House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs

If this becomes law, then yes. But then people will turn to VPS providers instead and set up their own VPNs, which will then prompt a law to demand age verification before renting any server. I wonder how far they're willing to go down this rabbit hole.

gjsman-10004• 6 months ago

Not necessarily - how is a kid paying for a VPS server?

A personal debit card (which requires ID verification anyway, and likely has their parents able to see activity)? A personal credit card (which definitely requires ID + 18+)? Stealing their parents' card (works for like 5 days)? Does the VPS company block VPN ports without verification, similar to how most companies handle email? Do you think VPS services have any interest, at all, in an underage clientele?

The proposed law is plenty effective - saying otherwise is like saying kids can bypass age verification at the knife shop or alcohol store by using eBay. No sane mind says that age verification is therefore useless.

landl0rd2• 6 months ago

You're implying pervasive KYC and tying everything to your real-life identity is some unfortunate side-effect rather than a deliberate end. I have contempt for people who pass policies such as these but I do not think them foolish; they are likely aware of what will happen.

gruez3• 6 months ago

If this becomes law, then yes.

Or they just operate outside of UK jurisdiction, in which case they can politely decline. Any executives/directors of said company might be liable to arrest if they decide to vacation in uk, though.

gnarlouse2• 6 months ago

Age verification to wake up in the morning, age verification to breathe air, age verification to use the restroom, age verification t...

dlisboa• 6 months ago

All of this would easily be solved by just banning social media. Nothing will convince me they are a net-positive to society.

brightball• 6 months ago

Watching laws like this play out in real time adds some color to the other discussion about software in Europe right now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46767668#46769847

krunck• 6 months ago

Also VPS services because "SSH -D".

whynotmaybe• 6 months ago

How would this work with a VPN outside of UK that doesn't do it ? Will it be blocked?

yakbarber• 6 months ago

you pay them, isn't that already enough to identify any non-fraudulent account is needed?

lacoolj• 6 months ago

Very shallow, naive approach to child safety. This is like banning children from riding scooters on a highway. They're just going to use a bike instead. Danger still exists.

VPNs are not the only way around this, so if you want to ban the "method of access" you need to be much more broad, and get the parents involved.

ASalazarMX2• 6 months ago

A innefective mandate for the intended purpose, but a very effective mandate to know what adults use VPNs.

Between this and the repeated attempts at encryption backdoors, this is something I would expect from a totalitarian regime that is preparing for civil unrest, not the UK.

fooqux• 6 months ago

but a very effective mandate to know what adults use VPNs.

How? I suppose if the VPN services all started requiring age verification that might tell you this info. But I very much doubt that'll happen, as it runs completely counter to many legitimate VPN services' missions.

romanovcode• 6 months ago

Very shallow, naive approach to child safety.

It's naive of you to think this has anything to do with the child safety.

kelseyfrog• 6 months ago

It's like banning children from owning and carrying handguns. They still have knives and ultimately fists. We cannot eliminate harms, therefore we should not attempt to reduce harms.

CJefferson• 6 months ago

But, we do ban children on scooters from roads in the UK, but they can go on bikes? I don't understand your metaphor.. what you are suggesting is what we do and it's sensible.

guerrilla2• 6 months ago

I don't think they don't mean the same thing you mean by scooters. Difference in the language.

captainbland• 6 months ago

In fairness we essentially ban scooters from practically every public path/road but they're still everywhere

chrisjj• 6 months ago

If parent could be sufficiently involved, there'd be no need for any ban.

subscribed5• 6 months ago

This is not about the child safety, please stop believing British politicians. They just say things that are supposed to be discussed and repeated.

munksbeer5• 6 months ago

People say this, and maybe it is true. But do you live in the same Britain as me? The majority of parents and older people want this. They are ignorant of how it all works and want the government to "do something". They support stuff like this.

It doesn't actually matter how flawed it is. All that matters to the government is votes. Always. Governments exist to buy votes, otherwise they're not governments. Any time you see a government action, you can be very sure they think it will buy them votes.

linhns• 6 months ago

How to enforce?

cyberpunk• 6 months ago

Same way as they do with porn? Massive fines. Or the threat thereof.

Deukhoofd• 6 months ago

may make provision for the provider of a relevant VPN service to apply to any person seeking to access its service in or from the UK age assurance which is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not that person is a child

"The law we made is like super duper good!!"

Children may also turn to VPNs, which would then undermine the child safety gains of the Online Safety Act

"The law we made is easily circumvented :("

donmcronald• 6 months ago

may make provision for the provider of a relevant VPN service to apply to any person seeking to access its service in or from the UK age assurance which is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not that person is a child

I think you're reading it wrong. Regulations may have a provision that allows providers to apply age assurance [systems ?] if the age assurance is highly effective at determining age.

I'm always surprised how ambiguous the writing is for this kind of stuff. Maybe that's the point. If the regulations don't (may is optional) have the provision, does that mean they need to demand ID?

IMO, highly effective = our buddies' tech that we declare highly effective. The whole ID push around the world is big tech trying to set up government mandated services that you're going to be forced to pay for, either directly or via taxes.

The end game is probably digital IDs with digitally signed requests for everything you do. And, of course, corrupt individuals and criminals will somehow be able to get as many digital IDs as they want.

That money should be spent on education. We're being robbed.

Hizonner4• 6 months ago

I'm always surprised how ambiguous the writing is for this kind of stuff.

That's because--

(a) The actual legislators vaguely realize that they're too lazy and stupid to get anything right in detail, so they delegate to the regulatory apparatus.

(b) Neither the legislators nor the regulators are ever quite sure what they can politically get away with actually demanding, or how fast they can politically get away with moving, so they want both the ability to grab anything that looks like they can hold it, and the ability to deny that they ever meant to ask for anything that's blowing back too hard on them.

(c) Both the legislators and the regulators want to be able to threaten various actors with draconian actions that are at least possibly authorized under that kind of vague language, in order to get concessions that they are not authorized to demand (and that would be too hot politically to give them authorization to demand).

antonvs• 6 months ago

I foresee a lot of VPN companies starting to offer "secure proxy" services or something like that. "It's not a VPN, it's a secure proxy!"

advisedwang2• 6 months ago

The law doesn't work like that. First of all, the actual regulation that gets made probably has a definition of VPN and won't rely on a company self-describing as VPN. Secondly law enforcement and courts aren't idiots*

* well, many of them are. But not in the particular way that would be needed for a simple rename to work.

guerrilla2• 6 months ago

Proxies aren't VPNs though. They didn't mean call proxies VPNS, they meant provide proxies.

zrn9003• 6 months ago

After enforcing age verification to prevent children from viewing those pesky Gaza genocide videos that Israel did not want them to see, they gotta ensure that those brats wont be able to get around it and still see the videos.

Its amazing how this censorship was brought on rapidly and precisely after Netanyahu demanded it at the start of last year. No surprise as half of Starmer government was funded by zionists.

landl0rd2• 6 months ago

I really don't think governments need a kick in the tail from a foreign power to try to grab more power. It's just what they do by nature.

AlexandrB• 6 months ago

Not sure what you're going on about. I don't think children should be watching any genocide videos. Is that something you watched a lot of as a child?

c0m47053• 6 months ago

The thing is, it's not really children who lose access to this sort of content, it's the user who doesn't want to give Reddit or Twitter or whoever else a copy of their driving licence. Without age verification, they don't see the truth of something like Gaza, because it's ages restricted. They can however view the other, sanitised version of the story.

zrn9003• 6 months ago

I don't think children should be watching any genocide videos.

Not watching any genocide videos means not seeing anything related to the genocide either. And that provides the basis for propaganda to make the genocide disappear, or turn it around by inventing realities. That was how the Iraqi WMDs were made happen.

This is happening for no apparent reason, other than Netanyahu personally requesting it at the start of 2025.

ChrisArchitect2• 6 months ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46763548

4fterd4rk• 6 months ago

UK nanny state makes it an nonviable place to live. It's pervasive from the moment you step off the plane at Heathrow and see the inane safety stickers covering every surface "WARNING: DOOR" "WARNING: WATER FROM HOT TAP IS HOT" as well as the CCTV cameras.

bdavbdav• 6 months ago

Not sure if you’re from the US, but they certainly need to remove the log from their own eye…

ck2• 6 months ago

ah the country of brexit has more "clever ideas"

something I find myself saying often lately watching BBC News every morning

How about Cloudflare Warp? And don't some browsers like Opera have builtin VPN?

What about tunnels like Hurricane Electric?

irusensei• 6 months ago

Did the CEO of Tor announced when age verification features will be implemented?

causalscience5• 6 months ago

I'm in the UK and I've been involved in advocating for this.

I find it utterly frustrating to read the "think of the children" mockery here on HN.

I argue that this is good.

There's many reasons why children having unfettered access to the internet and different campaigners care about different aspects, so I'm going to talk about the one I care about: addiction, destroyed ability to focus, and dopamine desensitization. In the UK (and elsewhere in the world, I imagine) there's a huge problem with people addicted to phones and children are especially vulnerable. I don't care if adults are vulnerable, they have to make their own decisions. But I care that parents that do everything right in terms of educating their children on how to be healthy with respect of phones (like me and my partner) then have to send their children to schools where they're given ipads. It's not fair to say "banning doesnt work you should just not give your children phones", but then force you to send your children to schools that give them ipads and other distractions.

It's a matter of network effects (something that HN loooves talking about). In addition to the fact that phones are engineered to be addictive, you have the fact that in many schools EVERY child is on social media, and so any family that wants to stay away has to decide between isolating their child from society, or selling themselves into the "engagement industry".

I think that banning is a valid approach. It won't be 100% effective, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that it will introduce friction (another thing that HN looooves talking about) and so will reduce the total number on children that is on social media and therefore reduce the social need for other children to be in.

So, we're adding friction to break or weaken the network effects that keep these cancer companies harming children in schools.

monsecchris• 6 months ago

The reason you want this is because the only way to implement it facilitates your tyranny and it still wont achieve what you pretend to desire.

miningape• 6 months ago

I think that banning is a valid approach

Are we talking about VPNs or phones in general? Because somewhere in this we jumped from VPNs to phones in general, and these things are not equivalent.

A phone ban in general for children, maybe I could agree with you on. But, a VPN ban on those grounds alone is utterly pointless: it's not like there aren't millions of other bits of internet crack children can easily find without a VPN.

Not addressing the actual concerns and instead pointing fingers at a totally different, larger issue reeks of "won't somebody think of the children". All with the convenient downstream effect of revealing which citizens own VPNs.

wasmainiac• 6 months ago

I don’t think people mocking the reasoning behind the law, just its implementation. I’m all for kicking kids off the internet and phones. I’m not British… fyi, but as kids we were not allowed to drink but we still found ways to get beer or whatever else because the regulations were not effective.

It’s better to be more to the point and straight up identity social media platforms as addictive or otherwise harmful and block them altogether or at least kill the algorithm and endless scroll.

boznz• 6 months ago

The title of the site "Hacker News" should be a dead giveaway why this law is mocked here

causalscience5• 6 months ago

Well, we've tried your thing of letting these companies call the shots. Now we'll try my thing for a bit :-)

What's more hacker than experimenting to get the results you want?

AlienRobot• 6 months ago

When I went to school nobody gave me an ipad. We just wrote on paper, the teacher on chalkboard. That was a long time ago, though.

6DM• 6 months ago

In my opinion you're undercutting your own argument. You should be working to remove tablets from the schools instead of advocating for making us register our ID's all over the internet (which has proven to be insecure on an almost monthly basis now).

ReluctantLaser• 6 months ago

It seems you want to talk about other things rather than the VPN age-gating or the online safety act this post is about. I'll engage with the content of this post.

but then force you to send your children to schools that give them ipads and other distractions

What does the online safety act (OSA) or this VPN age check do to prevent this? Are the "ipads" at school giving the users "unfettered access to the internet"? That seems a bit irresponsible, however I would think that your ire should instead be directed towards the schools? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding?

In addition to the fact that phones are engineered to be addictive

Is it the phones or the content? I interpret your views as someone who should be campaigning for phones and other "distractions" to be restricted in a school environment, however the OSA and this VPN age check do not appear to tackle this.

there's a huge problem with people addicted to phones and children are especially vulnerable

I will assume this is true for the sake of conversation. Similar to my previous query, how does the OSA or this VPN age check tackle this problem? Will banning certain types of content prevent this, or perhaps shift it? Instead of social media, would it be preferable if children were playing games on their phone? If they were then "addicted" to gaming or socialising around a popular game, would the proposal be at that point to ban children from playing games on their phone? To me, it seems the problem is less the content and more that the environment is setup in certain ways that allows this. It is unclear to me how banning and gating certain content will prevent this.

different campaigners care about different aspects, so I'm going to talk about the one I care about: addiction, destroyed ability to focus, and dopamine desensitization

What kind of things are you pushing outside of banning material and gating access? Is there a push for educating parents of the dangers of this "addiction"? Perhaps informing people about how to use parental controls to limit the access their children have? Is there a push on companies to provide robust, and easy-to-use parental controls? I feel that parents should have the tools, yet it seems that we consider the problem out of the parents control. Why is that? If parents make an informed choice and choose differently to you, should they be allowed to do so?

I don't care if adults are vulnerable, they have to make their own decisions.

I feel that if you are caring about children accessing "addicting" material that you should also care about your fellow citizens accessing the same. How would those adults know that this material is addictive? Are they being informed by the state? What avenues are there for them to get help? It seems that the OSA and this VPN age check do not provide any assistance to people that are perhaps already addicted, or preventing people from falling into that trap. Does the care only extend to children and no further? Should we care about building sturdy adults regardless if they are currently children or not?

My general thoughts on this is that there appears to be a lot of restriction and preventing people from accessing certain content, however very little on informing people on what those perceived dangers are. The UK government is especially keen on this restriction, yet I am seeing no push towards informing people, or providing assistance for those afflicted. To me, the proposed motivation and the implementation are incongruent with each other. The perception of safety, as opposed to an improvement in real world safety.

yunnpp2• 6 months ago

You're advocating for the wrong thing. Advocate to ban targeted advertising or demand that social media feeds be transparent. Don't advocate for banning VPNs from anyone who does not want to submit an ID to a company that will be breached less than a year later, or any kind of client-side measure; that's ineffective towards the goal you are trying to accomplish, and has so many other negative side effects that the whole thing is just stupid.

munksbeer5• 6 months ago

I admire your intentions, I genuinely mean that. I have children and worry about the horrible impact of social media too.

But your methods are flawed. I'm not even sure I can follow the logic of your post. You're talking about doing school work on iPads at school, so we must make everyone give their personal identifying information to VPNs? How does that follow?

The main problems I have with your methods:

1. You're forcing everyone in the UK to expose their personal identifying data to third party companies who *will* leak the data at some point.

2. You're forcing children to work around this and they *will* work around it and end up on websites that definitely do not have their best intentions in mind. I think your hammer approach is going to partly work, but have some extreme negative outcomes. Will you raise your hand for the harm this causes?

I'd suggest digesting what I'm saying here, really looking strongly at your aims and think if there are better alternatives.

Here is what I would like:

Whenever a UK citizen browses a social media site, I'd mandate banners that advertise the harms of social media, and also mandate that they can view the algorithm that is being used to feed them.

I plan on providing safe ways to browse the internet for my children when they're old enough. I'll give them their own VPN if needed, again with necessary precautions and education.

Hizonner4• 6 months ago

dopamine desensitization

So ignorant pop pseudo-neuroscience. Got it.

It's not fair to say "banning doesnt work you should just not give your children phones", but then force you to send your children to schools that give them ipads and other distractions.

Books can also be distractions. Ask me how I know. And I notice that you're just silently shifting back and forth between "social media" (ever notice how there's no single agreed-upon definition of that in the world?) and "just anything you can do on an iPad".

in many schools EVERY child is on social media

Yes, because the world at large uses social media for some things. And for that matter uses things other than social media, things you or your coalition want to deprive children of, for other things. What you are effectively asking is to stick everybody who's not officially an adult in a curated sandbox that will never match the richness of the rest of society. That is unfair, unreasonable, and basically a guaranteed way to fail to prepare them for actual adulthood.

ares6232• 6 months ago

Every time this comes up I always take the opportunity to suggest that it should've been a ban on _smart_phones. Not dumb phones, not laptops, not even tablets (i.e. those without sim).

Easier to enforce, you don't have to rely on the very same companies that peddle the thing you're trying to ban in the first place. It can disrupt the network effects that could hopefully be enough to let people voluntarily cut it out of their lives. People are primed to get rid of it, but can't because it is so addicting and said network effects.

qingcharles• 6 months ago

It is really hard to find dumb phones to buy. Even the dumbest ones in stores right now, flip phones that look like they are 20 years old, still have some very janky Internet features baked in.

ares6232• 6 months ago

That's because smartphones are objectively superior. When they are banned, a niche will become available for dumb phones and manufacturers to fill. Still having access to janky internet is not perfect yes, but I would argue it is still way better than current smartphones. Just adding a little bit of friction can shortcircuit the addiction people currently have, and the social media corps definitely know this and are super obsessed with removing any friction at all at every step of their user journey.

IlikeMadison• 6 months ago

China, Iran, UK. same stuff, different names.

javascriptfan692• 6 months ago

We will try everything except regulating the algorithmic content feeds themselves.

causalscience5• 6 months ago

Yo, I'm all for banning all of these companies from my country. That would be ideal.

But then you'll have HN: NOOOO it's not effective, people will just use VPNs nanny state! Oppression! Freedom of speech!

pibaker4• 6 months ago

If algorithmic feed is so bad then why are you on hacker news, a website with an algorithmic feed that is notoriously non-transparent and often accused of being manipulated by bad actors?

javascriptfan692• 6 months ago

"If smoking is so bad then why are you smoking?"

Because I'm addicted like everyone else.

deaux2• 6 months ago

Because obviously "algorithmic" is an oversimplification. Even a chronological feed is "algorithmic".

What needs banning is the combination of "behavioral personalization + infinite content/scroll". HN's feed has neither of these elements.

NekkoDroid• 6 months ago

I assume they mean personalized algorithms and not algorithms in general as that would encompas literally anything programmed not based on true RNG. And to my knowledge HN doesn't have any personalized feed.

pibaker4• 6 months ago

Every HN thread on social media or porn inevitably gets overrun with "but think of the children" comments calling for banning kids from social media, or the internet, or from having a phone at all.

And then every time a country actually tries to ban children from the internet, they cry "but my privacy!!!" As if having to hand your id to the state to use the internet isn't exactly what you asked for. As if the regimes most interested in "protecting the kid" aren't exactly the ones who puts you in jail for a meme too spicy.

You reap what you sow. Congrats on making the internet worse.

iamnothere4• 6 months ago

These are not the same people. I doubt that most of the people pushing for mandatory restrictions on child access care about privacy at all.

pibaker4• 6 months ago

You will be surprised by the number of people (even among self proclaimed libertarians) who think children have no rights and are essentially their parents' properties.

sadeshmukh• 6 months ago

Sounds like the Goomba fallacy: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Goomba_fallacy

AuthAuth• 6 months ago

You either ban children from social media through age restrictions or you ban the harmful content from social media. We cant just the next generation get cooked. Both are hard to implement and unpopular and attack freedom but you must pick one because the harm is so clear.

puppycodes• 6 months ago

I'm always reminded of the Snowden revelations that the GCHQ was (and still is) saving, catagorizing, and performing deep packet inspection of all internet traffic.

Nothing suprises me anymore in the UK. It's been extremely dystopian for a long time.

polski-g• 6 months ago

So parents can just sign up for children? What problem is this solving? If my government was censoring my child of course I'd sign up a Facebook/Mullvad account for them.

subscribed5• 6 months ago

Yup, I'm signing up for my kids the moment they ask. At this point it's outrageous.

Oh, and I'm also reading on Amnesiac and other stealth VPN protocols. The only thing this will achieve, is kids' deep understand the government is hostile cluster of entities lying through their teeth.

weirdmantis69• 6 months ago

People worry about the US but there is no country I'm more worried about than the UK.

House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs

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