and fuck the UK goverment
That is, I believe, a British law that they’re following for users that appear to be in the UK. Not like they’re going to just disregard the law.
kagis
Yeah, the Online Safety Act 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
The Online Safety Act 2023[1][2][3] (c. 50) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate online content. Designed to protect children and adults online, it passed on 26 October 2023 and gives the relevant Secretary of State the power, subject to parliamentary approval, to designate and suppress or record a wide range of online content that is illegal or deemed “harmful” to children.[4][5]
The act creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content, or legal content that could be “harmful” to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher. It also empowers Ofcom to block access to particular websites.
So that’s what they’ll be aiming to do.
Some websites and apps stated they would introduce age verification for users in response to a 25 July 2025 deadline set by Ofcom.[47] These include pornographic websites,[48] but also the social networks Bluesky and Reddit.[49][50]
Probably should be mostly irritated with Parliament.
I expect that using a VPN that terminates in another country will avoid it, though I bet that then you can’t do things like buy Reddit Gold, if that’s still a thing.
I’d add that if you pick Ireland as the VPN exit country, it will have notable benefits:
-
Sites that pick language based on IP will probably do English.
-
It probably won’t add much latency.
-
Ireland isn’t too bonkers and hopefully won’t have any large collection of online laws of their own that become an irritant.
-
Because Ireland has a considerably smaller population than the UK, if people in the UK do this at scale for pornography, it will make the Irish statistically look like absolutely indefatigable horndogs, which I think will be pretty funny on visualizations.
Indefatigable horndogs best band name calling dibs now
Please make the music ska. A band with that name, playing literal horns, creating a fast, upbeat tempo? It would be beautiful.
the Irish statistically look like absolutely indefatigable horndogs
What did you think that “wild rover” they keep singing about was? 😉
Pornhub stats: Irish +28572%
-
If you don’t mind my hijacking, I’ve seen the term “kagis” used a number of times on Lemmy, possibly only by you but I think also others. Based on the usage, I assumed it was a Latin word to indicate some sort of transition or side-bar, but it seems to just translate to “you are”, which doesn’t make sense in context. Can I ask what it means?
Kagi is a new-ish search engine that is popular among Lemmy users. Those users are trying to get it to catch on, and have started using kagi as a verb, the same way people say “let me google that really quick.”
It honestly feels a lot like when Microsoft was trying to get Bing and their phone OS to take off, and started slipping product placement into popular TV shows. There was a brief time period in American TV, where characters had the disgusting line of “Bing it!” Usually while showing the Bing home page on a Microsoft Phone. It was just blatant ham-fisted cringey product placement.
Yeah I’ve noticed this user basically inserts a “kagis” into like 2/3 of their comments, it always slightly irks me because it makes me feel like I’m getting advertised at. I’ve never felt the need to proclaim which search engine(s) I’ve used to research any particular comment on Lemmy, and I find it odd that the one person who does so regularly is doing it for a paid service.
Apart from that, their comments are usually pretty good, so I’m not accusing them of shilling or anything, but I find it super peculiar.
It makes me sad when I see the name because Kagi used to be a payments processor for shareware and essentially a predecessor to modern app stores…but before enshittification.
Does “googled” make you feel advertised at?
Not particularly, and while I admit this can seem hypocritical, the verb “to google” has just become a generic trademark.
When someone says band-aid, or kleenex, or jello, I think of bandages, tissues, or gelatin desserts, not of a specific brand of these products. Same goes with “googled”, it just means “searched the web” now rather than specifically using Google.
What about ye olde “googles on ddg”?
There’s a search engine named Kagi. It’s basically the equivalent of “googles” but for a different search engine.
Thanks. The usage now makes sense, albeit superfluous.
Upvote for the verbification of Kagi :)
In this one instance I’ll give Reddit a pass. This is 100% a fuck the UK government moment
Lol yeah I’m not doing that. VPN all the way.
Today I’m french.
Tomorrow, who knows?
The possibilities are endless.
Too bad VPN server addresses are on-sight to reddit’s IP blocking strategy for years now. For whatever good internet choice you make, reddit reciprocates with an equally bad one
What’s funny about that is the VPN I use I saw advertised on Reddit. I wonder if these companies know that they ban users for using their products? Well I guess they don’t really don’t care.
Other companies: Thank you for buying from our sponsors! Here’s a code for 15% off!
Reddit: You bought from our sponsors? Lol, you’re banned.
Remember when you didn’t even need an email address to sign up for reddit?
If I need to look at that site, my LibRedirect extension sends me to a privacy focused mirror
Mullvad has couple of USA exits that don’t get blocked by Reddit. Texas and D.C., I think.
so does nord but to me the point of using a VPN is to get my traffic exit point out of the US and the other eyes countries
I usually use US because I like the localization of websites more that way.
can’t argue with that. setting my server to other places makes Google completely unusable because it will localize to whatever your ip address is no matter what you specify it to do in your settings. it’s annoying enough that it got me to stop using Google so I don’t blame anyone for just opting to let the NSA do their thing.
Blocking VPNs from posting or vviewing content too?
if you’re not logged in and using a VPN server that’s not in the US. If you want to post, it’s not an issue but if you want to browse logged out they block you.
I wonder if they pay per verification. If so, I wonder how hard it would be to set up a script to just keep submitting new requests a few hundred or thousands of times a day with random photos…
Random AI photos. That would be funny in theory, but they’re just using AI to check the ages anyway.
Sure, it’s not about wasting their time; this says they’re using a 3rd party service to verify, so theoretically they’re paying for that service. It’s about wasting their money.
Good point. I just think that if reddit would see an uptick in POC and old people with these random AI photos, it would be a weird and hilarious thing to happen to them. Spez is in awe of a nazi (musk) and old people would send their advertising into a tailspin.
Was using a VPN to watch iPlayer last night and then hopped on reddit and was like “whereintheactualfuck is all the porn‽” Before realizing I had it set to the UK. Blew my mind for a minute
I went “whereisallmyporn?” When reddit banned it from r/all. I think that was the start of its downfall for me.
I deleted my Reddit account but still follow some writers on it and had the same issue. The worst part is it’s anything marked as NSFW – even posts that were tagged as a joke weren’t accessible.
I changed my VPN to another country and Reddit was still asking me to log in and show ID until I cleared my cookies and cache.
Anyone try a McLovin ID?
In this case I blame the UK government
I’m not sure what you all are doing
deleted by creator
If any service requires me to send a photo of myself to use it, I ain’t using it.
EDIT: lol wut, Facebook and YouTube want photo ID now?? I must be old enough to have missed out. My comment stands though, if I wasn’t already a member on either of those I guess I wouldn’t become one!
Facebook does that,
Youtube does that
Does a vpn bypass it?
Edit: btw yes I totally agree with you, I’m just wondering if that would be a workaround
You can use a VPN to negate this check. For now…
But Spez will still edit your comments. I don’t know how reddit has still some users left after that and the API train wreck.
Exactly. I get that there are still niches there that haven’t found their place here yet (be the change you want to see), but the only way I use Reddit now is through a search for things that find old information, since it is still a huge database of data (admittedly both good and bad).
Reddit blocks VPN users. I’m unable to access it on my home network because of it.
Which is great! They trained me not to bother going to their site by blocking my attempts. Though I kind of want to punch Snoo now, from having to see his smug face winking at me on the block page every time. Little fucker, you used to be cool. Enjoy the inevitable bot-pocalypse nazi farm you’re building.
At one point Reddit had an Onion site
I heard about this but I didn’t really believe it, until now.
Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
deleted by creator
Dude I was recently visiting Florida. I totally forgot the fascist bullshit laws about porn there, was gobsmacked I couldn’t view pornhub. 5 minutes and a free vpn on my phone and I was happily watching my preferred smut.
It’s so stupid how pointless the laws are, like it’s dumb easy to circumvent them.
Just some real bullshit waste of time. Plus a waste of money for companies that try to comply with the Florida law. Pornhub just decided if you’re in Florida you can’t even use pornhub because they didn’t want to spend the money and time to comply with the stupid ass backwards law.
deleted by creator
Its funny and pointless until they pressure Visa and the site you are using dies.
Sometimes my VPN kicks me to one of those backwards ass states and I also get surprised by them. Swap states and I’m in.
Age verification is insane in it’s entirety and no payment processor, corpo, government, or think-tank has any right to enforce their puritanical views on sex and Orwellian techno-fascist policies on everyone.
Try using old.reddit.com. Literally just replace
wwwwithold, or addoldin front ofreddit.com. This should take you to a version of reddit’s interface which isn’t complete trash and it usually also allows you to bypass the need to login for NSFW content.I use rdx.overdevs.com for anything I need on reddit these days, it’s a read only interface that isn’t affiliated with the site and doesn’t track you or advertise anything.
Or use Stealth if you’re on Android.
rdx is already an android app
True, but it’s only available through the Play Store if I’m not mistaken.
Reads like more material for the Palantir machine.
Here’s an interesting point. I just went to an nsfw sub to see if I’d get that prompt, and it gives me two ways to verify - selfie or photo ID. The photo ID has to be “government issued”, and maybe I don’t have one of those. The selfie is a link for a phone, using a QR code and I don’t have a phone that can scan QR codes.
This means that in order to access said sub, I’d need to buy a new phone or wait 30 days or whatever to buy some kind of ID. Even with all the other reasons this sucks, that seems discriminatory.
I don’t have a phone that can scan QR codes.
QR codes are a plain text encoding scheme. If you can screenshot it, you have access to FOSS software that can decode it, and you can paste that URL into your browser.
Sure, but the point is, they also could’ve posted a simple link, instead of expecting users like the above, to go thru hoops.
I know this, but it’s a barrier for anyone who doesn’t.
Who’s in the middle of this Venn Diagram between “uses some kind of custom OS on their phone to where their camera app doesn’t automatically read QR codes” and “doesn’t know how to install or use software that can read QR codes”?
My phone is Android from 2016, and it doesn’t have a QR scanner built-in. I know I can download something to do it, but someone like my mother for instance wouldn’t know that. Why do I have such an old phone? It still lasts for days on a charge and does everything I need.
Damn. Did you find something else to jerk to my friend ? ( Shit no I don’t want you to jerk to my friend )
Can’t even get porn models from civitai in a few hours it’s about to be blocked in the UK too.
Really? Lmao. Stock up.

























