Xbox players in the UK must verify their age to keep access to social features – Dexerto
https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/xbox-players-in-the-uk-must-verify-their-age-to-keep-access-to-social-features-3231452/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwL4KjljbGNrAvgqNGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEeorObr4yOvxMgiNmeP2x1wnND9kmi_3ZJ00-FN120RsS9FmT8twwgudyYUq8_aem_p8zNbjJgXNQecNgMll8klA
Posted by springheeledjack69
31 Comments
What a fucking insane situation.
Genuinely considering my vote for labour over this, might vote with the masses just to watch it burn.
The Online Safety Act really is demonstrating the law of unintended consequences.
I don’t think they’re going to repeal it. I think it’s a coordinated effort across multiple countries – it’s no coincidence that this is happening here, the US, Europe, Australia etc. etc.
This is an authoritarian power grab. I suspect they’ll use the ‘age verification’ information they’ve gathered to cross reference against suspected dissidents to act on them. How far the umbrella of the term ‘dissident’ spreads is currently unknown.
They started with “we need to stop kids seeing porn” and now they’re at “17 year olds can’t speak on the telephone to strangers if the telephone is part of a scary computer.” They do realise this age group works actual jobs, right?
It’s incredible how a policy written by Nadine Dorries ended up causing so many headaches for Labour.
Such a dumb law too because not even the supporters like it, they wanted social media to be checked and that’s the one place that’s being let off from this.
All Labour needed to do was agree that it was dumb, blame the Tories for passing it in 2023 and move on promising to work on a more comprehensive law that tackles the problem without infringing on liberties (aka lie and do nothing).
Don’t think that Xbox (and other services) can necessarily be criticised for reacting to ridiculous legislation.
It’s just extremely stupid but somewhat out of their hands.
The most overreaching, vague act ever made thus far. I really hope Labour lose thousands of votes over this. Yes the Tories passed this but this current government looked at this act and saw no issues. They’re absolute clowns.
If my account was a person it’d be old enough to verify its own age, I’ve been on live since 2006. They try and make me do it and I’ll buy a PlayStation
Great.
Can’t wait to verify my PS account which is probably old enough to fucking drink at this point.
My payment by credit card confirms that I am of age?
“Xbox users in the UK will soon need to verify their age to continue using key social features like messaging and voice chat with people outside their friends list”
So public lobby stuff you won’t be able to use.
The worst thing is that unless they do periodic check this is pointless as anyone can use an account so you know its coming going to be asked to prove your age everytime you log in or try to do anything not just once
Same as Spotify. I pay a direct debit to Microsoft every month. That should be verification enough. No kids in my household. Sick of this unnecessary bullshit
I’m a labour voter and seriously can’t see myself voting for them now. This bill is causing so much hassle and annoyance while they virtue signal to hide that it’s just about control
This is pointless. Daddy will simply verify the account and let his 5 year old play.
Project 2025 wasn’t something they used to scare Americans into voting for Kamala. It’s a real distopian shit show that’s happening, and it’s happening globally.
This is so annoying. The UK has been on the downhill like many places for a long time, lately its been only getting worse but the age verification thing is annoying me. Reddit already is asking me for it, and now XBOX?? C’mon. Its crazy this is what tips me over the edge haha but I am not even kidding. Why waste time with this, there are way more important things the goverment can be doing. Bunch of fools
Right after they say they are letting 16 year old vote?
Sounds like those that lobby our government are looking to get us to vote reform so they can go full ~~right~~ reich. Also known as reich up the pedo cheetos arse.
I hope this gets even worse for us, we REALLY deserve it.
Good ol English, always ready to bend over and lube up to take it up the arse.
Stiff upper lips lads, tally ho, better not say anything and be rude
It is really absurd that 16-17 year olds are old enough to vote, but not old enough to talk to someone online.
> online safety act is to prevent kids from accessing porn
Is being used to age gate absolutely everything
There’s absolutely no reason why the state should be involved in this topic, especially not when there are obviously better solutions. The age at which a person should be allowed to watch porn is absolutely a parental responsibility not a state responsibility. All the main providers give parental control features so the state getting involved is completely unnecessary.
If they want to do something meaningful but not offensive and privacy invading, they should mandate that the parental controls ISPs provide are stronger and more featureful and/or that the default is parental controls on for new accounts and for new devices to the router – a bit of nudge theory that worked very well with pensions being opt out rather than opt in. Some even already do this.
Then leave parents alone to make their own decisions.
A policy that causes the majority of the population to hand over their private information for the “safety” of a smaller part of the population is clearly nonsensical and authoritarian. Especially when there are solutions as above that could achieve the same, without the privacy invasion.
So, let me just understand something here. Instagram, tiktok and snap don’t get any restrictions at all, but fucking xbox does? Half these kids get their drugs from snap these days, Instagram promotes so much hate and negativity, which ruins a teens mental health, and tiktok is awful for attention spans, especially for a teen with a developing brain.
But nooo, xbox is the problem here.
My Microsoft account could legally buy alcohol, they’ll still try and have me upload ID.
Well I have just had my identity stolen from someone hacking into my Microsoft account so they can fuck right off
I was taught at school not to give away personal details on the internet to protect myself online. Now 20 years later I’m told by the government to dox myself. Wild.
Parents already have all the tools at hand to ‘protect’ their children when online. This is utterly stupid.
Fuck Labour, my vote will be going elsewhere. Complete incompetence with this, driving the masses to VPNs, including the ‘free’ ones will only puts people at more risk.
What a bunch of idiots.
Who is labour actually trying to appeal to? They’ve alienated a lot of the left to try and appeal to the right. The right want nothing to do with labour. What is the point of Labour? I can’t wait to have reform in control of the UK because that’ll surely not make everything so much worse
You know the situation is shit when every single comment on r/UnitedKingdom agrees it is shit
This entire act is stupid.
It’s up to the parents to make sure their children aren’t accessing material that isn’t age appropriate. Not the state.
Sad thing is though is that parents don’t seem to care. I work as an IT Tech in a school and whenever we’ve had Safer Internet workshops, no one bothers to turn up. I’ve only dealt with one parent who asked me to help set up parental controls in the 18 months I’ve worked there, and it’s a service the school offers free of charge and whenever the parent is free.
But just because they can’t be arsed to parent properly doesn’t mean we should have to go all dystopic and submit freedoms to the government.
The online safety act might be the dumbest fucking thing this government has done in a long time. And now that the government has given 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote, they may aswell be throwing away votes. Why would any 16/17 year olds vote for Labour when they are banning access to porn and anything that could be explicit, and then also making it so they have to verify their age for Xbox, Spotify and probably soon for PlayStation too (as well as a host of other things)
Especially now where a lot of the younger generation is going through a righter wing shift, labour has practically guaranteed that no young people will vote for then now
As well as this even for adults this act is still hilariously bad. Why would any person want to give their ID to a third party company? And what if the data stored with these companies is leaked? Now thousands of people’s ID’s are compromised
And also it is stupidly easy to bypass these measures, use any vpn and now you don’t have to do any of this shit, I’ve seen people inputting video games characters into the system too to trick it
The online safety act sets a dangerous precedent into what could happen in the future. What if the government doesn’t stop here? What if they now start censoring information where it fits them or controlling a narrative