Aaron L Bennett

Bartender, Milliner, Socialist.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

ridiculous that we have all these supposed billionaire geniuses running around, and their greatest innovation of our lifetime has been stealing our personal data to sell us targeted ads.

[big john the boshfather @Johnfis08605918]

Talk is cheap. Help is needed now. Come on the government.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Apple built this exact tool in 2021. Within weeks, security researchers showed it could flag innocent people's content. Apple killed it 16 months later. The UK just gave tech companies three months to build it anyway, threatening prison for executives who refuse.

The proposal is for something called client-side scanning. End-to-end encryption (the technology that protects your WhatsApp or Signal messages) works by scrambling your messages on your phone before they leave it. Nobody intercepting them can read them. Client-side scanning changes that sequence: your phone checks every image and message against a database of prohibited content before encrypting it. The lock stays in place, but the inspection happens first. When the government says "scan for nude images," technically they mean "scan everything."

The people who invented internet security have already ruled on this. Ronald Rivest helped create RSA encryption, the system behind every padlock icon you see in a browser. Whitfield Diffie invented public-key cryptography, the math that all web security is built on. In October 2021, both co-signed a paper with twelve other leading cryptographers, concluding that device-level scanning undermines security for everyone while giving law enforcement only unreliable gains. Once that infrastructure is on every phone, any government can point it at whatever they decide to ban next.

The EU spent three years trying to pass something identical. Germany blocked a Council vote in October 2025. On March 26, 2026, the European Parliament voted 307 to 306 to reject it. One vote. German federal police data from those debates showed roughly 48% of the 300,000 chats reported annually under existing scanning rules were false positives, innocent people's messages treated as criminal evidence.

There is one more consequence the announcement left out. The government wants to block nude images on children's devices but not adults'. Enforcing that line means every device in the UK needs to know whether its owner is a child. The only way to do that is mandatory age verification. Signal pointed out where this lands: every UK resident would need to prove their identity just to communicate privately. That means 67 million people submitting identification to use software they already own.

The EU rejected this by one vote two and a half months ago. The UK is now attempting it alone.

[Count Dankula @CountDankulaTV]

This all seems to be a ploy to link IP addresses and online activity directly to an identifiable person to make them easier to catch and track down. The government falsely assumed that everyone watches porn and they thought they would get everyone that way. It obviously did not work as well as they were hoping so they are now expanding it. (I have always said that initial laws are just a foot in the door, those laws will always be expanding after the fact into their true original intended purpose).

So their plan now is if you want to use any social media or much of the internet in any way, you will need to prove that you are over 18 which means submitting an ID. This will require far far more ID submissions which will massively expand the government database, which was the real plan all along, not the safety of children.

The funniest thing about this is after all the fuss about the Online Safety Act, this blanket ban on kids using social media pretty much renders the entire act pointless and made it a giant waste of time. Which to be honest, proves that the act was never about protecting children but was really about building a giant database that links all online activity directly to a person.

This database would then be constantly poured over by AI to flag "citizens of concern" to the government who may be potential political dissidents, saying naughty anti-government things etc so the government can pre-emptively act against them.

Minority Report. This is literally the plot of Minority Report.

[keewa 🇵🇸 @keewa]

Again: a suffragette threw an axe at Herbert Asquith

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

83% of British people are white

87% of MPs are white

92% of Police officers are white

94% of the House of Lords are white

85% of Britains richest families are white

The notion that Britain experiences systemic anti-white racism is absurd

It’s a far-right conspiracy

[Bite Your Brum @BiteYourBrum]

So just to be clear, a 16 year old girl can legally have a baby but can’t watch TikToks after dinner? Sound 😂

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Elon Musk is a fascist POS, and trillionaires shouldn't exist.

But they definitely shouldn't be people like him.

[Aaron L Bennett @ALBennett89]

@anon_opin Self scan is card only.

[Bev Buckland @buckland_bev]

So apparently, the plan's this:

1. Deny trans boys hormone treatment & force them to develop breasts.
2. Condemn them for having top surgery as adults.
3. Tell them their scars look repulsive.

Feminism huh.

[James @JPainter_]

When I was a teenager I had a passion for making videos, I wanted to go into film and tv but when I tried to take the traditional eduction route I quickly realised it was a failing system

The teachers were underpaid, didn’t care enough, under resourced and quite frankly weren’t really skilled enough to actually provide me with the level of eduction I needed to persue my passion

So I turned to YouTube where I found millions of free, highly eductional tutorials that taught me everything I needed to know, I spent 3 years between the age of 13-16 on YouTube every night learning how to use different softwares, how to edit videos, cinematography, how to tell stories etc

All of which are things a traditional eduction in tv and film never even attempted to
teach me, 12 years on I’ve built an entire career with the knowledge I learned from free YouTube tutorials, bought a house from that knowledge and contributed substaincially to both the economy and the tax fund in this country

Banning YouTube for U16s does far more damage than it does good to the next generation, it takes away their ability to learn and grow outside of the boundries of a government approved education system and puts the country at risk of falling even further behind the rest of the world than we already are in terms of inovation

[enter shakira𓅮 @BARFJAMiN]

getting a fast-tracked 3-year jail sentence handed down by an AI judge for a hallucinated crime with no jury or right of appeal. the future of Britain is here baby

[fareed 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @it_is_fareed]

Perhaps a social media curfew for over-65s, or at least mental faculty tests for access? Do our pensioners not deserve similar protections to our teenagers?

[chloe @Dykeocletian]

People making the point that this is about creeping authoritarianism aimed at adults, which it is, but the ongoing crusade for "parent's rights" e.g. to reaffirm that children are the property of their parents and deserve zero autonomy whatsoever is also a crucial aspect of this.

[Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz]

Studies in AUS found that since the social media ban went into effect teenagers are significantly less educated on news and events and more ignorant on what’s going on in the world. This is the goal. Western govts saw the rise of the information age and are seeking to quash it

[John Duncan @Johntheduncan]

Jesus christ what an absolute shit show. Our judiciary is not only deeply reactionary and authoritarian but also just stupid. In no conceivable sense were the Suffragettes more peaceful than PA

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

This is absolutely insane.

The suffragettes used far more extreme tactics than Palestine Action.

They planted bombs, burned down private homes and smashed up art galleries.

They killed five people!

Her outrageous judgement is based on absurd historical ignorance.

[Page ✿♡ @Vampuppy_Page]

Living in Britain really radicalises you to genuinely despise old people.

[Aaron L Bennett @ALBennett89]

@jan_murray Trans men exist.

[Aaron L Bennett @ALBennett89]

@nicolelampert Maybe they should stop selling illegally occupied land?