UK will be blocked early July 😢

[sluttony]

6 hours ago, Splitcock said:

Will you make this site as VPN friendly as you can for us considering the free vpns take ages to load. 

There isn't much you can do at the website end that will make it any more performant over a VPN than it is for general access.

If you're limited to free choices, I would seriously recommend using the Brave browser and TOR as I said above. Generally, it's just as responsive as native browsing.

[rawTOP]

On 5/29/2025 at 9:53 PM, Splitcock said:

Will you make this site as VPN friendly as you can for us considering the free vpns take ages to load. 

The site is hosted in Detroit. Choose a VPN location near there to have the lowest latency.

[cub84]

On 5/30/2025 at 2:53 AM, Splitcock said:

Will you make this site as VPN friendly as you can for us considering the free vpns take ages to load.

Thankfully @rawTOP supports the use of VPNs and has been advising folk for a while that they ought to consider getting one. I currently use NordVPN, which has been fairly decent over the years of using it, though I'm considering switching to Proton.

Unlike the owner of barebackrt who actively bans VPN users from accessing that site. Using a VPN on my laptop almost always means I can't log in and get a webpage (made by them) accusing me of being a fraudster, rather than wanting privacy from my home ISP or the hotel wifi provider etc. When accessing bbrt on my phone/ipad and have the VPN active, I don't seem to get the warning as often but no idea why since it's the same VPN across all devices.

[cub84]

I've been keeping an eye on this topic since it first started, since as a UK resident it directly affects me. But have been also cautious for various reasons.

For all those railing against the current UK government, the introduction of age verification for adult content has been on the cards for many years under governments of all different stripes. Folk have said 'voting matters', yet at successive elections none of the main parties has advocated for anything other than continuing this line of practice. If anything they're stuck in a vicious circle of trying to out compete each other on who can be more draconian and curtail more personally liberties, with public discourse being constantly inflamed by our ever more awful newspaper and media commentariat ecosystem.

While the internet has made it much, much more easy to access adult content, it is worth recalling that the UK has historically had some of the most stringent anti-porn laws in the western world (which it also exported, via Empire, to other shores). The Obsecenity Act is still active law, first enacted in the 1800s and replacing various royal proclamations, it controls the production and publication of pornographic material. Through other legislation it is also still technically illegal to send obscene material through the post, though in the post-VHS/DVD age this hardly matterns now. While enforcement of these laws has always been somewhat mixed, it's only because of a more relaxed stance at the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) since the start of the 2000s and the Human Rights Act that "hardcore" pornography has been generally available (in physical form) in the UK. But the Internet makes a mockery of all these previous laws designed for the non-Internet age. These new laws are merely a moden expression of long held moral sentiments and executive perogative to constrain access to what is deemed "obscene material" by the powers that be.

The attempts by British governments since the mid-2000s to weaken end-to-end encryption come from a similar admistrative tradition that views citizens as subjects and that 'for the public good' the Crown has an inalienable right to their information. Though government ministers and senior officials seem to routinely forget that weakening end-to-end for one weakens it for all, including them.

Returning to the matter at hand, for what it's worth I think the risk and impact of enforcement action being taken out against BZ itself is low, but it's non-zero and therefore I understand the action rawTOP's decided to take. It is also quite possible, probable even, that the UK's ISPs might further restrict access to adult content. Since 2013, UK-based broadband and mobile (cell) providers have been required to 'content filter' users access to the internet, meaning you have had to actively opt-out of content filtering and declare that you want to see "18+" content (porn, gambling, etc).

There isn't really anything we (UK users) can do about the situation especially this late in the day, so we have adapt (e.g. getting a VPN) since we're rather a niche community here and not big enough to affect public policy. We also probably don't want the likes of the D*!1y M*!1 snooping around here and getting all Mary Whitehouse on us.

[sluttony]

Until they ban VPN's 

They're already taking the baton from numerous previous home secretaries and trying to weaken encryption. Just look at the lawsuit between UK Gov vs Apple (and now, Apple being supported by WhatsApp).