EVEYRTHING ## ###### ########
                ##### WILL BE ####### ### ###
                ### ###### ### #### FINE ####
            

***CAUTION! - CONTENT ON THIS POST IS IN RELATION TO UK POLITICS. PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION.***

Honestly I've been wanting to launch val_hut (aka WPSite v5) for a while. And while this is a fun thing to launch, I didn't intend my first blog post to be political and this negative. However, it's this shithole of a situation that was the last traw to me launching this website that I've been planning to launch for a while, simple for the fact that I can type this and raise awareness not only about this shitty situation, but also, what should be done instead. I promise not everything I put onto here will be a miserable val shouting about how much she hates the current world. Regardless, here I go.

On July 25th, a new bill got passed by the UK labour government. It was initially proposed in 2023, and is known as the Online Safety Act. What it does is restrict a large amount of content behind an ID verification system. The ID verification system must be decided by the webmaster, which, given most of the sites affected by this are major companies, means it will almost definitely be provided by a company that is actually a data broker and gives 0 respect for privacy, and will give your data away.

If you think that's bad though, you haven't seen it all.

"But Val... Think about the children!!!! They should never see p*rn!!!"

Of course they fucking shouldn't. But this is not about that. If you are asking that right here, right now, then please, PLEASE, turn off the TV, stop lounging about like my fucking dad watching BBC News and actually get the fuck online and see this for yourself. This is not about 18+ content, guys. That's what they want you to think. The media is saying it, because the government is saying it, because it's bait. If you asked for a cheeseburger, and made you a cheeseburger with bacon in it, and told you it's a cheeseburger, that would be me baiting you into eating a bacon and cheese burger. Yes, it's technically a cheeseburger, but I'm not being transparent about the bacon. What if you're allergic to pork? That is what the government is doing, but instead with this fucking act. And besides, even if it did just focus on prn sites, this act would still be pushing minors into more dangerous sites run as smaller entities, opening a whole world of new risks.

This is not the online safety act. This is the online censorship act. Overnight, the UK lost a huge source of information. LGBT advice, mental support, even just basic fucking functions. Are people seriously forgetting what the web is??? The world wide web. Yes, it has sort of diversified and become a bit fuzzy about what it is, but like, at it's core, the web was built for, and essentially is, a library. It's a library for hosting and transmitting hypertext, which at it's core, is just stylized text, which is what you find in text.

Do you see the problem here? the UK government is censoring hypertext, which in my opinion, is as bad as censoring books.

Look, I get it. Kids are too chronically online nowadays. But the government is putting too much effort into the wrong solution. The morraly and practically wrong solution. I believe in encouragement. Not control. Especially when control affects everyone. And besides, this is not about protecting kids. This is about censorship. The real solution to making everyone go outside more, not just kids, is to fix our urban hell. Make it so you have places to go and socialise in the real world, so you don't get ran over by a car if you go 2 meters away from the house, so you can travel and experience and explore. Third place theory is real, and car dependency is hell. By doing this, the government is only enforcing our urban hellscape more. This is only worsening the loneliness pandemic, and harming everyone. And much like the act isn't about kids, this reality isn't about kids either. Social media is harming everyone. And the government trying to nuke Wikipedia and all sources of LGBT content is going to fuck over society.

And this will not be a UK thing forever. America has been cooking up something similar, companies like YouTube are pushing this to other places, and I bet Europe will soon join. Australia is also having it's own moment. Payment processors are also bullying websites now to take down things when they shouldn't even be responsible for that. Nobody is safe from this.

My message to the world is simple.

DO. NOT. HAND. OVER. ANY. INFO. TO. THESE. ID. CHECKERS.

Fake or real, selfie or ID, just don't. They will benefit from it. Don't let them use you. Use a VPN (I recommend ProtonVPN if you're broke like me), and fight this bullshit. Heck, I even suggest changing your software and socials (I am planning to type of a "boycott proprietary software and Silicone Valley" post, but I don't want to have 2 political posts in a row... Especially when the first one is the first post ever), because if you use niecher solutions and harder to target socials, particularly those in the Fediverse, you probably will be even harder to target.

It's sad what the web is now. We need to be decentralised and independent again, and not controlled by world governments. We must fight censorship, no matter what.