just get a vpn: https://mullvad.net/
Use a VPN. Even if the current environment of aggressive puritan censorship weren’t happening, everyone should use one.
Here are two of the best.
+1 for Mullvad.
Will need an alternative if you need to port forward, but for general use you can’t fault them
windscribe $1/month.
https://www.torproject.org/download/
Probably a good idea for things other than Lemmy, too, the way that things are going.
thx!
Theoretically if you would host your own Lemmy/PieFed server then you would be able to access everything (as long as you host it outside of the UK I guess). And then you could keep being moderator on those communities with your new account on your own instance.
That only helps you out though, if the communities were UK specific ones and other people from the UK meet to participate then there is no other way than moving them to a UK friendly instance.
What happened? Is it the instances fault or UK’s?
UK is implementing law for age verification on nsfw content, that’s the jist of it.
Some services are choosing to simply not serve the UK rather than deal with the faff and/or the privacy concerns. lemmy.zip where I am from is one of them.
Blame lies squarely with the UK gov & Online Safety Act. It’s a shit law made to pander to the ‘think of the children’ types that are incapable of parenting, also coming with the bonus of grift and doxxing concerns by companies that move in to provide the service.
I don’t blame any site operator that chooses to simply not play. VPN goes on, normal service resumes.
It’s also several hundred pages long. Fair few web forums are closing because of it if they are UK hosted too.
It would be interesting to get a legal opinion on what about it actually impacts lemmy instances tbh. Obviously one option is to go “lol fuck off” if the UK complain and you are not in the UK.
“It’s a shit law made to pander to the *‘think of the children’* types that are incapable of parenting”
This.
UK has always been a nanny state. Surprised it took them so long.
I lived there for 10 years from 2000, it seemed to come uo every year or two whil I was there - fuck them
The EU is also adopting similar regulations.
Are you talking about chat control?
It was rejected once, and will be rejected again. At least if people mobilize a bit against it. There’s a long way from Commission proposal to law.
Equating the proposal of a law with the adaptation of it is highly misleading. The EU is a complex institution where different bodies are pulling in different directions.
I think they are talking about age verification for something like porn ^^'!
For the chatcontrol thing, it’s only a matter of when and not if.
I would like to know which EU law it is they are takling about, aa they proclaim pretty boldly that the Union is adapting “similar Regulations”. I follow EU politics somewhat closely and I have no idea what they are talking about.
The Commission has published some guidelines and recommendations, which are as legally binding as a fart.
As for chat control: With that attitude, probably.
To give you a concrete exemple, while it isn’t directly relates to EU laws, France enforced age verification for pornsite to protect the children !
So it seems to me they are slowly, bit by bit, enforcing those stupid laws not EU wise, but country by country ^^!
Yeah, there’s no guarantees against stupidity in the member states. That’s easier to reverse than if it happens in an EU regulation.
This kind of misinformation is why people get confused and vote for right wing eurosceptic parties, which ironically tends to be the parties most eager to strip people’s rights away.
On EU age verification: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-verification
As for chat control: With that attitude, probably.
That attitude isn’t the problem.
Look around on Lemmy. People are saying that the EU needs to enforce its law against Big Tech. It must protect its citizens. It’s about “our values”. Blah blah blah…
When that happens, you immediately get age verification. Germany had a social media service called StudiVZ. It was forced to segregate minors to a separate service. American social media not doing that is an example of them not following our laws and our values (not mine, not sure whose).
These big corpos make big money by enabling pedos to groom children. We need to hold them accountable and force them to stop that! Does that make sense? Well, now you have to make Big Tech read private messages to search for suspicious activity. There’s your chat control.
What exactly do you think a Commission blueprint is?
It’s nothing but soft power and hardly even that, little more than just thinking out loud. It has no implications whatsoever unless member states decide they want to implement the ideas nationally, in which case it’s on them. The Commission cannot implement EU law unilaterally.
As for chat contol, that’s about banning true encryption. Very different from regulating big tech.
The UK enacted age verification, the instance said fuck that. So, more or less, the UK’s fault.
UK, this is hitting basically all websites. Any site hosting adult content has to verify user ages for anyone in the UK, and instead of doing that many smaller sites are just geoblocking the UK. Easy to get around with a VPN, still absurd it’s happening.
Tunnelbear has a free 2GB a month one - not enough for a lot of use probably, but an easy to test if a paid VPN will do what you need.
Windscribe also has 2Gb free or 10Gb free per month if you provide and email and let them spam you.
If you want to be part of a bot net sure.
I’ve not had any issues with them. It’s a pretty user friendly VPN app, and having a small allowance you can test it with before buying is pretty handy. Most other VPNs you have to pay up before you can test them AFAIK.
