Virtual Invasion of Privacy

Well, I've been investigating the wild, wild world of VPNs again.  Actually, there's nothing wild about them really.  But we are getting to the stage where I fear that they are going to become a necessity if you simply want to continue surfing the web without finding yourself continuously blocked and challenged over your age and identity.  Because, of course, the whole issue of social media bans for under sixteens has raised its ugly head again.  The supposed protection of children from online harm by restricting everybody's freedom and privacy has become a perennial obsession for UK governments of both left and right.  It apparently isn't enough that we've already had that law passed which forces age verification on UK visitors to 'adult' sites, with the verification methods being dodgy in the extreme.  (Also, open to abuse - only the other day I had some scammer on Tumblr impersonating the site's admin and claiming that I needed to verify my age by giving my bank details to some third-party site.  Yeah, like that's going to happen.  Needless to say, I reported them, for what little good that will do).  I have so far steadfastly refused to engage with such nonsense, but with the prospect of being denied access to any site the UK government classifies as 'social media', the only long-term solution will be to circumvent the problem by surfing from behind a VPN.

None of this is to say that I don't sympathise with the idea of keeping kids away from potentially harmful content, but what the government has done so far and is proposing to do in the near future, is to once again put the onus of prevention upon ordinary web users, instead of trying to make those who run social media sites more responsible with regard to the kind of material they allow.  Moreover, it also seems to absolve parents of all responsibility to restrict their children's web access - indeed, it represents a further erosion of the whole concept of parental responsibility.  If your child is a horrible little bastard then, well, it's your fault and down to you to do something about it, not the rest of us.  Anyway, getting back to the responsibility of tech firms for the content their services carry, I'm also pretty sick and tired of them hiding behind the excuse of 'free speech' to justify their lack of regulation.  Yes, Elon Musk, I'm looking at you here - the man who thinks it OK for to have an AI app accessible by, well, anyone, which will create sexualised and naked images of children for public consumption.  Not just children, anyone, in fact.  It isn't as if it is difficult to stop this sort of thing - just about every other AI app has built in safeguards to prevent this sort of thing.  (It's incredible, actually, the number of things that ChatGPT will tell you that it isn't allowed to do - it won't even allow the creation of satirical images of politicians, for example).  

But to go back to Musk, his AI and those images, one has to ponder, just why are he and his acolytes so keen to put in place safeguards that would prevent their creation?  Could it have anything to do with the fact that they are part of 'Generation Epstein'?  A bunch of unhealthily wealthy people who seem to think that their money means that normal rules and social conventions don't apply to them?  Is that why they were all so drawn to Epstein and his procurement of underage girls for his rich buddies?   Do they see the sexualisation of children as one of the ultimate taboos they can break in order to reassure themselves that there is nothing their wealth won't allow them to do?  Is that why we have an AI app that allows the creation of such images?  Because they are trying to normalise the sexualisation of children in order to justify their own behaviour?  Maybe the government should be looking at taking action against them rather than trying to force the likes of me to give credit card details or photos of myself in order to verify my age just so that I can look at some model railway videos on YouTube?  But, of course, they'll just cry 'freedom of speech!' - and it isn't just the billionaires who try this defence.  A while ago on a webmaster forum, the issue of the UK government trying to force Musk to prevent the creation of this stuff via his AI got the reaction from a US contributor 'that's just censorship!'.  No, buddy, it's called 'protecting the vulnerable', a concept apparently unknown to even ordinary US citizens.  Which simply reinforces my opinion that they are a nation of psychopaths.  Pervo peado psychos, at that.  After all, they voted an adjudicated rapist and possible peado into the White House.  Twice.