So, the UK's Online Safety Act, with all its strict age verification, went live a while back. I gotta say, I wasn't surprised when people started looking for ways around it. It's human nature, right? When you put up a wall, someone's gonna try to climb over, go around, or dig under it. And that's exactly what happened.

I saw some pretty creative workarounds pop up. Apparently, folks were using the photo mode in Death Stranding to try and trick the face scans. Wild, right? However, the simplest solutions often work the best, and in this case, it seems like VPNs have become the tool of choice.

If you aren't already familiar, VPNs basically let you pretend you're browsing from another country. This means when a website tries to figure out if you're old enough to view certain content, it sees an IP address from somewhere like, say, Canada, where the UK's age checks don't apply. Pretty sneaky.

I remember reading that shortly after the law came into effect, a huge number of the top free apps in the iOS App Store were VPNs. People were downloading them like crazy! It really shows you how much people value their online privacy and freedom. I mean, who wants to constantly be bombarded with age verification prompts?

I think the real takeaway here isn't just that people are circumventing the law, but that the law itself might be a bit misguided. When you make things too difficult for regular users, they're just going to find a way around it. Maybe the UK should rethink its approach and focus on solutions that are more user-friendly and less invasive. What do you think?