I've been replaying Final Fantasy XIII. I visited a Reddit thread because I was curious to know what the reception was to the noise a certain character makes upon casting spells. Unfortunetly this discussion is now forbidden in the UK - the thread is blocked unless I verify my age...

There are so many problems with these regulations, I could rant about it for a good 5 mins or so.

This is akin to countries and states starting to ban cigarettes to minors in the early 20th century.

Honestly this social media shit is toxic and damaging as hell in ways we are starting to find out just now.

Nothing but bullshit. But think of the kids while we take your rights....

Also a convenient way to silence opposition. If people are opposed to these Internet control law, they're called paedophiles. 

imagine wanting to have a wank... go find some corn site.... and then.... you need to take a selfie, and do a small quiz and test, to prove your age before you can log on....

Hhahhahahaha....

Pretty much.

And authoritarianism is never satisfied. It won't stop at porn. Laws have already been proposed in places like the EU that would monitor all online communication.

In a twist that I'm sure absolutely nobody saw coming... "Discord confirms hacks have compromised the IDs of users who had appealed an age determination, following the implementation of the Online Safety Act"
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1ny9pzk/discord_confirms_hacks_have_compromised_the_ids/

Discord went on to state "Of the accounts impacted globally, we have identified approximately 70,000 users that may have had government-ID photos exposed, which our vendor used to review age-related appeals."

It's almost like the Online Saftey Act, doesn't make you safe online!

On another note, I've noticed that imgur is now blocked in the UK.
Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo

Imgur was going to get fined because it's approach to age checks wasn't robust enough, so Imgur responded by restricting access to the UK.

As a result, I'm seeing a bunch of photos that look like this:

Yep, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, these stupid laws are already infringing on grown adults being able to access content, much of which isn't even adult at all.

Any kid worth their salt will be able to access porn anyway, while in the meantime the rest of us will be made to jump through hoops or be constantly gatekept.

Meanwhile, the pro-censorship zealots are already trying to ban adult games by pressuring credit card companies, which is just a slippery slope to banning anything they deem inappropriate, from LGBT+ content to political content, etc.