The New Statesman.

Does the government understand the internet?

Will Labour and the Lib Dems form a pact?

Is it time to revive the Commonwealth?

I'm Anusha Kellyan and this is the listener questions edition of the New Statesman podcast

and I'm joined by my colleagues Rachel Cunliff and George

Eaton. Hello. Hello. Thanks to our audience for a great host of questions this week. So let's get

into it. This question is from a mysterious anonymous audience member and it's a long question.

So I've actually split it into two. So first of all, on the Online Safety Act, how did we end up in a situation

where a major piece of legislation has been passed and enacted when there was such an

obvious way of getting around it, the rise of the use of VPNs? Does this point to a wider

problem of politicians and maybe Whitehall not really understanding the internet or was it

just deemed good politics

regardless of this obvious workaround?

Rachel, you've been looking into this policy, haven't you?

Can you explain, you know, how do you use a VPN to get around what they're imposing?

You use a VPN to basically tell the internet that you are in a different country other than the UK

that doesn't have these restrictions.

And some of them are free.

Some of them are you have to pay for.

I think if you had stocks and shares in a VPN company this week, then his policy is

really good for you, yeah, because there's been a lot more interest in it.

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