Why the UK’s age verification system (probably) won’t work

On Friday, the “Age Verification” clause of the UK’s Online Safety Act officially came into force. The result was a sudden surge in discussion, and a lot of people realising – finally – what the law really means.

People have been googling “VPN” a lot. That’s a good thing; we’ll get to why later.

Unfortunately, much of this is stable doors and bolted horses. We’ve been warning about the OSA since it was first mooted (by the Conservatives, just to remind you that “sides” are an illusion), and we’re rather past the point where awareness would have mattered.

The new law essentially forces companies to put any even potentially “adult content” behind an ID wall – meaning a user must prove their age before they access it. The ways of doing that vary; you can use a credit card or let an AI-powered system scan your face via webcam to guess your age.

Don’t worry, it won’t store the data, and it’s only guessing your age, not scanning your face and uploading it to some data storage centre. They promised they wouldn’t do that.

The really vital part here is what exactly “adult content” means. It evokes – and is indeed intended to evoke – pornography. The act was sold as a tool to prevent children from accessing the near-infinite amounts of porn scattered across the web, but pornography is the least of it.

“Adult content” can also mean violence, suicide, animal cruelty, war, drugs…or any news coverage and/or discussion of the same. It could also mean “conspiracy theories”, especially those which could “expose children to harm”, like anti-vaccine sentiment, or cause “radicalization”.

In fact, it can potentially mean anything it is required to mean, which is exactly the kind of thing they LOVE to put in new laws.

But I don’t want to rehash these points here. You can read our previous coverage of it HERE HERE HERE and HERE.

Today I want to talk about how the OSA is going to spread, and why it might not matter if it does.

Over the weekend, it was widely noted on Twitter/X that Elon Musk’s platform was putting EU-based users behind the age restriction, not just British ones. People made jokes that the US-based platform couldn’t differentiate between the UK and Europe.

Far more likely, they are preparing for when the EU launches its own age verification scheme in the near future.

Australia, as they so often do, started this totalitarian ball rolling back in the Spring (we covered that here). Ireland followed suit earlier this month. Canada and Mexico aren’t far behind. The US’s “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA) is moving forward more slowly, but only the most optimistic would bet against it passing eventually.

The trend is as predictable as it was inevitable.

We must ask, yet again, what is the functional difference between a one-world government and 197 near-identical national governments? The answer is as close to “nothing” as makes no difference.

That is the current model for global rule. A hundred hydra heads pretending the body they’re all attached to doesn’t exist.

And this hydra really, REALLY wants to control the internet.

The good news, at least in my opinion, is that I don’t think they can. I don’t think it will work.

Well…in one way it will.

It will normalize people handing over IDs and asking permission. It will further accustom people to the idea that the government is looking over their shoulder, and further ingrain all the habits of self-moderation and internal censorship that dictates.

There’s nothing you can do about that, except to nudge people and remind them “this is not normal”. Whatever the counter of “normalization” is (Anti-normalization? Weirdening?)

But that’s only half of it, the psycho-social half. The other half – actually controlling the internet – I don’t think they’re capable of achieving it. I’m not even sure it’s possible.

I don’t believe the internet is capable of being controlled in the way they are seeking to control it, I don’t think the establishment knew, for one second, what they were unleashing when they made access to it so widely available, and I don’t think they would ever have birthed this monster if they had known.

And I think they have been playing catch-up ever since.

This lack of understanding of the internet is displayed in comical and trivial terms fairly routinely. Consider the viral video of a CNN anchor asking “who is this 4chan?” or David Cameron’s solemn pledge to ban encryption (which is almost impossible).

They just don’t get it.

Let’s take these age verification measures as an example. We already mentioned that people are simply using VPNs to get around them. There’s talk of the government banning VPNs in response (unlikely) or making them “register” with the government (more likely), but that typifies the failings of imagination and approach that make it so unlikely they could ever fully succeed.

They are always reacting. Plugging leaks and whacking moles. They lag behind.

People still torrent. Piratebay was shut down fifty thousand times. It’s still there. If one day it isn’t, something else will be.

There will likely be a dozen ways to circumvent the age verification system within a few weeks of it being implemented. It will be only slightly slower than 17-year-olds realizing they can just click the “I’m over 18” button.

The internet evolves. It is dynamic and organic. When one route is blocked, informal armies of thousands of anonymous intelligences cloud-compute workarounds.

I’m not saying everything is fine. I’m not doing the negative panic meme…

…at least, I don’t think I am.

The OSA, and all the other acts like it, are terrible. They enable censorship and demand surveillance. They make the environment more hostile, but not unlivable. While they are clearly a threat…I just can’t see them as existential one.

I might be wrong. I might just be in a good mood and seeing ice cream castles in the air.

For now, I’d download Tor while you can. And then whatever replaces Tor should it get banned or bought or compromised. That’s just the way the internet works. And fortunately for us, this is something the powers that be have never really understood.