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Enforcement, one countries laws don’t apply in another. Which is kind of why the age verification thing won’t work… There will always be some jurisdiction that’

Enforcement, one countries laws don’t apply in another. Which is kind of why the age verification thing won’t work… There will always be some jurisdiction that’ll ignore things for profit.

commandlinefan 1y ago
If that were true, we'd see the adult sites just migrating to those other, friendlier countries - I don't believe we are.
Fraaaank 1y ago
Not entirely true. If I'm incorporated in country A and want to offer a service in country B, I'll have to comply with the local regulations. Furthermore, most VPNs have local presence in the EU as well. NordVPN is incorporated in Panama, but also has an entity in The Netherlands.
reliabilityguy 1y ago
Well, what’s preventing the UK to ban the websites/VPN services that don’t comply at the ISP level? This is what Russia is (semi-successfully) doing.
- qualeed 1y ago
  That's a forever lasting game of whack-a-mole. You either need to firewall the nation (which I imagine would be pretty unpopular) or it's just a waste of resources.
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    Many areas of law enforcement are whack-a-mole. There's no online gambling regulation so strict that it will stop unlicensed sites from existing entirely; that doesn't mean the rules are pointless or resources dedicated to enforcing them are wasted.
    - qualeed 1y ago
      Sure. However, the effort spent vs. what is gained has to be considered. Not all games of whack-a-mole are created equal. VPNs are incredibly easy to spin up, gambling groups are not. Within a week I could probably spin up a dozen or more semi-legitimate VPN companies. Multiply that by however many hundreds of people are willing to do the same. Add a few thousand more people willing to spin up completely shady 'free' VPNs. The scale quickly exceeds what you can possibly block, unless you firewall the nation.
      - reliabilityguy 1y ago
        Sure. But majority of the people (as seen with China, or Russia) do not care about VPN and won’t care. So, it seems to me that this way it will be easier for law enforcement to achieve what they want just because the target pool is already smaller.
        qualeed 1y ago
        >But majority of the people (as seen with China, or Russia) do not care about VPN and won’t care The article that our comments are under are about an 18x increase in sign-ups from the UK for one provider, a 2.5x increase for another provider, a 10x increase for yet another provider, etc. in just days. I'm curious about your stats for China/Russia, though. Where/how do you find out how many internet users in those countries have a subscription to and/or use a VPN? Would those stats continue to hold true if there was not a great firewall in China, and just rudimentary IP-blocking of VPN providers?
        reliabilityguy 1y ago
        > The article that our comments are under are about an 18x increase in sign-ups from the UK for one provider, a 2.5x increase for another provider, a 10x increase for yet another provider, etc. in just days. Those numbers mean nothing without the baseline. What if before it was 1 person and now it’s 18x more, totaling 19 people? W.r.t. data about China and Russia, I don’t want to pay for market reports, but occasional discussions about China, for example, show that about 35% of internet users use VPN (https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/i3afnz/how_many_people_in_china_excluding_foreigners_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/i3afnz/how_many_peop..., the thread has some links for more info). However, it is unclear how many of those users are private citizens use VPN to specifically bypass censorship. From my anecdotal experience from work and my PhD, most Chinese I met just don’t care about censorship and lack of access to FB, YouTube, or whatever. Chinese are like western users for the most part, on average they need social media, financial apps, maybe search, etc. they are not actively looking for censored info.

Enforcement, one countries laws don’t apply in another. Which is kind of why the age verification thing won’t work… There will always be some jurisdiction that’ll ignore things for profit.

commandlinefan 1y ago

If that were true, we'd see the adult sites just migrating to those other, friendlier countries - I don't believe we are.

Fraaaank 1y ago

Not entirely true. If I'm incorporated in country A and want to offer a service in country B, I'll have to comply with the local regulations. Furthermore, most VPNs have local presence in the EU as well. NordVPN is incorporated in Panama, but also has an entity in The Netherlands.

reliabilityguy 1y ago

Well, what’s preventing the UK to ban the websites/VPN services that don’t comply at the ISP level? This is what Russia is (semi-successfully) doing.

qualeed 1y ago
That's a forever lasting game of whack-a-mole. You either need to firewall the nation (which I imagine would be pretty unpopular) or it's just a waste of resources.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  Many areas of law enforcement are whack-a-mole. There's no online gambling regulation so strict that it will stop unlicensed sites from existing entirely; that doesn't mean the rules are pointless or resources dedicated to enforcing them are wasted.
  - qualeed 1y ago
    Sure. However, the effort spent vs. what is gained has to be considered. Not all games of whack-a-mole are created equal. VPNs are incredibly easy to spin up, gambling groups are not. Within a week I could probably spin up a dozen or more semi-legitimate VPN companies. Multiply that by however many hundreds of people are willing to do the same. Add a few thousand more people willing to spin up completely shady 'free' VPNs. The scale quickly exceeds what you can possibly block, unless you firewall the nation.
    - reliabilityguy 1y ago
      Sure. But majority of the people (as seen with China, or Russia) do not care about VPN and won’t care. So, it seems to me that this way it will be easier for law enforcement to achieve what they want just because the target pool is already smaller.
      - qualeed 1y ago
        >But majority of the people (as seen with China, or Russia) do not care about VPN and won’t care The article that our comments are under are about an 18x increase in sign-ups from the UK for one provider, a 2.5x increase for another provider, a 10x increase for yet another provider, etc. in just days. I'm curious about your stats for China/Russia, though. Where/how do you find out how many internet users in those countries have a subscription to and/or use a VPN? Would those stats continue to hold true if there was not a great firewall in China, and just rudimentary IP-blocking of VPN providers?
        reliabilityguy 1y ago
        > The article that our comments are under are about an 18x increase in sign-ups from the UK for one provider, a 2.5x increase for another provider, a 10x increase for yet another provider, etc. in just days. Those numbers mean nothing without the baseline. What if before it was 1 person and now it’s 18x more, totaling 19 people? W.r.t. data about China and Russia, I don’t want to pay for market reports, but occasional discussions about China, for example, show that about 35% of internet users use VPN (https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/i3afnz/how_many_people_in_china_excluding_foreigners_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/i3afnz/how_many_peop..., the thread has some links for more info). However, it is unclear how many of those users are private citizens use VPN to specifically bypass censorship. From my anecdotal experience from work and my PhD, most Chinese I met just don’t care about censorship and lack of access to FB, YouTube, or whatever. Chinese are like western users for the most part, on average they need social media, financial apps, maybe search, etc. they are not actively looking for censored info.