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.

When is DeviantArt going to demand my ID, I wonder, it is chock full of all manner of fetish material.

I'm on the fence, because do kids need to be seeing glimmer choke down on a futa She-Ra? No. But does the UK Guv need to de-anonymize the internet to stop it? Fuck. No.

Age verification is a security nightmare, you shouldn't support it. Unlike you, I hope Deviantart never asks for users' IDs.

Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards)

When the Snowden Revelations came out, the UK had even more civil society surveillance than the US.

As a consequence of those revelations, in the US some of the surveillance was walked back, whilst in the UK the Government just passed a law that retroactively made the whole thing legal, issued a bunch of D-Notices (the UK system of Press Censorship) to shut up the Press, got the Editor of the newspaper that brought it out in the UK (The Guardian) kicked out, and the Press there never talked about it again.

Also, let's not forget the UK has the biggest number of surveillance cameras per-capita in the World.

Oh, and they have a special and separate Surveillance Tribunal (the Investigatory Powers Tribunal) were the lawyers for the side other than the State are not allowed to be present in certain sessions, see certain evidence or even get informed of the final judgement unless their side wins.

They easily have the most extreme regime of Civil Society Surveillance in Europe, and in the World are probably second only to the likes of North Korea and China.

Britain is well beyond merely "headed towards" Big Brother and has been for at least a decade.

The full spectrum is really more like “authoritarian vs libertarian”. Political policy should really be split into two different spectrums. On one spectrum, you have financial policy. On the other, you have social policy. The two normally get lumped together because politicians campaign on both simultaneously. But in reality, they’re two separate policies. So the political spectrum should look less like a single left/right line, and more like an X/Y graph with individual points for each person’s ideology. Something more like this:

On this graph, as you go farther left, the government has more ownership and provides more, (and individuals own less because the government provides more for their needs). As you go farther up the chart, social policy gets more authoritarian. So for example, something on the far right bottom corner would be the Cyberpunk 2077/The Outer Worlds end-stage capitalist where megacorps inevitably own everything and have their own private laws.

Once you separate the two policies into a graph (instead of just a left/right line) it becomes clear why “small government” doesn’t necessarily correspond to “fewer laws” when dealing with politicians.

Imagine if people could choose what country they're browsing from.

All of this is precluded by you using a browser that is authorised and approved by the government.

How did neo-liberalism make it to the left?

There's a third option: taking responsibility as a community to educate kids on the harmful effects of being exposed to sexual content at a young age, and then letting them make that mistake if they really really want to. Put up a warning about how porn can damage the mind. And then give them the same freedoms as adults (when it comes to passive consumption), because restricting their freedoms would restrict everyone's.

The precise location of individual points really depends on personal biases, but I agree that the “Republican” point is wrong on this chart; Pretty much all of America’s political discussion takes place on the right side of the graph.

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

That's not a third option, that's the option I outlined in my comment directly above yours. You miss when you clicked a reply button, or something?

Nah I don't see it.