I'm actually surprised that I've encountered this (when ending up on a UK exit viewing porn).
It's super annoying to have to spend 15 seconds changing the exit on my VPN app and refreshing to make the age verification modal go away
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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Privacy
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don't worry, soon it'll be everywhere so you won't have to bother w switching your vpn.
Social media != Internet It doesn't cost much to get an instance for masto, a forum, ...
A part of the people can't leave FB, other Insta, other discord, others,... but each time something else arrives. Stop thinking that big techs are the omega. Think change. Get use to change.
Unfortunately, most people want a frictionless experience, they want to click the "Sign in with Google" button and never think about it again, the moment you have to register manually, even with an email and password, fetch a client from GitHub/GitLab, or worse create a wallet and understand cryptographic keys, 90+% of the population gives up.
It doesn't mean people are stupid, humans just evolved to pick the path of least resistance when it came to foraging for food, same principle applies to modern life.
People can't be experts at everything. If the IT industry is on big parts build on deception and lies it's not the user's fault that they don't have the time to learn about these systems when everyday life gives them more then enough to care about. You most definitely don't fully understand every aspect of life you partake in and based on that you also most definitely make bad choices on a regular basis.
Yea, this is exactly that reason why the people who do focus and spend time specializing in area of fast processing technology should also take care to make sure to cause a little harm to people as possible. Or there should be more oversight if those people are incapable of doing so themselves. For example, Google causes harm by invading privacy, which is unfortunately more profitable than enabling end-to-end encryption. I don’t know what could solve the problem, but there are surely options out there.
that's the whole point. they want people to be deanonymised. It's good for business if the big tech companies can identify you, without a doubt of who you are. This is their entire purpose.
Don't forget chilling free speech and the sister program to put back doors in, or otherwise destroy, private communication, polly faves.
We are well on our way towards a dystopia and by allowing people that are currently our "representatives" in every country in the government we have snowballed that descent, these greedy corrupt politicians will never stop.
people that are currently our “representatives” in every country
TBH I think like 99% of those reps just have no clue how tech works. Or what the impacts woulkd be of the laws they want to pass.
Of those 99%, many are actively hostile to privacy. But some are not hostile, just clueless. Which amounts to the same result in the end. Except maybe we have a chance to sway them.
Then they should step down and let people that know wtf is going on take charge, just because these old assholes can't let go of their "power" doesn't mean they have to right see every moment of our lives and also do you think they will allow themselves to be monitored? yeah most likely not, "sensitive secrets" and all that bullshit.
I would have had resisted posting the common framing in the title and used "Most age verification is identity verification" they themselves mention below. And, of course, what this means for future legality of privacy protection tools.
Im sorry but this blogpost is regurgitated by AI. They could at least make the effort of writing themselves.
What makes it seem that way? Doesn't read like AI to me, not a lot of vague fluff, consists of salient points and claims backed by links to relevant sources.
Yeah because that's what kills the internet.
Not ads everywhere, invasive data collection, AI slop flooding any and all search results, fascist propaganda at every corner...
No really, the internet was amazing before that!
Seriously though, the internet was already long dead, and if you know how to find the few places that are not too rotten, then you'll manage to avoid age verification as well. There is a lot of concerns to have for the state of the internet, but this is a small problem compared to things that are already there, and already make the whole web unbearable and unusable. LLMs are a much bigger problem for example.
This is a larger problem than ads and LLMs. It is a new level of invasive data connection and kills anonymity on any site that goes along with it. This is really bad even considering how things have been.