this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Looks like it were gonna go back to private VPNs with 10/20 people putting in each month to pay someone in a unrestricted area to run them a VPN.

Keep it small, make it look like enterprise kinda shit.

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago

I remember when you didn't have to have a VPN to enjoy the internet.

[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 11 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Coz thats the only place porn exists

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 8 points 23 hours ago

Policy makers so naive

[–] eletes@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago

Have the porn companies released numbers on how affected their traffic has been with an these new rules? I could see them not wanting to they're getting hurt but would be interesting to see

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Are they partnered up with VPN companies by any chance?

[–] wuffah@lemmy.world 154 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Sexuality is a human right, and controlling sexuality is an authoritarian tactic to manufacture compliance.

“Age verification” is not just a tool for elimination of Internet privacy, it’s also a tool for sexual control.

[–] manualoverride@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Someone has been reading 1984… I’m not disagreeing with you, just saying ‘hi fellow doom reader’.

[–] danh2os@piefed.social 66 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

2026 - 1984 = 42

o__O

[–] yetAnotherUser@lemmy.ca 54 points 1 day ago (11 children)

If you live in the UK or in another country where porn is being restricted:

  • Talk with friends and family about getting a VPN (everyone says good things about Mullvad VPN, so it's probably one of the best choices)
  • Learn to use the Tor network (it's really easy to start, and unlike popular belief, Tor isn't only for illegal activities)
  • Pressure MPs that didn't vote in favor of the age verification bill by sending emails to them about it so that they fight (or keep fighting) this age verification nonsense.

You don't need to be a porn addict to do these things. In fact, they have started with porn, but they may as well keep going and fight for age verification in other types of content, making access to said content way more difficult. The best thing you can do right now is to learn to fight back.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 4 points 15 hours ago

Don’t use tor for porn. Use i2p. You can torrent without breaking shit on i2p.

[–] SethTaylor@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

If you live in the UK or in another country where porn is being restricted: Talk with friends and family

Hmmmmm... Maybe not though

" Help me, stepbro. I can't access PornHub anymore 🥹 "

[–] UxyIVrljPeRl@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago

Im stuck in age-verification

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[–] tankplanker@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

UK is going to be requiring age verification for VPN access. https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-house-of-lords-votes-to-extend-age-verification-to-vpns

Will this mean all VPNs will comply? Obviously not, but the bigger names will either pull out or comply as we seeing with the bigger porn sites.

The next step after this will be criminalization of using a VPN without age verification.

[–] yetAnotherUser@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wait, WHAT? They already voted? I didn't expect that so soon...

[–] tankplanker@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

It was planned from the beginningas the real drivers behind the detail of the legislation, the security services, knew people would use VPNs and those have always been the main target.

Its why the legislation was written in the first place. Most people's identity is already tied to their connection via big tech social media. Its the people who use VPNs they can lose track of.

I would expect this to be a live requirement by the end of the year at the latest.

Just be glad the client side scanning keeps getting rejected thats in the same legislation.

[–] jmf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Advertising for mullvad harms the peer2peer network. (They blocked port forwarding and won't be bringing it back)

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Are there any VPNs that didn't? I couldn't really find any, and tbh it's not a massive issue for torrenting. I still upload a fair bit, but obviously not as much as I would be if I had ports open.

[–] Coleslaw4145@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

AirVPN allow port forwarding.

I use Mullvad for my day to day devices like my phone and laptop, and AirVPN in my homelab for things like torrenting.

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[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works -5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I will never understand why people insist on using VPNs in 2026. You are just moving a single point of failure elsewhere and paying someone to lie about spying on you. Move to i2p.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

vpn is too easy to track, thats why reddit immediately would recognize user and ban vpn users. on another site, they use private proxies mobile, residential, with anti-detect browsers(use to spoof your fingerprinting, canvas,,,etc) thats how they are using it with hordes of reddit accounts that wont get immediately detected.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 107 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Hey I heard that theres a Very Pretty Neat trick for Brits to "travel abroad" effortlessly

[–] SlacksMcTavish@lemmy.ml 70 points 2 days ago (8 children)

House of Lords voted for age verification on VPNs. Not for them of course.....

[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 30 points 2 days ago (9 children)

So rent a VPS abroad and run your own VPN from it. Comercial VPNs have a business to maintain so they've got to comply to keep operating and public advertising, but a privately run VPN just for yourself is just another TLS connection in a sea of other traffic.

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[–] warm@kbin.earth 84 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Good job UK, you will push children to dangerous unmoderated sites instead! All in the name of state surveillance!

[–] manualoverride@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This will lead to, sexual blackmail of children, suicide and financial fraud.

You should thank the UK for sacrificing so many of its citizens to show the world what peak government stupidity looks like. We thought the point was made with Brexit, but the UK says “hold my beer” one more time.

[–] abbiistabbii@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 18 hours ago

Which will be reacted to with even more authoritarian shit. 

[–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You think it'll be the bad example other countries learn from, but loads of other countries are already following suit.

[–] manualoverride@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ah yes America, the embodiment of “if he jumped off a cliff would you do it as well?” Followed by “Hold my Bud Light”

[–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

I don't even mean the USA, loads of EU countries, Australia, etc.

[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (9 children)

What would we even call a decentralized porn site?

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

Wouldn’t the ideal be self hosted content made by the people hosting it? Obviously there’s no mechanical means to block people from uploading content that they don’t make, but those kinds of ethical questions and control of access can be handled by federation networks.

Decentralizing these things could lead to a better way for sex workers to work safely (SESTA/FOSTA closed up a lot of safer avenues for sex work in the US) There’s a lot of rules for trust that you can build into these systems, things like basic encryption with private and public keys.

Someone who didn’t want their content online could take it down easily. They could easily gate it - like, think about where most of the profit the actresses and actors videos go to now? If you are watching stuff for free on a website, it’s the website getting ad revenue and maybe the company. Do they get royalties? Workers should own the means of their reproduction.

[–] SethTaylor@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago
[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 50 points 1 day ago

circlejerk?

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

More importantly, what type of content would be most popular in fediverse?

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Yall may wanna step in and nip that kind of authoritarianism in the bud because it doesn't get easier when it's matured.

[–] tidderuuf@lemmy.world 41 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh no... Let's just Google what other porn sites are out there. Oh look 1,642,000 results found...

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's not the point. This is a protest by the company running these sites against a system that's not fit for its claimed purpose (age restriction of websites) but is very fit for surveillance.

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