Hard Wire

New Law Overseas Sees Increase In VPN Use

1.7k Views

Well, here we go again — another government promising safety and delivering controversy instead. It’s been just five days since the UK’s Online Safety Act went into effect, and the fallout is already massive: nearly 400,000 people have signed a petition calling for its repeal, VPN downloads in the country have skyrocketed, and the debate has morphed into a cultural brawl between those crying "censorship" and those demanding tighter protections for kids online.


This law, enforced by Ofcom, aims to clean up the internet for children — think fewer violent videos, suicide and self-harm content, and access to porn. Platforms now have to implement “highly effective” age checks, meaning UK users could be asked to upload an ID and even a selfie just to access certain legal websites. Social media companies have been forced to rework their algorithms to filter out harmful content for young users, while kids are supposed to get more control over their accounts. The UK government is celebrating this as "important progress" — a win for parents and teens who’ve been clamoring for more online protections.


But here’s the flip side: critics say it’s an overreach, a clumsy fix for a complex issue. Nigel Farage slammed the rules as “state suppression of genuine free speech,” sparking a nasty spat with tech secretary Peter Kyle, who accused Farage of siding with predators like Jimmy Savile — a claim Farage called “absolutely disgusting.” Even adult content creators, like Jak White, are saying their engagement has plummeted and that emojis and non-explicit posts are being caught in the filters. In his words: “What it’s turned into now is pretty much censorship.”


And people aren’t just complaining — they’re bypassing. Proton VPN reports a 1,400% surge in UK sign-ups just minutes after the law took effect, with sustained increases of 1,800% in daily sign-ups. NordVPN claims a 1,000% spike in purchases. Five VPN apps cracked the top 10 on Apple’s UK App Store. In other words, Brits are downloading circumvention tools in droves, just like users in more heavily censored countries do.


That raises a bigger question: are these “child safety” measures actually effective, or are they just pushing people toward workarounds while normalizing surveillance? Civil liberties experts like Daniel Kahn Gillmor of the ACLU warn this is a dangerous precedent — a quick, feel-good technological fix with consequences we haven’t fully reckoned with.

So here we are: a law meant to protect kids has triggered a privacy panic, a political mudfight, and a booming VPN market. And the cat-and-mouse game between regulators and users? It’s just getting started.

Previous Biden Comments On KJP
Next City Council President Comments On Incident