Technology

What they can likely do is the same as with porn sites: require law-abiding, trusted and well-known VPN providers to do age verification, thus pushing people to more obscure and risky providers who don't care about the law instead.

21 states have laws for age verification on porn sites. 4 more states are in the process of passing laws for age verification. That's nearly half the states...

UK has a massive federal budget problem...

The UK isn't a Federal Country. It's a Unitary state with Devolution. I know it is basically a Federal state in Practice (Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Stormont all have varying amounts of autonomy) but the distinction is significant.

and they still keep increasing expenditure on surveillance.

This is the fucked up bit though: The OSA doesn't put the burden of Age gates on the State. They put it on The Service Provider (Websites and services). This is why so many non-porn forums, lemmy instances, and mastodon instances have either had to shut down or geoblock the UK, all the responsibility is on them to institute this lest they get sued out the arse. They can't afford to get YOTI or whatever, or don't have the manpower or money to institute their own system, so they shut down.

It's also why overblocking is a thing: because the OSA's official defination of what should be blocked is so vague so the two people who decide what get's blocked are the Service Provider and the Government effectively in that order. This is why Reddit is blocking things that should not be agegated (like support groups), because the law is so fucking vague, and why sites like Twitter are blocking tweets that don't need to be blocked under the "news" exception (yes, there is an exception for the news).

All of this, by the way, is because an investment trust and thinktank (yes, a lovely little conflict of interest) called Carnegie United Kingdom Trust pretty much wrote the OSA for the government. As an investment trust, they invest money in things, but being private, they don't need to tell Joe Public what they invest in, nor to the Investees need to tell us. So basically, they invested in YOTI or some others like it, and are making money from it because so many sites are forced to have it to work in the UK.

And all the other major tech players (Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft) are developing "Digital ID" systems as a "solution" which will not only make it easier to track people for them and the government, but also for advertisers, so they aren't complaining either.

TL;DR, The UK basically put all the pressure on the Websites so their friends can make loads of money.

Their mass surveillance program doesn’t even work. Like not enough people are watching those video feeds of all the cameras in London to prevent crime or even solve crime. Not to mention UK also has a cop problem. People who are in most need of their protection do not trust the police.

Until the go government starts blocking entry nodes, then there will be a whole new country relying on the snowflake protocol.

Also, this doesn't affect only people under 18, any sane adult should never send a copy of their id to anything but the government, bank, insurance or employer.

They'll just block that too. Can't have a full blown dictatorship without taking away any freedom people have. Better not have a negative opinion about it either.

Holy Fuck 1984 was a warning, not a fucking manual on how to do things.

Im guessing they'll make it illegal for users to try to bypass the restriction.

Insert tasteless parody of the "First They Came" poem