> Shrug. I’m not sure what else to say. I’ve shown you that polling shows the majority support age verification. I have asked you to provide evidence of mainstream objection to this law, which you are unable to provide. You have asserted that polling is wrong because you know people who disagree.
You said it "wasn't part of the conversation" originally. Not what the majority agreed with. You've subtly tried to change what the discussion was about. That is known as moving the goalposts:
Then you asked me to provide evidence of something I can't possibly provide. That quite frankly bullshit.
> You may not like it and I may not like it but the view of the U.K. voting public is that age verification to look at porn is reasonable and that “protecting” children justifies limiting freedoms.
I don't doubt that the majority are OK with it. I am taking issue with the fact that you are pretending only libertarian nerds online care about this. I know that isn't true.
> My exercise for you: decide what evidence is needed to convince you that most British people are happy with this law.
Don't talk to me like a child.
I don't have you provide you with anything. You made the claim that only a few people care about this. When even your own evidence disputes. 20% of a large group of people is still a lot. That isn't "nobody cares" like you pretend is the case.
There are discussions in parliament about grooming gangs on X. These are soft-censored (you can't see it without passing the the age verification). Few people will be bothered to make an account to see a post and pass age verification. Therefore it slows the sharing of information.
It isn't about outright banning the discussion, because that will cause considerable push-back by the public. So you dress up a policy as doing one thing knowing that the effect will be another. I don't take anything the British State says at face value. If you do, you are simply being naive.
One of the reasons they want to make discourse on the internet as painful as possible is because immigration has become an mainstream concern in the UK. Many of the things that are being soft censored is clips about from the British parliament where this and related issues are being discussed.
Just because people like yourself happen to think it is uncouth to discuss, doesn't mean that it isn't part of the equation.
> You are simply over indexing for your own circle. Your circle (by virtue of being a nerd) is deeply biased towards people heavily influenced by U.S. attitudes towards freedom. I’m an internet nerd too, I know how easy it is to get caught up in this idea that what you see online is representative of the people, but it isn’t.
False. Most of the people I engage with in real life are not nerds. You keep on stating things that you know nothing about as truisms. How about instead of trying to gaslight people about what is real and what isn't, you actually engage in the points being made by your interlocutor?
> Go out and talk to real people. Go and stand in the street and ask every passer by whether they feel the U.K. is “draconian” or not.
I would imagine if someone thought about it, I would get a statement something about all the cameras everywhere or how buying some with a bank transfer is difficult (if you buy something cash like a vehicle it sets off anti-fraud detection in your bank and transactions can be blocked).
They won't talk about it in terms you are familiar with. They will point to stuff like cameras, unfair charges etc and how difficult some of this makes their lives.
All of this normal people have experienced.
> You’ll be shocked to discover that almost nobody cares about anything that doesn’t directly impact their day to day life. Look at the rise of Reform, Farage’s embrace of trumpism. That’s authoritarianism, and the people love it. You’re completely out of touch with the common person if you think any of this matters.
You mentioned all of those. I didn't mention them. You are projecting onto me what your experience is. The irony here is astounding.
> The myth of things “not being talked about” in the mainstream is a convenient way to excuse being unable to provide any meaningful evidence that a notable portion of the country care about something.
If social media wasn't important, politicians, mainstream news publications themselves, and other political activists wouldn't bother with it. So this is patently False.
Pretending this hasn't been a trend now for 15 years is completely asinine and shame on you for attempting to pretend the opposite is true.
> I know it might shock you but people on twitter and discord are not representative of voters. Most voters do not engage with any social media.
False. Almost everyone I know is on social media of some sort. They might not be actively engaging but they do engage regularly in some form or another. Most of them would be called lurkers, or they will check out stuff if some piques their interests.
You conveniently missed out where I said "facebook" and "in person"
> People on the internet get so caught up in the international perspective we are exposed to that we forget what national voters actually care about.
I don't care about the international perspective. I am English (I've already told you this). I care about this issue and I know plenty of other people who are British care about this issue.
The same YouGov polling that had almost every about Brexit issue at 71% vs 29%. Their polling isn't to be trusted.
Even if I took that at face value, that means 1/5 people don't support it. Which isn't an insignificant amount of people. So there are a decent number of people that care about it, even using your own figures. This disproves your statements about it not being cared about and only uber nerds caring about it.
So because it isn't discussed through UK mainstream news and publications that means people aren't concerned about it? A lot of things people are actually concerned about isn't mentioned at all in the mainstream news or publications that is why increasingly fewer people are paying attention to them.
People are talking about these things ironically on places like twitter/X, facebook, whatsapp, discord and in person (shock horror I know). I was at a boys football match this weekend and people were talking about it there.
BTW quite hilariously twitter/X are censoring some footage from the commons as that content has to be age-gated.
> I lived in the U.K. for decades and I have lived in many other countries. I’ll criticise the U.K. government and society endlessly but to describe these changes as notable or remarkable relative to most other countries is nonsense.
I am English. I was born in England, my parents are English, my Grandparents were English, My Great Grandparents were English etc. etc.
I have lived my majority of my life here. So I am English.
You obviously didn't read what I said. I understand that it is nothing special in isolation. However I am not talking about it in isolation. I was talking about the entirety of how the current laws are constructed as well as how the UK state operates.
Also just because other countries have rubbish laws, doesn't mean we should have adopted similar ones.
> From a U.S. internet libertarian freedom-at-all-costs perspective, sure, it’s a draconian nightmare, but for normal people from the U.K. or any other country, it’s barely a blip on their radar.
Many people do not like this and are actively seeking work-arounds. These aren't uber nerds like myself BTW.
> The U.K. is a flawed place going to hell in a hand basket that many U.K. citizens have strong opinions on but outside of us, the freedom loving nerds on the internet, this identity verification law is not a part of the conversation.
So you admit there is a problem. But you then pretend that this can't possibly be part of the entire picture because you say so.
Sorry it very much well is part of the problem. You stating it isn't doesn't make it so.
> This view (“the Bourgeois’, etc.) seems to imply there’s a group of very clever manipulators somewhere, overtly planning and executing this (presumably in a dark room with armchairs and cigars). But I just can’t imagine this, in the UK’s example.
If you read any history about any daring military action during WW2, a lot of it was done by men thinking up of stuff in dark rooms while smoking cigars. Why is this so unbelievable now?
BTW, The UK ran the world's largest empire and until recently this was in living memory.
> What I see instead is the other side of Hanlon’s razor —incompetence— coupled with a political class riven with pockets of self-interest, and very few seemingly with an intellectual hypothesis to explain the UK’s current predicament, or to chart a path out of it.
Hanlon's razor IMO is nonsense. It is honestly believe it was invented so people could explain away their malice.
Anyone who is relatively intelligent will work at out some point, that if they don't want to do something they can passively aggressively work against the authority while working withing the rules. My father (who builds luxury yachts and is near retirement) was telling me how he maliciously complies with various companies rules to make his superior's life more difficult, this is a way to get back at them for their poor planning.
Even if you accept that Hanlon's razor is mostly true. It cannot be applied when you are dealing with political actors. Political actors, the media and anything related are literally trying to manipulate you. In fact it is a good rule that whatever they tell you that it is, assume the opposite and that is typically true.
It his law combined with all the other iffy laws in the UK which make this nefarious. This is the issue about discussing anything about how draconian the UK is. If you compare any single law in isolation, it isn't that different. However if you take how the British authorities and how they operate it, and all the other laws you start to see a more draconian picture.
That is what many people, especially those that do live in the UK don't appreciate.
You said it "wasn't part of the conversation" originally. Not what the majority agreed with. You've subtly tried to change what the discussion was about. That is known as moving the goalposts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
Then you asked me to provide evidence of something I can't possibly provide. That quite frankly bullshit.
> You may not like it and I may not like it but the view of the U.K. voting public is that age verification to look at porn is reasonable and that “protecting” children justifies limiting freedoms.
I don't doubt that the majority are OK with it. I am taking issue with the fact that you are pretending only libertarian nerds online care about this. I know that isn't true.
> My exercise for you: decide what evidence is needed to convince you that most British people are happy with this law.
Don't talk to me like a child.
I don't have you provide you with anything. You made the claim that only a few people care about this. When even your own evidence disputes. 20% of a large group of people is still a lot. That isn't "nobody cares" like you pretend is the case.
Anyway I am done with you. Go away!