alt Hacker NewsI'm surprised that the EFF does not highlight the best option, here: use a VPN to a jurisdiction that doesn't have such ridiculous laws.
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VPNs are increasingly useless, with Cloudflare in front of 80% of the public net. I always wonder if people giving this advice try it themselves, most major sites are unusable with a common VPN provider.
In many cases, using a VPN is a great way to get your account flagged as suspicious.
"Give up" is not the best option. Certainly not from the EFF's perspective.
The days are numbered on this technique working. After enough countries enact their own age verification laws tech companies will just make that the global default policy, and I'm sure the opportunity to harvest user data will not be left to waste. Many sites already block and throttle VPNs.
When that day comes I'll stop casually using the internet or search for the underground alternative.
I think EFF does not recommend for or against VPN in general because it's not always a clear win, depending on the VPN and the use case.
Next step: the same government that is demanding the age verification will ban VPNs.
It might be bad for an activist group to advocate just ignoring the problem into a different jurisdiction.