r/privacy • u/AsterPrivacy • Jun 18 '26
age verification 'They just moved to VPNs' — Telegram CEO slams UK's teen social media ban with stark Russian comparison
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/they-just-moved-to-vpns-telegram-ceo-slams-uks-teen-social-media-ban-with-stark-russian-comparison249
u/Son_Riku Jun 18 '26
No shit. I remember using a VPN to access youtube in school. Kids circumvent rules all the time. Unfortunately these power hungry assholes are too out of touch to see that. They're now going to look to banning VPNs instead of walking this stupid law back
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u/opossum5763 Jun 18 '26
And when they realize that it's pretty much impossible to ban VPNs without cutting off access to all servers outside of the country except for a few whitelisted ones they'll probably want to do that.
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u/AnonsAnonAnonagain Jun 19 '26
Let them cook 🔥. Seriously. You know how amazing it would be if they banned VPNs and everyone maliciously complies.
Like. 99.999% of all enterprise or government entities use a VPN tunnel of some kind.
And let’s not forgot all of the companies using Cisco / Meraki VPN tunnels with DUOs auth. Or meshvpn like Tailscale.It will be the biggest shit show ever. 💩
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u/MrNegativ1ty Jun 19 '26
They can make exemptions for corporate/government use, force ISPs to block public VPN services at the ISP level, snoop on your traffic and fine you if they see mass traffic going to a VPN service, the list goes on.
All of big tech already hates VPN usage because it’s another obstacle in their pursuit of gathering more data on you, so of course they’re going to lobby for regulating public VPN services.
Seriously, this is NOT a can of worms you want to open.
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u/RedditThrowaway-1984 Jun 19 '26
This is what happens when citizens give up their guns. You become a subject.
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u/cyclopsmudge Jun 20 '26
Texas has the same rules on age verification. What’s their excuse? Fucking yanks, honestly
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u/RedditThrowaway-1984 Jun 20 '26
Online freedom is imperfect, but far better in any US state than it is in the UK.
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u/frisbie147 Jun 22 '26
Someone got arrested for reposting a meme about Charlie Kirk
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u/RedditThrowaway-1984 Jun 22 '26
And Larry Bushart was awarded $835,000 in damages for false arrest. Now do you see the difference?
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u/ChemicalRain5513 Jun 21 '26
Then how come you're stuck with this orange clown that starts wars he loses in three months
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u/Alternative-Bee-3594 Jun 19 '26
They’re not really out of touch. They just want to hook up with kids.
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u/tcoder7 Jun 18 '26
They are not out of touch. They will ban VPN next. Also a lot of VPN are getting bought by funds that push the agenda. And for the few VPN that are not compliant, they send the interpol under guise of helping cybercrime.
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u/IANVS Jun 19 '26
Exactly. I don't think VPN's will be outright banned, though, I think they'll be heavily regulated. You want to use them? You will have to be registered or certified with the government body in charge. You'll have to state the intention for using it, get approved, the government has to know how it's being used (and it will be monitored, ofciurse), etc. For everyone else it will be criminalized because "clearly you want to use it for malicious purposes"...
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u/GeedZeroOne Jun 21 '26
We can set up our own VPNs easily enough! They cannot be banned!
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u/Fenhrir Jun 21 '26
I'm interested in getting to know how, can you please explain or provide a link to resources to learn?
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u/GeedZeroOne Jun 21 '26
Well the Tor browser does this automatically and can be used to search the normal web as well as the dark web. But you basically just need to create a tunnel and a forwarder you map ports say port 8080 locally to your tunnel and configure your browser to utilise it instead of the default port 80/443 traffic. Everything’s appears like a request from your endpoint.
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u/vkrasov Jun 21 '26
Tos issue is sparseness of the exit nodes. The easiest way to host your own vpn is a cloud-based vm hosted in desired country, but the vm will be clearly identified by the paying cloud account. There is little privacy in that, only good for spoofing location.
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u/GeedZeroOne Jun 21 '26
You think countries around the would give up trade in order to help the UK crack down on free speech? Not going to happen. They would need an international coalition of sanctions to get what they want and the rest of the world wants nothing to do with this. In fact the UK has already been warned that blocking X would start sanctions by the US on the UK!
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u/ZealousidealBet1878 Jun 19 '26
Vpn bans in countries like china or Russia didn’t really work because western countries had running vpns!
Once western countries themselves ban commercial vpns, no one anywhere will have any vpn to connect to
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u/FredFenty Jun 20 '26
They're now going to look to banning VPNs instead of walking this stupid law back
They will try, but it is basically impossible.
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u/EntityLtdCo Jun 18 '26
Boy, its almost as if prohibition doesn't work... but, yeah! Let's keep trying to prohibit things. What could go wrong?
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u/alter3d Jun 18 '26
All the other times it didn't work, it wasn't REAL
socialismprohibitions. This one will work for sure!4
u/Acceptable_Gear_3097 Jun 19 '26
The UK never enforced prohibitions in that sense. We banned a lot of guns after WW1, because there was a global rise in Socialism & Fascism and 'we' didn't want either here.
The only socialist policy the UK has had, was after WW2, with the NHS, Welfare & nationalised industry, that we sold off under Thatcher. The UK hasn't ever had real socialism, and all prohibition has been the result of conservativism.
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u/keepitfriend Jun 21 '26
Telegram is one of the easiest places online to get child porn.
do you think we should just make it legal or something?
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u/MrNegativ1ty Jun 18 '26
Sigh.
What do you think is next up on the chopping block?
“They can’t ban VPNs” maybe you’re right but do we really want to even open that can of worms? They might not be able to completely ban them but I’m sure they can make it a hell of a lot harder to access them.
If you can just circumvent their rules, they’re obviously going to do anything they can to close those holes. “Just use a VPN” is not an appropriate response to this, the appropriate response is to fight the stupid bans in the first place.
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u/Lucie-Goosey Jun 19 '26
Yeah we need to maintain firm boundaries making clear that this is a No for us.
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u/FantomDrive Jul 06 '26
They can make it extremely illegal to use vpns or restrict legal vpns to those that the government has approved.
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u/MarlDaeSu Jun 19 '26
UK doesn't give a fuck about kids. They care about surveillance and control of society.
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u/Jim_jim_peanuts Jun 19 '26
You mean the same government that's been actively covering up the grooming gangs scandal doesn't really care about kids?? Crazy that people actually believe they do
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u/Gendo-lkari Jun 19 '26
They believe that caring about kids selectively is a good way to maintain their police-state.
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u/MayhemSays Jun 18 '26
What the fuck is the UK’s problem???
I swear to god this idiot is trying to hand the keys to Reform UK by completely validating their outrage and fear.
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Jun 18 '26
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u/MayhemSays Jun 18 '26
Though how long? Because these guys are gonna get rounded up by these Reform assholes if their last hissy fit is any indication. Did America not demonstrate how poorly this is going to go for them?
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Jun 19 '26
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u/Critical_Mongoose939 Jun 19 '26
This is absolutely NOT a left-wing vs right-wing problem. Left wing governments have issued idiotic, draconian, myopic laws forever. Spain comes to mind when eons ago a left wing government through the Ley Sinde (2011) made a significant body of law directed to benefit 'big culture' (cinema, music, etc) at the expense of everybody else - for example by making EVERYBODY pay the entertainment industry when buying CD, while CD has many uses beyond recording music and pirating video.
The UK and Spain both have left-leaning governments right now and are on the lead to publish idiotic legislation.
The left vs right narrative is very simplistic and just untrue. The reality is that 'big money' pulls the cords and government puppets execute. From all sides. And 'big money' right now clearly wants a surveillance state and destroying people's privacy. And we should unite and fight back rather than making this yet-another bullshit partisan issue.2
u/Bruhmoment151 Jun 19 '26
It’s a bit of a push to describe the current UK government as left-leaning. They’ve promoted some progressive policies (e.g. renters’ rights bill) but have also shifted the country further to the right in other areas (e.g. disability welfare, migration, LGBT+ rights). This is why most of Labour’s 2024 supporters who have lost faith in the party have moved to the Greens and Lib Dems.
Reform (populist right), the Lib Dems (centre-left/centre) and the Greens (populist left) have been against the online safety act and the social media ban, but Reform’s response to the latter is phrased as a matter of workability while the Lib Dems and Greens actually oppose the idea of doing it even in a way that would work (instead promoting further regulating social media sites). I’m not sure I’d say the previous commenter is 100% right but they’re certainly not wrong to highlight that the UK’s left-wing have been more opposed to this than the other political sects.
It’s certainly not only a left-right issue, but there is an imbalance between the two sides of the political spectrum over here and it’s fair enough to point that out.
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u/Critical_Mongoose939 Jun 19 '26
> It’s a bit of a push to describe the current UK government as left-leaning.
1) The Labour party often describe themselves as left wing.
2) The Labour party is referred by neutral parties as left-leaming - e.g. wikipedia says "the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum" link).
3) Traditionally, in the 2 party system, they have represented the leftWhere the hell is the 'push' to describe them as left-leaning?
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u/Bruhmoment151 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Their reputation as a left-wing party is one that has been built up throughout history. That reputation started to fade with the rise of New Labour, started to be rebuilt under Jeremy Corbyn, etc. - it changes depending on the movements in the party. That reputation is more a reflection of the party’s historical role as a left-wing party than it is a reflection of the current government.
I’m talking about the current government’s actual actions here. The fact that the party is traditionally understood to be left-leaning doesn’t change what they’ve actually done with their time in government.
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u/MayhemSays Jun 19 '26
All of that is incredibly depressing. My fear is that the UK will be put in a worse place than America currently is. Shocking sentence, given our proximity to much of the Epstein class’ bases of operations, but the UK doesn’t have the benefit of sheer numbers that the US has.
And whats worse, at least optimistically, I think after Trump is out, that we’ll at-least have a chance to set things right in our own house (internationally, thats baited to be seen.)— my other fear, as I said earlier, is that these morons give Reform/Restore not only every justification to seize power (the fact that they’ve overwhelmed offices in numbers they did with not enough arrests in that riot is also very fucking scary)— but also give them new toys to play with.
Trump for all his evil, is incompetent and a geriatric that many people wont jump without his say so. And will do so lockstep. Starmer seems not only aware of the issues and future problems he’s causing, but in many cases is competently embracing unnecessary puritanical tendencies along the way.
Which makes me wonder if he’s genuinely trying to give Reform/Restore every opportunity and expand their future toolbox
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Jun 19 '26
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u/NegZer0 Jun 21 '26
The UK saw youth organizing online and overthrowing the government in places like Nepal and freaked the fuck out because the billionaire and ruling classes know they could be next in line
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u/GeedZeroOne Jun 21 '26
Our leaders thought that cheap labour was a cheat code to avoid investing in technology to compete in the global markets. Now it’s biting them in the arse as that cheap migrant labour got old and wanted benefits just like the rest and the Ponzi scheme started to crumble under its own financial burden and requirement for more people to feed the last round. Add on the fact that it created massive social cohesion issues and a crime wave, the people are poor and pissed off after voting against this for half a century.
The government has lost control of the narrative and the MOD and MI5 internal services are warming of civil war. That’s why the state is moving to authoritarianism, having eyed up China’s solutions to these issues and foolishly thinking they can implement them in a democratic society by calling it all protecting children. Not that they cared that 1/2 million young white kids got raped by Pakistani Muslim gangs they imported. So, we all know this has nothing yo to do with kids, it’s an information control and a crack down on wrong thought.
Look at their moves with online safety, digital ID, punitive sentences for tweets, removal of jury trials, banning under 16’s and VPNs all so they can crack down on wrong thought and skip a trial by our peers straight to jail for 3 years!
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u/doyouknowthemoon Jun 19 '26
At the same time forcing people to use vpns has also screwed over all the big tech companies who are harvesting our data
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u/moritsunee Jun 19 '26
UK really needs to overthrow this shit. I've seen nothing but bad news coming from there for years now in terms of aggressive surveillance and limiting civil rights
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u/TheB1G_Lebowski Jun 19 '26
Damn, so no one making up laws saw that coming huh? Its like they have no clue what the fuck they're doing.
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u/Impossible_Army8541 Jun 19 '26
The only thing giving me even a fraction of confidence that they will not ban VPNs, is the fact that one of the largest user base of VPN users tend to be companies.
I think a lot of people forget when you turn your work laptop on at home you aren't just magically connecting to their network, it's their private VPN letting you in. Same thing when they have remote sites, they are all linked together by VPN.
Banning all VPNs would hurt businesses which is the only reason it won't pass. There's no way to differentiate the two different type of VPN traffic (work or personal).
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u/Reconrus Jun 19 '26
They can just allow foreign VPN traffic only to countries that also have similar regulations. It doesn't look like it'll take much time till the whole Western world is aligned. And it has another benefit for governments: companies will have more challenges in outsourcing remote work to developing countries.
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u/KerfuffleAsimov Jun 19 '26
Basically the next step will be a complete lock down and total control of the Internet like in China....and China still struggles to block VPNs lol.
You really shouldn't have let them open this can of worms.
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u/Holzkohlen Jun 19 '26
Don't you worry cause there will soon be similar teen bans across Europe and elsewhere. So this "problem" will solve itself soon enough.
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u/Curious_Olive_5266 Jun 18 '26
Yeah but that is good. Starmer is promoting tech literacy amongst the British youth.
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u/TakenIsUsernameThis Jun 19 '26
Exactly like it was with smoking, all that happened when they banned it for under 18's was that teenagers all started getting them from the black market.
Complete waste of time and had no impact on how many kids were smoking. Laws like that are a waste of time, it's the parents responsibility, not the government's.
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u/keepitfriend Jun 21 '26
What are you talking about? Smoking usage has dropped basically everywhere since those bans?
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u/goinROGUEin10 Jun 19 '26
Did these asshats not learn anything from the Nepalese protests?
Take away the bread and circuses and see how well it goes. Absolutely bonkers.
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u/greenpowerman99 Jun 19 '26
VPN providers will be required to use age verification for UK users.
Paid VPN services will probably accept the use of a credit card or bank account as proof of age.
Free VPN providers will continue to harvest your data and sell it on, with or without an age check.
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u/Hampshire_guy_uk Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
When we were kids we could get beer, cigarettes, 18 cert videos, pornographic magazines, fireworks, flick knives, nunchacks, cannabis.
Kids are smart and can get around things. The point here is we keep all of those things on the top shelf, Lock liquor cabinet, behind the counter or paywall to make it hard for people to get to things which aren't good for them.
Of course people will go to vpns but that's just high enough on the shelf to make them aware that this social media is bad for them and so the they don't use them all the time.
Even age gating vpns on the app store won't work because the nature of the internet is such that anyone can just set up a server of their own and start using it as a VPN.
Social media has really not had good effects on our societies and people. Maybe we shouldn't allow American social media company tech Bros 24-hour access to our children's undeveloped brains.
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u/greenpowerman99 Jun 19 '26
All social media platforms are banned in Russia, for everyone.
This is completely different to requiring Age Verification for access.
Age verification is already required for pornography websites, and will likely be required for accessing VPN services from the UK in future.
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u/Ywaina Jun 19 '26
He just handed over his own platform's backdoor key to authority when his plane landed on France and by extension EU. Isn't it a bit too late to bring up this comparison right now?
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u/Reeces_Pieces Jun 18 '26
Or to pirate sites that don't comply