sure why they think I do.

For now, I used my Hetzner server via Tailscale running fast-socks5 [1] using FoxyProxy [2] (for Mozilla Firefox) which allows me to select a list of domains to re-direct through the socks proxy. I also have Tor installed which is useful when roaming.

[1] https://github.com/dizda/fast-socks5 [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/foxyproxy-sta...

I also switched to use Redlib instances to browser Reddit

I continue to use Tor Browser for entirely innocuous sites that are collateral damage of the OSA.

For example, the Interactive Fiction Archive. All its game files are voluntarily blocked in the UK by its well-meaning but stupid operators. Even games intended for children. They should stop complying and just serve up all their files to everyone. If a teenager learns what a. z5 file even is, they deserve to be able to play it.

Any reddit thread where someone said naughty words? "Oh we're going to need your phone number and a facial". I don't think so, Mr Data Harvester. Click on URL, Ctrl+c, alt-tab to Tor Browser, Ctrl+v, "Are you over 18?" Yes I am. See how easy that is?

I hate my government.

The idea of a global internet is becoming increasingly infeasible and I believe that China is just ahead of its time. If you look at the UK, it is really just a matter of time until they figure out that the real issue they are having is that, the Internet allows communication with entities they can not enforce their laws on. The logical consequence for them will be to deny access entirely. The same seems true for the EU, which is moving in a similar direction.

Among the general public I would say effectively zero. The Online Safety Act does not even register in the news or as part of people's concerns.

There might have been a burst of interest because of reports in the media when the OSA came into force but I suspect that this is about it.