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Lol how are they ever going to block VPNs

And SSH? And Tor? And the various obfuscation methods people use to mask internet traffic?

I take it young people can do this because it’s double Dutch to this old codger.

Most can't now.
Depending on how the ban is enforced many will learn how relatively quickly.
But that's not an argument agains a ban. We don’t abandon age restrictions on alcohol because some teenagers can get served, or speed limits because some drivers speed.

The kids will go on something worse than social media, like 4chan. The VPN ban idea is the response of a nervous wreck overreaching with the illusion of control. They need therapy, or drugs in the first instance.

We’re discussing a proposal to restrict access to social media for children, not mandatory chip implantation and a Ministry of Truth.

The harms of social media on minors are now well documented and widely accepted. Doing nothing is not a neutral position. It is a conscious choice to allow those harms to continue.

Instead of disappearing down the conspiracy rabbit hole, or smugly declaring that “da yoof” will bypass the controls with VPNs and disappear into the dark web, perhaps we could have a grown-up discussion about what might actually help.

No policy is ever 100% effective. We don’t abandon age restrictions on alcohol because some teenagers get served, or speed limits because some drivers speed.

The question isn’t whether a determined minority can circumvent the rules. It’s whether the lives of the much larger compliant majority are improved.

If you’ve got better ideas, let’s hear them. If not, “they’ll get around it anyway” isn’t much of a policy.

The issue is that the plan cannot be implemented without restricting access for everyone, not just children.

If you do want to do this, we need a proper double-blind government Digital ID for everyone, where
a) The site receiving the verification only receives a flag that you are over 18
b) The site providing the verification doesn't know what you are looking at.

I believe it works like this in France.

Don't pretend that this is just a small change for da kids.

And if TikTok and the like are publishing stuff that shouldn't be seen, then deal with TikTok first, before restricting the populace.

I think people are overcomplicating this.

Restrict access to social media apps through age-verified Apple and Google accounts. Add parental controls and website restrictions on phones and tablets, with access denied by default rather than granted by default.

Is it perfect? No.

Will some determined teenagers find workarounds? Of course.

But the goal isn’t perfection. The goal is friction.

Public policy doesn’t have to be unbreakable to be effective. It just has to change the default behaviour for the majority.

At the moment social media is effectively omnipresent and frictionless. Making access conditional rather than automatic would be a significant change even if a minority still circumvent it.

Lol how are they ever going to block VPNs

And SSH? And Tor? And the various obfuscation methods people use to mask internet traffic?

They can't even keep up with the pirate streaming sites.

I’m on several private trackers. I think this is what the government thinks is the “dark web”, apparently they mean “not available via Google”

Given Google Search's degeneration since the late 00s that's increasingly everything.

Indeed. It seems to have got far worse since the advent of AI as well. I find it extremely dificult to find anything reelevant for even simple searches.

@Richard_Tyndall a couple of days back you mentioned your book on British intervention in southern Russia at the end of WWI. This sounds like a book I want to read! Can you tell us more?

Its a long term project that I started a few years ago and have picked up again. It revolves around the British fears of Turkish Pan Turanianism expansion into central Asia following the Russian collapse in 1917. To try and prevent this the British organised a series of interventions in the Caucaus and Southern central Asia - Dunsterforce and the Malleson Mission amongst them. As a result the British/Empire troops ended up defending Baku against the Turks and also fighting the Red Russians on the South Central Asian railway in Turkmenistan.

Its real boys own stuff and includes a small group of about 20 Australian and British soldiers defending the retreat of the last of the Assyrians from Urmia down into Persia, holding off thousands of Turks and Kurds to get 80,000 refugees to safety.

My plan is to have the first draft finished middle of next year. I have a couple of military publishers interested.

My family tree includes a great* uncle (or something like that) who, while serving with the Army, married the daughter of a senior British diplomat in Baku in 1920.
He'd been a civilian before the war, some sort of trader in Tsarist Russia, but of course. that all went pear-shaped after the Revolution.

Lol how are they ever going to block VPNs

And SSH? And Tor? And the various obfuscation methods people use to mask internet traffic?

I take it young people can do this because it’s double Dutch to this old codger.

Most can't now.
Depending on how the ban is enforced many will learn how relatively quickly.
But that's not an argument agains a ban. We don’t abandon age restrictions on alcohol because some teenagers can get served, or speed limits because some drivers speed.

The kids will go on something worse than social media, like 4chan. The VPN ban idea is the response of a nervous wreck overreaching with the illusion of control. They need therapy, or drugs in the first instance.

We’re discussing a proposal to restrict access to social media for children, not mandatory chip implantation and a Ministry of Truth.

The harms of social media on minors are now well documented and widely accepted. Doing nothing is not a neutral position. It is a conscious choice to allow those harms to continue.

Instead of disappearing down the conspiracy rabbit hole, or smugly declaring that “da yoof” will bypass the controls with VPNs and disappear into the dark web, perhaps we could have a grown-up discussion about what might actually help.

No policy is ever 100% effective. We don’t abandon age restrictions on alcohol because some teenagers get served, or speed limits because some drivers speed.

The question isn’t whether a determined minority can circumvent the rules. It’s whether the lives of the much larger compliant majority are improved.

If you’ve got better ideas, let’s hear them. If not, “they’ll get around it anyway” isn’t much of a policy.

Again you have fallen into the trap of 'We must do something. This is something. We must do it'.

There is no requirement, when identifying a stupid policy that will not work, to come up with a better policy that will. A stupid policy is stupid all on its own. And this is a stupid policy.

If you are so concerned about this then you come up with a better policy. Don't just expect us to accept this because it is 'something', irrespective of how stupid it is.

Lol how are they ever going to block VPNs

And SSH? And Tor? And the various obfuscation methods people use to mask internet traffic?

They can't even keep up with the pirate streaming sites.

I’m on several private trackers. I think this is what the government thinks is the “dark web”, apparently they mean “not available via Google”

Given Google Search's degeneration since the late 00s that's increasingly everything.

If you search once and get what you want, you see one set of adverts (assuming you aren't blocking them).

If you have to search several times and click over the page to find what you want, you see many sets of adverts...

Google broke itself when Facebook drove Google's management insane and they decided that they really wanted to be a Social Media platform. Everything else has been fallout from that.