Architect Of Reason @ArchOfReason

How hard is it to really ban VPN's technically without going full "North Korea" with the tech of today!? Turns out, actually really hard. How do we know ? Well, the world's biggest surveillance state in China has been trying for a long time and despite some advances, to this day they struggle. Let us have a little walk along "VPN ban lane". 1/

You are arguing against a position I do not hold. I was not setting out a complete strategy for resisting present abuses of state power. I was responding to a specific future policy proposal: that, if Restore gains power, new speech crimes should be created, applied retrospectively, and used against political opponents. That is the proposal I reject. Rejecting it is not the same as saying current abuses should be met with passivity. If power is obtained, the response I would support is to repeal speech-policing laws, narrow the criminal line back to credible, serious threats of violence or calls to violence, and put safeguards in place so that machinery cannot be easily rebuilt. At the individual level, I agree more with Rupert’s instinct: let the insult roll off you. The deeper problem is not merely that someone says “racist”, “Nazi”, or “fascist”. The problem is that institutions increasingly treat those labels as permission to punish the accused. If Restore gains power, that machinery should be dismantled, not mirrored against political opponents. Justice has to distinguish between guilt and association, violence and offence, punishment and retaliation. Broad political accusations should not become speech crimes simply because one side has abused them. Turning broad political labels into criminal offences because they are said to create hatred, reputational harm, or social consequences is just hate-speech law under another name. It also makes it harder to call out genuine extremism when it actually appears. Real change means removing the machinery, not preserving the structure and changing the target. It is not naive to dismantle systems used for political punishment. It is naive to keep them, aim them at today’s opponents, and assume they will not be aimed back at you later. I want the state kept at a distance from ordinary life, not made more powerful because a different faction temporarily controls it. The priest analogy does not address the point. I am not discussing immigration policy or private risk-taking. I am discussing whether a future government should criminalise political speech as retaliation. The analogy relies on emotional force, but it does not answer the argument. I understand the anger behind the proposal. Public demonisation can destroy reputations, livelihoods, and sometimes contribute to real-world danger. But that is precisely why I want the machinery dismantled. I want the cycle to end, not repeated every time power changes hands.

VPN Bans loading🌀 🇬🇧 UK - called VPNs a "technical problem" 🇪🇺 EU - signaled VPNs are next 🇹🇷 Turkey -VPN licensing proposals 🇮🇳 India - ordered VPN compliance or lose protections 🇦🇺 Australia - age verification may lead to ban 🇩🇰 Denmark - anti-piracy law risks VPN use Kind of hard to ban a decentralized VPN😉

That logic concedes the entire principle. If censorship is wrong, does it become just because it is aimed at those who previously supported it? Holding people to their own standards rhetorically is one thing. Expanding or legitimising state power to punish speech is another. Justice is not “do to them what they did to us.” Justice is acting according to reason even when your enemy acts viciously. And yes, the mechanism already exists. That is precisely the problem. The answer is not to inherit it and aim it at new targets. The answer is to dismantle it, narrow it, or make it unusable as a political weapon. Rights are not hostages to be returned after a “cessation of hostilities”. The state does not create natural rights; it either recognises and protects them, or violates them. This is not about being soft on the people who built the weapon. It is about refusing to make the weapon permanent. Any movement that claims to oppose state overreach cannot then justify using state power to punish political enemies. At that point it has not restored anything; it has simply changed who controls the machinery. The answer to tyranny is not to become a more efficient tyrant. It is to remove the weapon.

If “winning” requires becoming the censor, then what exactly has been won? Principles exist to restrain you when power becomes available. Without them, you are not opposing tyranny; you are simply competing for the right to wield it. And once power changes hands, the same weapon you justified will be turned back on you.

@noinconsistency There will certainly be a rise. If you create a centralised target you may as well be putting a flag up to malicious actors.

@WatcherAfar That is what I'm counting on.

If we are going to be forced to accept this policy, why not take “protecting children” even further? I mean, we need to keep the children safe, don’t we? So presumably everyone supporting this would also support £10,000 fines and up to 5 years in prison for any parent whose child is caught illegally accessing social media or bypassing age verification. After all, if child safety overrides everyone else’s privacy and liberty, then surely parental responsibility should be enforced too? Or is the principle only acceptable when the burden falls on strangers, platforms, and every adult in the country?

Sophie Corcoran @sophielouisecc

2 days ago

If the 90 percent of parents that supported banning children from social media Did their jobs as parents and banned their kids from social media We wouldn’t need government overreach

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@Graham_Mark_E

VPNs Reverse Proxies Forward Proxies Out of band tunnelling Covert Channels Sneakernets RF think about how many ways there are to send and receive data in overt and covert was! It's loads!

This is not really a left/right issue, even if some people have framed it that way. I understand why it appears that way: if someone has a large following, the loudest objections will often come from people who already disagree with them on other things. Tech culture often leans left, but I’ve found there is usually broad agreement on online privacy and technology legislation, especially among people in cybersecurity. Anyone who values liberty and wants the state kept at arm’s length should be concerned by this. Even if you trusted this government completely, it would still be a terrible idea. You would be building the infrastructure for state control over lawful digital access, then handing that infrastructure to every future government. That is not a small risk. It is how “safety” measures become permanent tools of control.

True. Privacy is a major part of protection. In cybersecurity, one principle is compartmentalisation: keeping different parts of your digital life separated so they are harder to link together. Banking, work, personal accounts, and social media should not all bleed into one easily traceable profile. The harder it is to connect all your activity, the harder it is for malicious actors, scammers, data brokers, or stalkers to build a clear picture of you and your life. Anyone who treats privacy as suspicious is either seriously misinformed, hostile to basic security, or far too comfortable with systems that require tracking the “full picture”.

If the UK ever bans VPNs, don’t buy the line that “only criminals need privacy”. That is absolute nonsense. Normal people use VPNs for banking, public Wi-Fi, working from home, travelling abroad, protecting business accounts, journalism, whistleblowing and basic online privacy. A ban would not stop serious criminals. They would just find another way. The people it would hurt are ordinary, law-abiding citizens who simply don’t want every click, search and message tracked. Privacy is not suspicious. Privacy is protection. And once any government starts banning privacy tools, you have to ask: What exactly are they trying to stop us seeing, saying, or protecting?

"Papers please" to get online. That's not a dystopian metaphor. That's Labour's current proposal

People objecting to a social media ban on social media does not prove that social media has skewed the debate. It may simply mean people are discussing the policy in the place it directly affects. Popularity is not a defence against the charge of illiberalism. Plenty of illiberal policies can be popular. Before someone says “it’s children, not people”: children are people. That does not mean they have the same legal capacity as adults, but it does mean liberal principles still apply. Restrictions on lawful communication should be proportionate, targeted, and necessary. The Kantian objection is that people should not be treated merely as instruments for a wider social objective, even one framed as protection. You can support child safety without giving the state broad power to decide which lawful digital spaces people may access. The state has legitimate duties, many of which it is failing. But its involvement in ordinary private life should be minimal, justified, and proportionate. Protecting children cannot become a blank cheque for broad restrictions on lawful communication and privacy. That is the logic of authoritarianism: restrict first, justify it through safety, then dismiss liberty objections as irresponsible. So yes, this policy is incompatible with classical liberal values. If someone supports broad state control over lawful digital spaces, they should be honest about the principle they are defending. Authoritarian logic does not become liberal merely because it wears liberal language as a skin suit.

Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot

3 days ago

You’re going to see a lot in your X timeline about how the social media ban is unworkable and illiberal - and it will be one the most obvious examples of how social media skews debate. But it will be one of the most popular things the government is doing theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/j…

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Same playbook as the Cameron years: object to overreach and suddenly wanting privacy is treated as suspicious. Privacy is not the problem. Criminals are. Protect children by targeting actual offenders and negligent platforms, not by weakening everyone’s security. There are non-intrusive ways to protect children online. But restricting privacy tools risks making people less safe, not more. It creates perverse incentives, pushes people toward riskier workarounds, and misunderstands how these technologies are actually used.

Vittoria @vitt2tsnoc

a day ago

Nothing has made me more pro social media ban for kids than watching anonymous adults lose their minds at the thought of proving they’re adults. The call is coming from inside the house.

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Neil is not quite accurate here. Banning VPNs would not literally require dismantling the internet, but it would have massive implications for networks and plenty of unintended consequences. Modern infrastructure relies heavily on secure tunnels. Ironically, much of this “online safety” policy seems to reduce security and privacy, leaving the average person more vulnerable.

@KanishkaNarayan The fact VPN restrictions are even being discussed tells me the people shaping this policy do not understand the technology they are trying to regulate.