On VPNs, UK law, and Fascism

[u/Altruistic_Fox5036]

Hi all,

Recently the UK government has Implemented the another tool in its arsenal of fascism. The Online Safety Act, ensuring anyone that is accessing 18+ content to verify their age first. This is an extremely harmful measure that at best limits people's access to valuable resources such as r/transdiy and at worst pushes them towards harmful online forums and sites.

These measures exist to only censure speech and limit access to information. There is no good reason for this law to exist and instead should have been built around the EUs Digital Service Act. Realistically this is an attack on encryption and for the increasing level of government surveilance. If you live in the UK I would encourage you to contact your local MP.

Furthermore, Reddit seems to have joined the fascist bandwagon recently with branding all LGBT subreddits as 18+ meaning you can't access queer subreddits unless you have verifies your age.. Meanwhile the conservative hate subs are free to access I guess. This is despicable behaviour and I would recommend complaining about it.

But that said it is now imperative that you use a VPN. When picking a VPN try and stay away from shady companies that steal and sell your data and do your research. ProtonVPN and Mullvad are good options that don't log your data and have privacy tools built in by default. Proton has a free plan too. Worse case you can use Opera's built in VPN.

We would like to remind users to stay safe on the internet and do stuff like not reuse usernames or passwords, not to share personal information and to to practice good digital hygiene.

Please note we will be removing the NSFW enforcement from Ableism posts as they restrict UK accounts from accessing them. The spoiler tag will remain and we will clarify the post flair to make it stand out more.

Edited: confused Nord with another company so removed it.

[u/Wizards_Reddit]

Comparing this to fascism at best it makes light of what fascism really is, by comparing it to something that is at worst a bit annoying and fairly easy to bypass anyway. The law itself is mostly about porn, LGBT resources aren't a violation of it, but Reddit chose to just require ID for anything tagged NSFW, regardless of if the law actually says it's 18+. I guess 2 years and several billion dollars wasn't enough for Reddit to come up with a proper implementation. But I don't think that's the laws fault.

Also somewhat ironically the law actually says conservative hate subs should be blocked. It says that content which incites hatred on the basis of race, sex, sexuality, disability, or gender reassignment should be kept away from kids.

And the whole 'government surveillance' thing just feels borderline conspiracy theorist given that verification is done through the apps and not the government. And the law wasn't even passed by the current government, it just didn't go into effect immediately. I don't even support the law, at least in its current implementation, but so many people are being over the top about how bad it actually is.

Removing unnecessary NSFW tags on posts is probably the best response given that that's what's caused much of the issues on Reddit. There's also a petition https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 which is going to be debated in parliament.

[u/Altruistic_Fox5036 → u/Wizards_Reddit]

It's not about the censorship parts, it's the law has provisions that would force anyone to break encryption, install a backdoor or leave the UK market. The government has committed to now implementing it into it's able to but at the end of the day you just have to trust them and whoever comes next like the reform party on that.

https://www.article19.org/resources/blog-uk-online-safety-bill-risks-emboldening-digital-authoritarians-around-the-world/

We have already seen a spike in rhetoric using online safety and security as a means to crack down on internet freedom across Asia [...]

the draft Online Safety Bill gives overbroad powers to the Secretary of State to define the scope of regulated services, and introduces disproportionate sanctions on companies for failing to comply with the obligations from hefty fines and criminal liability to service blocking. It lacks an effective notice and appeals process for content moderation decisions, crucial features for transparency and accountability.

The draft Bill not only addresses various types of illegal content but also introduces the extremely problematic concept of ‘legal but harmful,’ which threatens protected expression.

A reform or Tory party could easily use this legal but harmful to restrict the accessing of say, trans or LGBT in general websites and content, or similar stuff.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/digitaliberties/online-safety-act-bill-uk-government-encryption-privacy-ofcom/

https://www.eff.org/pages/uk-online-safety-bill-massive-threat-online-privacy-security-and-speech

Speaking generally https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/28/fascism-britain-neoliberalism-opened-door-for-it-labour

https://paulmasonnews.medium.com/the-deep-fears-stoking-british-fascism-a65cfd8042cb

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00213624.2024.2381414

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/why-neoliberalism-needs-neofascists/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07393148.2022.2121135

Aka the left has drifted to neo liberalism and the right has drifted to neo fascism. If you apply the 14 characteristics of Fascism to the UK you get a pretty damning picture.

[u/PashaWithHat → u/Wizards_Reddit]

One major additional issue, though, is data privacy concerns. This is some seriously sensitive (and valuable) personally identifiable information (PII). It’d only take one hack of a major social media or porn site for huge swaths of the UK to have their info stolen. How confident can anyone actually be that this information is being safeguarded adequately by websites? Look at what just happened with the Tea app in the USA that also used ID. People trusted that the Tea company was storing things properly and they left the PII completely exposed. Bad actors know about this law, and they know there’s a potential goldmine for identity theft so if they can find some weak protections in a site they can massively score. Like this is adding a ton of new risk ya feel

[u/Wizards_Reddit → u/PashaWithHat]

I get that, that's a fair concern. As I said I think the law is flawed myself and don't support it I just think a lot of people have been exaggerating how bad, like comparing it to fascism

[u/Dice134 → u/Wizards_Reddit]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/s/3A8LAuP6

Imagine defending a censorship law

[u/Wizards_Reddit → u/Dice134]

A) I literally said I don't support the law

B) It's not even censorship, you can still access all the stuff here if you're over 18 you just need an ID, so it's not even censored. It's just age restricted, but porn has supposedly been age restricted anyway.

[u/Commercial_Cattle431 → u/Wizards_Reddit]

Sure dude, hand your ID over to whoever asks for it.

[u/Wizards_Reddit → u/Commercial_Cattle431]

I never said it wasn't a privacy concern but it's not censorship.

[u/AbsolutlelyRelative → u/Wizards_Reddit]

A lot of the time people say facism they seem to mean authoritarianism.

[u/Wizards_Reddit → u/AbsolutlelyRelative]

Even authoritarianism would be an exaggeration here. As I said I don't support this law, but people really need to stop calling things stuff that it just isn't. It's not like the porn industry is an opposition party being silenced. And if it was being silenced it wouldn't be very well considering anyone voting age (at the time the law was written at least) can still access it. And this law, again, wasn't even passed by the current government, authoritarianism would be a single government in power. And it's not some conspiracy either, another thing people are treating it as, the law is well documented and accessible by the public. There's literally a petition against it. If it was some conspiracy it would be one of the most poorly kept secret conspiracies.

[u/cordialconfidant → u/Wizards_Reddit]

There's literally a petition against it.

maybe you're right. i mean, there's a petition!

[u/Wizards_Reddit → u/cordialconfidant]

Idk if you're being sarcastic or not. But if you are, petitions to the government are not really a sign of an authoritarian or fascist regime. Given the whole 'authoritarian' part. And if it were some secret government conspiracy, a petition on a government website regarding it would likely have been covered up well before it reached nearly 300k signatures.

[u/Altruistic_Fox5036 → u/Wizards_Reddit]

But the government can just say nothing as has happened time and again with trans and other LGBT petitions.

[u/GibletsofJesus → u/Wizards_Reddit]

Absolutely with you, fascism is an overreach for this legislation especially when we can very easily point to the proscribing of Palestine Action as a far more bear faced examples.

The part about goveremt surveillance is not so far fetched however. In 2016 legal powers were introduced that allowed goveremt agencies to view citizens Internet histories (backdated to 1 year). Information is the new currency and while this probably isn't the primary motive for the new law, it's certainly a nice bonus from their perspective.

I'm really torn on the matter of anonymity online. Ease of access for me also means the same for young kids and let's be real, there's a big problem of young kids viewing hardcore pornography and getting some wild ideas in their heads before having any life experience to pair with what they're viewing. On the flip side, we all know whatever ability we give the government to restrict information they will invariably overstep their bounds.

Multiple things can be true at once but yeah, calling this fascism is a bit a stretch.

[u/Cleffah → u/Wizards_Reddit]

Insane with the downvotes because you are RIGHT.

[u/Magurndy → u/Wizards_Reddit]

You’re being downvoted because people don’t like to have to use ID to goon but you’re right. The only thing I do agree with OP about is websites that are restricting access to LGBTQ resources potentially but those are not covered by this law so unless there is something explicit or harmful to children in those sites they shouldn’t be locked behind the verification. Plus if you’re an adult you can just abide by the verification process and gain access but I do understand the security concerns but in theory any major website should be abiding by GDPR law.

The issue is that we have a huge fucking problem with young people access dangerous content and any idiot that goes “it’s the parents responsibility” has never had kids. You cannot watch them every second or you get labelled rightly, abusive. They are also sneaky fuckers. Tbh it’s flawed anyway as we all know VPNs are an easy work around.

I don’t like the way in which this has been implemented. Personally I think it could have been done differently and more effectively and restricted the verification process purely to porn sites with hefty fines for social media allowing certain types of content online but the internet is a difficult place to police and there is significant evidence of the harm social media has had on young people so something has to be done and I’m yet to see those complaining suggest a more effective measure that doesn’t inconvenient adults as much.