Best not to survey VPN companies, then.
It’s been one week since the UK government introduced its Online Safety Act, legislation that requires people to provide age verification in order to access content that is adult-related. Two surveys conducted before and after the rules came into place, by a research and data analysis group, suggest that a significant portion of the British populace supports the new laws, but an equally large percentage also reckon that they’re not very effective.
That’s according to a report from YouGov, which surveyed almost 4,400 British adults about their thoughts on the new Online Safety Act. When asked whether they supported or opposed the legislation, almost 70% of the sample either somewhat or strongly supported it.
However, 64% of the same group of people also believed that the changes are either not very or not at all effective at «preventing those younger than 18 from gaining access to pornography».
The idiom of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ is perhaps the most apt description of the current UK government’s attempt at preventing underage people from accessing adult-rated material and content. In theory, nobody under the age of 18 should be able to access anything that’s classed or rated for adults, but the problem has been that said theory has relied entirely on people clicking ‘I am under 18, exit now’ verification buttons.
