So, to clear the air, no I am not dead or vanished by some secret police, yet. And granted, I doubt I will but who’s to say at this point with people getting arrested under terrorism laws for supporting the 🍉 action group (not mentioning the full name out of caution).
But before the meat of this, some good news! I have received the news that I have passed in all my university modules, meaning I’m on track to graduate with a BSc in Biomedical Sciences later this year.
Now, about what I’m writing about (and what the title is about):
https://www.theverge.com/news/704468/bluesky-age-verification-uk-online-safety-act
This FUCKING AWFUL bill.
Not just bluesky’s unfortunate involvement but the entire KOSA bill, what the actual fuck were they thinking with this?
In an attempt to further track citizen’s actions online, the UK Government (In particular the Tories spearheaded this, and Labour is following up on it), have pushed through a bill that forces ANY platform with ANY NSFW content to perform ID checks for UK citizens to even use the platform, they’re doing this under the guise of keeping children safe online which while a noble cause; this is not the way to do it. Doubly so that they’re forcing websites to implement this change by the 25th of July (yes, less than 14 days) or block UK users all together, otherwise they will assumedly face sanctions from the government.
This is going to cause so much stress and panic for companies and shut off so many UK users from even accessing common social medias without giving up their ID or face. It’s a disgrace frankly and is easily one of the more authoritarian moves of recent.
This is also a good time to mention (and no this is not sponsored) that Mullvad is a VERY cheap and entirely anonymous (no logs either) VPN that I uses regularly. For any UK folks I highly recommend getting a paid vpn like Mullvad or Proton (those two in particular) before the KOSA crackdown so you can still use the internet normally.
Don’t use a free vpn, you’re the product.