Drugs still won.

Or what?

because these laws aren't about protecting children they're about elimination of access to things the government doesn't like... like queer spaces

I don't understand how this is a controversial opinion, but maybe parents should actually parent their children instead of expecting the Internet or the government to decide what their kids should see for them? Maybe talk to your kid about safe and ethical sex, the dangers of porn addiction, and not to take anything away from pornographic content instead? Maybe we shouldn't be giving children smartphones and tablets with unfettered internet access in the first place instead of spending time with them? Wild concepts I know.

because these laws aren't about protecting children they're about elimination of access to things the government doesn't like... like queer spaces

So of all the fucking things to restrict, why this? Facebook is a hundred times more dangerous than any porn. Ban that shit instead.

Don't give your children unrestricted acces to a smartphone until they've proven they can use it wisely.
No smartphone before age twelve. Limited use until age 15.
And ffs. Ban smartphones at school.

Teach your kids about the internet. It's part of sexual education.

And don't leave it up to private companies to identify me and collect sensitive data on me. Fuck that. If you really want age verification. Deliver the framework.

Drugs still won.

And people of color lost.

I don't understand how this is a controversial opinion, but maybe parents should actually parent their children instead of expecting the Internet or the government to decide what their kids should see for them? Maybe talk to your kid about safe and ethical sex, the dangers of porn addiction, and not to take anything away from pornographic content instead? Maybe we shouldn't be giving children smartphones and tablets with unfettered internet access in the first place instead of spending time with them? Wild concepts I know.

Don't get me wrong, but why are matters of governmental surveillance and control inherently "right-wing" rather than a totalitarian policy not otherwise directly connected to wing politics? Extremists on both sides have a history of creating totalitarian, Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards).

I don't understand how this is a controversial opinion, but maybe parents should actually parent their children instead of expecting the Internet or the government to decide what their kids should see for them? Maybe talk to your kid about safe and ethical sex, the dangers of porn addiction, and not to take anything away from pornographic content instead? Maybe we shouldn't be giving children smartphones and tablets with unfettered internet access in the first place instead of spending time with them? Wild concepts I know.

Fuck off with your device based verification system. That's just the same service, but as a more invasive app installed on your phone.

not necessarily. you give a phone to your children. you partly lock it down by setting it up as a child account, with its age. you make sure to install a web browser that supports limiting access to age appropriate content according to the age set in the system, maybe taking a parent allowed whitelist. the website is legally obliged to set an appropriate age limit value in a standard HTTP header.

that way, the website does not know your age. the decision is on the web browser.
the web browser checks the configuration in the system, that only the parent can change. it does not send it anywhere, only does a yes/no decision. if the site is not ok, it'll show a thing like when the connection is not secure or it was put on the safebrowsing list, except that you can't skip it, only option is to request parent permission.
and finally the age is set in the operating system, without verifying its truthiness, but once again requesting lock screen authentication.
oh and app installs need parent approval for kid accounts, like it should almost always be.

this way it's as private as it can get. the only way a website can find out information about you from this, is to log if your browser loaded the html but not any other resources, because that means you were caught in the age filter. but that's it.

there's multiple pieces in this that is not yet implemented, but they should be possible with not too much work.
this is all possible with open source code, if you make sure the kid can't install anything without parent approval. stores like fdroid could have some badge or something if a browser supports this kind of limitation.

I'm just waiting for the response to be something along the lines of...
"According to existing law (see Online Safety Act), websites are required to do age verification... blah blah blah, no changes will be made, thank you for your inquiry"

I assume "Republican" on this diagram is not used in the contemporary American sense. Otherwise it would be somewhere up in that little grey cloud.

In any case, official US politics takes place entirely within the top right quadrant, and UK politics seems to have retreated there too. Canada is in danger of getting up there as well. And we don't have any mechanism to vote our way out of that box, so change will have to come from action outside of electoral politics.

And giving them sweeping ability to track everybody via their identity papers, to see what websites and services they're using, what all their online identities are, etc.

They claim the info isn't being saved or passed on to the government to form a big surveillance database to one day use against people - sure, it's legal to, say, be gay or a socialist or of a particular religion today, but societies and regimes change, and the info they collect on you today may become ammunition against you in 10, 20, 40 years time.

But I don't for a moment believe their obvious lies.

This is nothing but authoritarian police state monitoring and control. It's extremely obvious. Yet, who are we to vote for in the next election? Not Labour, thanks to this (and a few other big reasons perhaps), not the Tories because, well, you've seen what they're like.

It's not impossible for a third party to be elected of course, not as impossible as places like the USA that have a very worryingly solidified two party system, it's just very unlikely.

Knowing the British people and their seeming apathy and poor judgement at scale these days I wouldn't be surprised if they elect the racist bigots at Reform - who ironically would be even more authoritarian and evil than what we have now.

As usual, there's no hope for the future and no possibility of good outcomes.

Humanity is doomed to repeat it's failures for all of history again and again, and we're just along for the miserable ride.