UK MPs give ministers powers to restrict Internet for under 18s

christkv

So the UK is now China it seems. What a shining light for democracy and justice. There is no way this will be abused by petty little tyrant minister right?

Eddy_Viscosity2

In effect, this is the power to restrict internet to anyone.

colesantiago

This is fine. The internet is going to be filled with bots anyway so might as well restrict it to this age group. They should be outdoors with no access to the internet. Why not extend this to under 25s or the elderly? I'm sure the online safety act also needs to extend this to chatbots and anything that can heavily manipulate and distort this age group.

core-utility

But just a month ago everyone in the discussion about freedom.gov was saying that Europe doesn't restrict internet! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067270

direwolf20

What's the text of the amendment and why doesn't this page link to it?

Lio

So now consider that the same government want to extend voting rights to 16 year olds. So you can vote but you can't control the media you use to learn about who you're potentially voting for. There is something not quite right about that.

theflyinghorse

UK absolutely needs to be thought of in the same way we think about Russia or Belorussia, or China.

globular-toast

If they cared about children they'd just ban phones for children. Would be dead easy to enforce and wouldn't have any effect on the rights of adults. Unfortunately I think the way we are going is to treat everyone as children by default, though.

antonyh

I fail to see how this is technically possible. Virgin Media already censors chunks of the internet, but not in a way that currently would allow age verification. Beyond my ISP I'm virtually anonymous unless I log in. If it's blocked at the network level I cannot login. If it's not blocked by the network, then it doesn't know exactly which individual is using my network connection. Theoretically they could put an interstitial page to check credentials but we'd just end up sharing the login rather than sharing all our personal details in separate accounts, or more likely I'd just not bother and accept the 'child' experience. If I lose access to social media so be it. All that will do is change the landscape as the diaspora find a new uncensored social media. This all falls apart when it affects genuine work, then it's already too late. The only real option at this point is VPN.

Steve16384

Reading some of the comments here, HN seems to have been invaded by Twitter users spouting their opinion as if it's fact.