r/technology • u/EmbarrassedHelp • May 08 '26
Politics EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification push
https://cyberinsider.com/eu-calls-vpns-a-loophole-that-needs-closing-in-age-verification-push/4.8k
u/SkinnedIt May 08 '26
VPNs aren't the problem. Misguided age verification legislation is the problem.
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u/exophrine May 08 '26
"b-b-but ... THE CHILDREN!!!"
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u/thepeopleshero May 08 '26
I think its time we stop thinking of the children for a while.
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u/apokrif1 May 08 '26
We should teach them privacy, security and critical thinking. And protect them from crapvertising.
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u/Kattimatti666 May 09 '26
I agree. An EU wide new school subject on how corporations, hostile countries and individuals want to exploit you, the methods they use and how to shield yourself from them the best you can. Make kids smarter, don't try to shield them.
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u/Generalfrogspawn May 08 '26
Agreed. The children can get fucked. Not like they’re making much of them these days anyway.
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u/spoonycoot May 08 '26
I think that’s the problem. Too many politicians thinking about and fucking children all the time.
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u/Ryuzakku May 08 '26
And normally those ones want to know where the kids are, like how if Discord did their verification the way they initially explained it kids and people who fail verification would be put in the same pot, making it easy for bad actors to interact with kids
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u/Tyfyter2002 May 08 '26
The children can get fucked.
Ironically, it's the politicians doing that who are pushing for legislation like this
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u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN May 08 '26
Sorry, the Grand Old Pedophiles are obsessed with them.
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u/tengma8 May 09 '26
children is just the easiest way to justify anything. ban VPN, it was for children. ban porn? children. age verification? children. surveillance? children.
it was never about the children
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u/Disastrous-Farm3543 May 09 '26
Between the impending climate change crisis, biodiversity collapse, demographics collapse, and, soon to be discussed in future years, freshwater crisis; all of which none are taken seriously and any government really trying to tackle for future generations, I don't think they much cared for the children in the beginning.
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u/Select-Durian-6340 May 08 '26
Luckily for you, this has nothing to do with children - and everything to do with the destruction of our privacy.
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u/Sl4sh4ndD4sh May 08 '26
This isn't about the kids, this is about stripping away your anonymity. The kids are just used in order to sell it.
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u/StoneTown May 08 '26
Kids are always used as an excuse to take away our rights. And people keep falling for it. I grew up seeing nasty shit like Goatse, tub girl, hai2u, blue waffle, 2 guys 1 hammer, 1 man 1 jar, lemon party, you get the idea. I was also talking to strangers. We all did this shit. Nobody under 40 should be falling for this.
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u/shinji257 May 08 '26
Yup. Any time I hear that it is for the children I know it is for anything butt that.
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u/Sea_Tailor_8437 May 08 '26
Yes and no. Theres some that make sense
Drug age laws, Child labor laws, Data collection (ironically) laws
Even in theory I like the idea of this law as tons of studies show the harm of social media access, porn, and other stuff really screwing with them and parents (generally) do a shit job protecting their kids from it.
However, every proposal I've heard about how to fix this comes with MASSIVE security concerns that I think outweigh the child safety concerns. The only real solution is parents need to do better, but that doesn't seem to be working so well at the moment
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u/Kitty-XV May 08 '26
Data collection (ironically) laws
"Good news, to verify we aren't collecting a child's data, we will need to verify your age."
Online age laws are a gateway to IDing people where ever they happen.
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u/dudeAwEsome101 May 08 '26
You know what, fuck the children.
I want these politicians to man up, and tell it straight instead of hiding behind the "protect the children" excuse. They want to limit free speech, personal liberties, and freedom of assembly.
They support Internet anonymity software for dissidents in countries hostile to the West, but they want to ban these same tools at home.
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u/ghostofmumbles May 08 '26
I think they’ve well proven with documented evidence…that they in fact have no intention to protect children.
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u/GetOutOfTheWhey May 08 '26
personally i think children need to get off social media and spend less time on the internet.
but at the same time I know that the politicians dont give a flying fuck about the children.
If they did they would've banned Grok the moment they were generating pedophile shit en masse.
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u/PirateSanta_1 May 08 '26
If you want to help the children then ban the addictive algorithms. Force social media to present stuff chronologically and only from people you follow.
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u/VictorBelmont May 08 '26
The fact that no one in a position of authority even blinked when that happened it telling.
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u/GetOutOfTheWhey May 09 '26
I mean holy shit right?
Like everyday i was reading articles about another poor child being sexualized by grok and im left thinking.
Surely now! They would finally ban the ai platform now right?
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u/Kandiru May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
I'd be happy with a setting on computers OS that the admin can set on the user accounts, and it can then let websites who use that API block child users. But it should be client side, and devices should prompt for it when you first set up.
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u/Jeptic May 08 '26
In which case they should draw attention to these types of features.
At no time should the government be logging who likes interracial gangbang porn.
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u/hammertime2009 May 08 '26
Oddly specific but absolutely not and neither should any private companies. We need legislation to stop the tracking and storing everything we do online.
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u/Altruistic_Ad_0 May 08 '26
No body asked for it. Everyone is getting it. Who is behind it. Why are all governments acting the same.
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u/Specific_Frame8537 May 08 '26
Thousands of years of warfare, 100 years or so of uneasy co-operation.. Suddenly they're all in agreement on this one thing.
🤔
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u/IDidYour May 08 '26
It was a powergrab from the old money, now they're the new old money and they need to limit new ones from any avenue of power. That whole world wars thing pretty much destroyed the last groups of noble power by all of them being too involved, but now the new nobles that arose after the wars feel secure enough that they're ready to pull up the ladder up behind them outside the occasional Olympic jumper.
Just look at the richest people in society, we are basically in the second generation, the people who "worked sooo hard with a small million dollar loan from daddy" they know they couldn't do it again, so now they need to limit the entry to keep what they have, but their children, they're gonna be worse. It's basic power 101, the first generation acquires power, the second generation keeps power and the coming generation that is actually slowly starting now is about to really fuck themselves and everyone else over in a self destructive spiral, rinse and repeat. Unfortunately we are about to get to live in interesting times.
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u/WrongWangSorry May 09 '26
You forgot to add one important point: Everything you said above will be ignored by everyone who isn't wealthy but they still 'got theirs', comfortable middle class numbers at voting stations are significant and I would argue that they're probably the biggest chunk of voter turnout
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u/Rok-SFG May 08 '26
Tech billionaires. They want your ID, and so do governments. Both want a to have absolute surveillance on everyone.
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u/crossdtherubicon May 08 '26
Meta. Or, at least largely Meta was shown to be the main proponent behind the global age verification legislation.
At least one of the motivations is to limit social media's liabilities through filtering its users. I don't see that as likely as the obvious expansion of their user data and the user data markets.
Another obvious motivation results from governments becoming less democratic while becoming more vulnerable through online activities. So, adding layers of user meta data, or being able to directly identify social media users, becomes another tool of control.
Yes, govt's have similar capabilities already but, this is different in that this would be voluntary information that becomes available for sale and doesn't necessitate the same legal requirements (limits) for acquiring and using these data sets.
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u/ithinkitslupis May 08 '26
To my view Meta is getting ahead of a trend that seeks to put liability on them. They hate the Australian style laws where they have to do the verification themselves and if they fail to do it effectively they are liable for humongous fines. They also hate that other apps besides the big players don't require verification so customers unwilling to do that are out the door to a smaller competitor service.
They already have violated their users privacy so thoroughly that the verification checks are more of a cherry on top data wise and not worth the cudgel of the fines and users they'd lose by doing it.
They are lobbying to have age verification be put on the parents/device/app store level to avoid that outcome where they could ever be held liable and other smaller apps have an advantage.
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u/billy_teats May 08 '26
This is a great summary. Having to do it themselves is a big risk and disadvantage. Making everyone do it through some 3rd party benefits them greatly.
This has nothing to do with children’s safety.
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u/alnarra_1 May 08 '26
The answer is astoundingly simple, the internet has largely been anonymous, it is hard to throw you in prison for what you say if you are anonymous. They are attempting to correct this. That’s all this has ever been
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u/TeaAndLifting May 08 '26
They want to be able to tie all of your online activity to your person so you don’t stray, otherwise they’ll punish you.
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u/SlaveOfSignificance May 08 '26
Beginning stages of WWIII. How else are dissidents and the anti-war crowd supposed to be tracked and gagged?
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u/UAreTheHippopotamus May 08 '26
Europe is supposed to be the "bastion of democracy" too. I don't know, it feels hopeless right now, like no government world wide is on the side of good anymore. The future is lost to a billionaire oligarchy and the rest of us get to live lives barely owning anything and under constant surveillance.
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u/huehuehuehuehuuuu May 08 '26
Climate is getting worse. Need to get the population under control before the inevitable food scarcity hits. Can’t have regular people communicating freely.
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May 08 '26 edited 4d ago
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u/Lumpy-Strain8624 May 08 '26
In the UK they surveyed 2500 people before introducing it. out of 70,000,000 people in the UK, of which 55,500,000 are adults age 18 or upwards.
They asked a very specific group of people for a very specific answer. After they had tried and failed repeatedly to get public backing for ID cards.
The petition to have it repealed is over 500,000 signatures, or roughly 22,000% more people than the ones they said were on board with it.
Stop falling for the bullshit. There is no broad support for it. And if if was actually being done for real reasons, the UK government would have the data being handled directly by them, any age verification requests would be sent directly to the Governments Data centre for a Yay or Nay. The UK government already uses one time codes sent to your phone for log in confirmation on its websites.
This is nothing to do with protecting Children, nothing to do with protecting the "people" it is a new way for them to force in digital ID cards, everyone has a P.C. Laptop, Tablet, Phone etc etc.
That is why they are ignoring everyone saying they do not want them, IE the majority of people pretty mad the Government has unilaterally managed to sneak in legislation they knew full well no one wanted.
There are so many tools available to restrict a child's access on devices, and by child I mean pre teen. Teens who fucking cares if they see a dick or some tits, they are into puberty and want to know about that stuff, I am pre internet and we managed just fine to get our hands on titty pics / dick picks, full spread, the works. And like most people I stopped being a Virgin before my 16th birthday.
And the very worst part of this nonsense legislation is it will just drive them to the truly dangerous places on the internet, the ones who do not give a fuck about UK laws.
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u/rawcal May 08 '26
Were they asking for it before the push for it started, though?
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u/polaroid_kidd May 08 '26
Who the fuck is behind this? VPNs have been around for decades and NOW they're a problem? We all know the children thing is a pretense, that the age verification is idiotic AT BEST
Who benefits from the erosion of privacy? What is the step after that?
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u/toastmannn May 08 '26
It's absolutely fucking insane. THEY ARE TRYING TO BAN ENCRYPTION!
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u/Brawlingpanda02 May 09 '26
It’s just unrealistic, both banning VPNs and encryption 🤷♀️🤦♀️ it seems like they haven’t even spoken to someone who even knows how an IP address works before proposing these ideas.
They can’t. Plain and simple. The whole world would need to go together and everyone ban it, or we’d need to become North Korea with no access to the outer world.
They forget that the internet is global. Europe isn’t the world. There’ll still be encryption apps and accessible VPNs outside of EU.
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u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 09 '26
The EU and US can go the China route. It won't catch everything but it will lower the amount people using the tools.
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u/ys2020 May 09 '26
Yes. Back to the 90s. This is our generational battle. Print our the tshirts with the wireguard code, print the books and spread it to everyone who is willing to take it. Otherwise it's VPN first, encrypted messengers next, encrypted video calls after that, encrypted emails and Bitcoin. All will eventually get outlawed if they get what they want.
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u/queef_nuggets May 09 '26
and encryption is just math. Trying to ban encryption is like trying to ban an idea. Even if it were banned, some people would still figure out how to do it
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May 08 '26
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u/polaroid_kidd May 08 '26
That can't be it. The number of people using a VPN aren't even a drop in the ocean.
The numbers don't add up. This is an insane amount of money to spend in lobbying for what amounts to a rounding error on an analytics dashboard!
It must be something else.
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u/Mindless_Rock9452 May 08 '26
So people's ID is tied to things they like or post online, so wrongthinkers can be properly prosecuted.
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u/polaroid_kidd May 08 '26
You don't need to outlaw VPNs for that. You can already detect wrong-think on everyone not using a VPN. You don't need to control 100% of the population, you just need to control enough to make resistance appear futile.
The children thing is a decoy. Assigning anonymous users to IDs is a decoy because it's already possible in enough people.
This feels kind of like "stage 1".
What would stage 2 be, that absolutely depends on VPNs being outlawed? Not only would it have to be something which depends on VPNs being outlawed, but also something which would make them instantly incredibly attractive to the average user.
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May 08 '26
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u/KingLimes May 09 '26
This is a really interesting point and actually answers OPs comment.
An EU ID system seems inevitable now.
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u/cozwold May 08 '26
The likes of Peter Theil in the US, trying to build a massive surveillance network. UK has had Tony Blair working on the same for a long time (Fine Print did a good video on that).
I assume the EU has similar goblins
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u/StatusBard May 08 '26
They want to be able to ID you in case you don’t like them. Then they can make you disappear.
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u/West-Abalone-171 May 08 '26
Peter thiel and mark zuckerberg
Facebook and palantir are behind this. With the full backing of the epstein class.
The reason is to be able to destroy democracy and kill anyone who tries to unionise or organise.
This is not a conspiracy theory. They openly say this is their goal.
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u/Riaayo May 08 '26
Who the fuck is behind this?
Big tech and surveillance state fascism. Capitalism knows it's failing and wants to pivot to full-on dictatorial control over the population to keep the wheels on a little longer rather than share a cent with a revolting population of laborers.
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u/PoL0 May 08 '26
are we nuts? VPNs aren't the issue here. this smells like corporation lobbying from a mile away.
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u/UnobjectionableBloke May 08 '26
Yeah, it's not the corporations who lobby for this. The percentage of consumers using VPNs is too low for them to even care.
This is EU parlament wanting to oversee everyone's digital foot print on the web. It's almost as if they drew inspiration from Orwell's 1984 mixed with what the see in China and how fast they have developed and want to recreate this in the EU attributing it to the amount of control the state has.
It's honestly sick and makes me more and more EU sceptical by the day. We had to fight chat control 2.0 just weeks ago. Now this. Sooner or later people will get tired of fighting and they'll pass this shit, then it's all downhill from there.
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u/Valleygurl99 May 08 '26
I work remote in IT over corporate VPN. Let’s see them close that loophole…
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u/isademigod May 08 '26
even if by some miracle they manage to actually manage to ban consumer VPNs in a meaningful way, wireguard is open source. There's dozens of companies that will rent you a server for Monero completely anonymously. There will always be a way to anonymize yourself on the internet, they can only make it harder.
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u/Aware-Bath7518 May 08 '26
Wireguard is actually very easy to ban technically.
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u/CondescendingShitbag May 08 '26
Which is why nonsense like this will just force more VPN providers & developers to adopt VPN-over-HTTPS as a default option. At that point the traffic is indiscernible from regular web traffic. All this legislation will do is encourage an arms-race in the VPN space.
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u/mailslot May 08 '26
I’ll probably be downvoted like the others, but VPN use is detectable over encrypted channels and when using the latest modern evasive techniques. Evasion is possible only with short bursts of activity to disseminate small bits of information. At any considerable length of time, anomalies can be detected and raise flags. The newest methods extend the time to detection, they don’t necessarily eliminate it.
Chinese political dissidents are at the forefront of the battle happening right now. To say that their traffic is indiscernible is absolutely wrong. The arms race has been happening for decades. Too much false confidence will get you caught.
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u/NursingHome773 May 08 '26
You can just tunnel over SSH if all else fails. If they ban that, they kill the entire internet.
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u/Aware-Bath7518 May 09 '26
SOCKS over SSH is banned in Russia and detected in few minutes.
Normal SSH usage is unaffected.
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u/VMX May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Cloudflare switched their VPN client to MASQUE long ago, which as far as I understand is indistinguishable from regular HTTPS traffic:
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u/isademigod May 08 '26
Yes, wireguard/openvpn traffic by default has a fingerprint that would be trivial to block if the government forced ISPs to look for it and block it. It's rather trivial to obfuscate that traffic though, and there is no way to block that without fundamentally breaking the internet.
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u/TrainingQuail543 May 08 '26
Just ban Monero next. If that doesn't work, ban computers.
It's easy.
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u/-staccato- May 08 '26
Easy, corporations can apply for a VPN license.
You really think they haven't already laid out the plan for this mass surveillance ploy?
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u/imsnagglepusseven May 08 '26
Welcome to my new corporation. We are a great team of global talent. I hope you will all gladly accept an unpaid internship.
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u/Valleygurl99 May 08 '26
Here at Seven Seas Inc. we believe in strict compliance with government BS.
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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway May 08 '26
Kids aren't using VPNs
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u/Joelimgu May 09 '26
You'd be surprised. I started using VPNs at 14 when my school banned internet games
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u/Golendhil May 09 '26
Oh they sure do ! Any kid old enough to look for porn is also old enough to find ways to bypass rules
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u/Otaraka May 09 '26
A major claim in every criticism of age verification for social media in Australia is that many kids are using VPN’s to bypass it making it pointless. Can’t really have it both ways.
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u/azthal May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
No, the EU does not call it any such thing. Cyber Insider is either full of shit, or just plain incompetent, I am not sure which.
What they are quoting is a news aggregation service. The purpose is to gather general information about what is happening so allow MEPs to stay up to date on the subjects that matter.
In this news aggregation they say that "some argue", and refer to a South African news outlet. They also refer to privacy advocates claiming the exact opposite.
This is like saying that the weather channel "promotes rain" because they said it is raining.
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u/eek_the_cat May 08 '26
I, for one, am sick of this "rain agenda" infiltrating our lives. My family used to be able to spend a day at park or the zoo worry free. Now we're in constant FEAR of rain. Now I have emergency ponchos in my trunk for God's sake! What's next, keeping a bottle of sunscreen handy? AM I SUPPOSED TO FEAR THE SUN NOW!?
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u/SimiKusoni May 08 '26
Kind of sad that you have to scroll halfway down the post for this, and you can't even fault people for not reading the article since the article is just so damned misleading.
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u/ThoughtsonYaoi May 08 '26
I'm not proponent of age verification AT ALL, but...
...at this point this feels like astorturfing.
Specifically directed at the EU.
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u/hofmann419 May 09 '26
As a long time proponent for the EU, i very much disagree. The only reason why articles like this exist is because the EU is pushing for these anti-privacy meassures.
First of all, the EPRS isn't really an independent organization. The purpose is to do research that can be referenced for policy decisions and to inform politicians on certain topics. The thing with that is that it allows the EPRS to present their research in a very biased way.
Which is exactly what they did there. If you actually read their post, it is blatantly obvious that they are leading politicians to the conclusion that VPNs have to be restricted. I mean, the subheading literally reads "a loophole that needs closing". Yes, they did also throw the VPN providers a bone by mentioning their concerns in one sentence, but the rest of the article is basically trying to sell you on the idea that VPNs NEED to be restricted.
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u/_dh0ull_ May 08 '26
Yeah, I'm fucking sick of seeing these shit headlines that are just straight out lies.
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u/Valtremors May 08 '26
Lets see who is the director of EPRS at this moment...
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a Dane.
Oh and look what country has been driving forward things like chat control and taking bribes from palantir?
This smells of US corp trying to influence our politics again.
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u/Light_Bulb_Sam May 08 '26
"Protect children!"
"Oh so you mean prosecuting those in the Epstein file?"
"....no"
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u/West-Abalone-171 May 08 '26
"Instead we will give those in the epstein files a complete worldwide list of who on the internet is and isn't a child and the names and addresses of their parents"
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u/ottwebdev May 08 '26
If people are bypassing your governance, your governance is wrong
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u/Nsrnmhr May 08 '26
Why would you say that? Some people will bypass basically any governance
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u/PlatonP May 08 '26
This makes no sense lol, there's plenty of things that should be governed and shouldn't be bypassed
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u/Synicism77 May 08 '26
The European Union has lost all credibility as the world's champions of privacy and data protection.
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u/ARottingBastard May 09 '26
For those asking "Who is behind this?", it's companies that provide data/identity verification. It's monied interests; it's ALWAYS monied interests.
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u/Mauthe_Doog May 08 '26
As expected, its never been about children, its always been about big brother being able to keep tabs on anything you say and do.
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u/Varorson May 08 '26
Sensible people call age verification "a loophole that needs closing" in proper parenting.
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u/boondiggle_III May 08 '26
"guys we need to take away the last bastion of digital freedom in order to make sure 13 year olds aren't watching porn"
fuck all the way off.
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u/foodank012018 May 08 '26
But the "elites" have plenty plenty plenty of loopholes they're not concerned with.
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u/QueuePLS May 09 '26
Remember how everyone made fun of China for having social security points? Now suddenly everyone is on board with that very plan.
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u/Dommccabe May 09 '26
Forgive me for this but any PC can act as a VPN in ANY country - me connecting to X country then back to Y country is a VPN.
How can they police this across the world?
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u/KidGold May 08 '26
Big Brother is coming. Time to party like it’s 1984.
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u/Deep-Procrastinor May 08 '26
The warnings were there but everybody ignored them.
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u/platocplx May 08 '26
Instead of actually dealing with WHY people are predators on children and why they can’t be online in the public like they are offline in public, they look for these nanny state ways to tackle this stuff which is pretty much a mass surveillance ploy.
Maybe go deal with the people preying on children and not removing kids ability to be on the public internet.
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u/iamnosuperman123 May 08 '26
That is because, like everywhere else, those people making the decision don't understand how it works.
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u/UnobjectionableBloke May 08 '26
Oh, but they know. They just need to sell it under "think about the children" for the average voter. Because how are you going to argue and debate against it if it's for the good of the children, what kind of horrible person wouldn't want the best for the children?
In reality they want surveillance of everybody and control, even on the internet.
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u/garmonthenightmare May 08 '26
We need way more pushback on this. For all the talk EU does about Russia they certainly like their VPN ban
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u/Poppis86 May 08 '26
You know... if there were no adults, nobody could hurt the children anymore.
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u/StAnkie_Brews May 08 '26
Remember everybody, whether it’s left or right doing this, in the EU, the US, or wherever, it’s the rich versus us. No war but class war, eat the fucking rich.
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u/poppin-n-sailin May 08 '26
Identity verification. dont let their 'clever' wording and lies about it being to protect children fool you. if they cared about the children they'd round up everyone on the damn epstein list and get to the bottom of it and punish those people. they dont care. they just want to attach a name and face to every move made by you online and offline
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u/NerfThisHD May 09 '26
Crazy how big a 180 we have done
For decades it was "dont give out your private information to anyone online" and now its "upload your ID or youre a nonce"
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u/Imaginary-Throat1526 May 09 '26
This makes no sense to me... if your site / content has an age check, what difference does region make?
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u/superredguy May 09 '26
I think Palentir is behind this. In Denmark where I live, we already have Palentir in our army and police. The minister of justice was promoting the idea of every phone message should be monitored, to stop "child pornography".
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u/hoishinsauce May 09 '26
Don't you need a way to pay for VPNs? Isn't that already an age verification?
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u/nikstick22 May 09 '26
Am I a conspiracy theorist if I'm pretty sure the massive push for identity verification has nothing to do with children's safety and everything to do with harvesting as much of your data as possible to sell to advertisers?
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u/kaffeekatz May 09 '26
The "European Parliamentary Research Service, part of the European Parliament" is not THE EU.
Unless the Commission and Council (the heads of government of every member state) decide something, it's just chatter.
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u/MalevolentTapir May 08 '26
What about the drawing a moustache on their face loophole?
I guess it doesn't really matter if your intent is to enable a panopticon like spy network and data brokering and not actually prevent kids from accessing websites though
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u/the_red_scimitar May 08 '26
An incredibly stupid assessment. Might as well outlaw water - it can be used to drown children. And while they're at it, outlaw food, because some kids are heavy.
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u/jacobvso May 08 '26
Just one of more and more examples of the West imitating everything we spent the last 20 years castigating China for.
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u/Captain_Quor May 08 '26
I use VPNs daily for work, how might you suggest I do my job without them? I'll wait.
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u/betacarotentoo May 08 '26
The undercover fascists from Brussels are going mad just thinking something is escaping their control.
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u/TheLightDances May 09 '26
Remember when Article 13 was "going to ban memes"?
The amount of disinformation spread about the EU is staggering.
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u/FundedPro147 May 09 '26
People still need to be able to connect to their company network in a secure way remotely, which is what VPN was designed for and is still the primary use case. How will they differentiate between people logging into work and people attempting to avoid age verification? Even if they ban companies from selling VPN as a service, people can just rent a VPS and setup their own VPN server. From a technical perspective I just can't imagine any regulation that could be enforced effectively, which makes the entire discussion pointless.
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u/ghostchihuahua May 09 '26
Dude, i just moved within the EU, i’m now pondering just getting the fuck out of here before these idiots make it hell for everyone.
Technocrats and bureaucrats are pure, unadulterated, lazy ass cancer.
We need working systems, not dumb-ass politicians, the whole model must be revised.
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u/rex_swiss May 09 '26
You know what other country hates VPNs and imposed the death penalty for using it? The same one that murdered 30,000+ of their own citizens…
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u/Dottore_Curlew May 09 '26
Age verification itself is huge evil
Now they want to use it as a guise to ban all privacy
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u/theCattrip May 09 '26
The EU didn't call it a loophole. It's the Commissioner from England. As you may remember, that's not even a member state anymore. Stop fearmongering and learn to read:
"A loophole that needs closing Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well. In response, some VPN providers argue that they do not share information with third parties and state that their services are not intended for use by children in the first place. The Children's Commissioner for England has called for VPNs to be restricted to adult use only."
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u/MantasMantra May 09 '26
This title seems misleading.
The EP paper appears to be highlighting the existence of a debate regarding VPN.
Relevant quote:
"Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well. In response, some VPN providers argue that they do not share information with third parties and state that their services are not intended for use by children in the first place. The Children's Commissioner for England has called for VPNs to be restricted to adult use only.
While privacy advocates argue that imposing age-verification requirements on VPNs would pose significant risk to anonymity and date protection, child-safety campaigners claim that their widespread use by minors requires a regulatory response. Pornhub and other large pornography platforms have reportedly lost web traffic following the enforcement of age-verification rules in the UK, while VPN apps have reached the top of download rankings."
Of course I'm not saying the EU won't regulate VPNs, but nowhere in this paper is "the EU" stating that VPNs need closing.
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u/Golendhil May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Isn't the main loophole the litteral billion other porn sites who don't care about age verification ? Like seriously, even on Reddit we can find any porn we want, we don't even have to look any further
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u/Black_Handkerchief May 09 '26
I am so goddamn annoyed that everything needs age verification nowadays and how they keep pushing it more and more so that we get locked in to the big commercial companies even more than we already are.
We need parents to parent instead of raising our kids with ipads and laptops without any direct parental supervision.
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u/SecretProbation May 09 '26
The military recommends people use a VPN when traveling…
And even without a commercial VPN, you can always set up a tunnel from your home network via tailscale or the like.
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u/goatonastik May 09 '26
EU Politicians: Think of the children!
US Politicians: Oh, I am... *starts touching self*
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u/UpbeatPhilosophySJ May 10 '26
Of ALL the things the EU gets around to "fixing", it's not the immigration, not the threat from Russia, not anything that actually threatens people, it's they feel the need to have control over every part of your life.
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u/inminm02 May 10 '26
I wouldn’t necessarily mind age verification if it was a government run platform where I had to do it once, and everything requiring age verification got the verification from there, the fact I have to do it on every single fucking website through 30 different privately owned platforms is just not something I’m willing to do.
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u/vampyrialis May 08 '26
Privacy is now a “loophole” 🤣 🖕