It only takes a single determined kid really as long as they can explain to their friends how to do it and their friends are capable of or able to install some software or boot into a live USB OS for example.
A lot of the various censorship circumvention software is designed to be fairly easy to use. I first learned about Tails when I was like 14 or so because I was being abused for being suspected of being LGBT by my parents and also for various other things such as being autistic and having other disabilities and they were abusing me for things I could not help. So I needed a way to ensure that I would stay protected from their potential digital snooping so I could get support online, talk to my online friends because I had nearly no irl friends and the very few I did kinda have just took advantage of me and bullied me most of the time.
I also needed to be able to rapidly destroy everything I was doing by pulling out the flash drive wiping the RAM and shutting down the PC. One of the somewhat common use cases for Tails is people under domestic abuse situations they are unable to escape from.
There is a reason why the Trevor Project, a mental health support site for LGBT people has an emergency mechanism for quickly leaving the site while your in the middle of a conversation with a counselor or just browsing the resources too.
But regardless after I learned about stuff like that I also helped an online friend from another school access content using bridges as well. I helped another friend at some point too though in that case basic web proxies were enough. Though the latter person I guess was not really a great friend since he only really wanted to talk to me when he needed help with things like that.
Psiphon, another censorship circumvention tool is also fairly easy to use and works on mobile and desktop style OSs.
On my phone I used the Shelter app to create a work profile with a separate password from my devices regular password.
I used various apps like Tor Browser, Orbot, and other free and open source apps such as Bitmask that come with 2 free VPN providers.
In some cases Tor may not even be blocked or if it is you can try obfs4, Snowflake proxies, Meek, and Webtunnel bridges to access it for example.
Also a friend could run a private bridge for you from their home if they are tech savvy and want to help you. For obfs4 for example, out of a lot of services someone could self host, that is relatively easy without as much knowlege required as self hosting something more complex.
Wireguard is relatively easy to self host once you become accustomed to how to configure it. SSH is even easier than Wireguard IMO though Wireguard tries to be as easy as SSH there are a few issues that can happen with Wireguard that need more troubleshooting sometimes compared to SSH. SSH can be used for tunneling traffic and you can set your web browser to use it’s SOCKS port.
So if you can find a friend with an ISP that isn’t doing the filtering who can self host something or if a person can access Tor, Psiphon or a VPN particularly one with a variety of anti censorship options this type of network censorship isn’t going to be trivial.
There is also DNS tunneling and a variety of other methods.
Edit: The last thing I will likely say in this particular comment is that people should really consider who they will be condemning to a much worse situation than they are already in by supporting stuff like this and these privacy invasive age verification tools.
Here is additional info about who these types of bills will impact harshly.
"Age-verification mandates most harshly affect people with disabilities. Facial recognition systems routinely fail to recognize faces with physical differences, affecting an estimated 100 million people worldwide who live with facial differences, and “liveness detection” can exclude folks with limited mobility. As these technologies become gatekeepers to online spaces, people with disabilities find themselves increasingly blocked from essential services and platforms with no specified appeals processes that account for disability.
Document-based systems also don’t solve this problem—as mentioned earlier, people with disabilities are also less likely to possess current driver’s licenses, so document-based age-gating technologies are equally exclusionary."
“For many LGBTQ+ young people, especially those with unsupportive or abusive families, the internet can be a lifeline. For young people facing family rejection or violence due to their sexuality or gender identity, social media platforms often provide crucial access to support networks, mental health resources, and communities that affirm their identities.”
"According to a groundbreaking study by Chapin Hall of the University of Chicago, LGBTQ+ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their peers. And, while LGBTQ+ youth make up only 7% of the total U.S. youth population, they comprise an astounding 40% of all young people experiencing homelessness in the country.
Often times, youth who make their way to Covenant House do so bearing complex histories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. LGBTQ+ youth are further traumatized by rejection in their families, schools, and communities due to their gender identity or sexual orientation. This abandonment leads to no support system, putting LGBTQ+ youth at greater risk of exploitation, human trafficking, physical violence, and suicide"
“Platforms that rely on AI-based age-estimation systems often use a webcam selfie to guess users’ ages. But these algorithms don’t work equally well for everyone. Research has consistently shown that they are less accurate for people with Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian backgrounds; that they often misclassify those adults as being under 18; and sometimes take longer to process, creating unequal access to online spaces. This mirrors the well-documented racial bias in facial recognition technologies. The result is that technology’s inherent biases can block people from speaking online or accessing others’ speech.”
“Age-verification systems are, at their core, surveillance systems. By requiring identity verification to access basic online services, we risk creating an internet where anonymity is a thing of the past. For people who rely on anonymity for safety, this is a serious issue. Domestic abuse survivors need to stay anonymous to hide from abusers who could track them through their online activities. Journalists, activists, and whistleblowers regularly use anonymity to protect sources and organize without facing retaliation or government surveillance. And in countries under authoritarian rule, anonymity is often the only way to access banned resources or share information without being silenced. Age-verification systems that demand government IDs or biometric data would strip away these protections, leaving the most vulnerable exposed”
Also the perspectives of young people are almost never considered in these conversations which is why I am glad the Electronic Frontier Foundation actually took the time to ask when KOSA was being considered but these comments in the following link apply to a lot of these other forms of legislation too.
It only takes a single determined kid really as long as they can explain to their friends how to do it and their friends are capable of or able to install some software or boot into a live USB OS for example.
A lot of the various censorship circumvention software is designed to be fairly easy to use. I first learned about Tails when I was like 14 or so because I was being abused for being suspected of being LGBT by my parents and also for various other things such as being autistic and having other disabilities and they were abusing me for things I could not help. So I needed a way to ensure that I would stay protected from their potential digital snooping so I could get support online, talk to my online friends because I had nearly no irl friends and the very few I did kinda have just took advantage of me and bullied me most of the time.
I also needed to be able to rapidly destroy everything I was doing by pulling out the flash drive wiping the RAM and shutting down the PC. One of the somewhat common use cases for Tails is people under domestic abuse situations they are unable to escape from.
There is a reason why the Trevor Project, a mental health support site for LGBT people has an emergency mechanism for quickly leaving the site while your in the middle of a conversation with a counselor or just browsing the resources too.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/mental-health-among-autistic-lgbtq-youth-apr-2022/
But regardless after I learned about stuff like that I also helped an online friend from another school access content using bridges as well. I helped another friend at some point too though in that case basic web proxies were enough. Though the latter person I guess was not really a great friend since he only really wanted to talk to me when he needed help with things like that.
Psiphon, another censorship circumvention tool is also fairly easy to use and works on mobile and desktop style OSs.
On my phone I used the Shelter app to create a work profile with a separate password from my devices regular password.
I used various apps like Tor Browser, Orbot, and other free and open source apps such as Bitmask that come with 2 free VPN providers.
In some cases Tor may not even be blocked or if it is you can try obfs4, Snowflake proxies, Meek, and Webtunnel bridges to access it for example.
Also a friend could run a private bridge for you from their home if they are tech savvy and want to help you. For obfs4 for example, out of a lot of services someone could self host, that is relatively easy without as much knowlege required as self hosting something more complex.
Wireguard is relatively easy to self host once you become accustomed to how to configure it. SSH is even easier than Wireguard IMO though Wireguard tries to be as easy as SSH there are a few issues that can happen with Wireguard that need more troubleshooting sometimes compared to SSH. SSH can be used for tunneling traffic and you can set your web browser to use it’s SOCKS port.
So if you can find a friend with an ISP that isn’t doing the filtering who can self host something or if a person can access Tor, Psiphon or a VPN particularly one with a variety of anti censorship options this type of network censorship isn’t going to be trivial.
There is also DNS tunneling and a variety of other methods.
Edit: The last thing I will likely say in this particular comment is that people should really consider who they will be condemning to a much worse situation than they are already in by supporting stuff like this and these privacy invasive age verification tools.
Here is additional info about who these types of bills will impact harshly.
"Age-verification mandates most harshly affect people with disabilities. Facial recognition systems routinely fail to recognize faces with physical differences, affecting an estimated 100 million people worldwide who live with facial differences, and “liveness detection” can exclude folks with limited mobility. As these technologies become gatekeepers to online spaces, people with disabilities find themselves increasingly blocked from essential services and platforms with no specified appeals processes that account for disability.
Document-based systems also don’t solve this problem—as mentioned earlier, people with disabilities are also less likely to possess current driver’s licenses, so document-based age-gating technologies are equally exclusionary."
“For many LGBTQ+ young people, especially those with unsupportive or abusive families, the internet can be a lifeline. For young people facing family rejection or violence due to their sexuality or gender identity, social media platforms often provide crucial access to support networks, mental health resources, and communities that affirm their identities.”
"According to a groundbreaking study by Chapin Hall of the University of Chicago, LGBTQ+ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their peers. And, while LGBTQ+ youth make up only 7% of the total U.S. youth population, they comprise an astounding 40% of all young people experiencing homelessness in the country.
Often times, youth who make their way to Covenant House do so bearing complex histories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. LGBTQ+ youth are further traumatized by rejection in their families, schools, and communities due to their gender identity or sexual orientation. This abandonment leads to no support system, putting LGBTQ+ youth at greater risk of exploitation, human trafficking, physical violence, and suicide"
“Platforms that rely on AI-based age-estimation systems often use a webcam selfie to guess users’ ages. But these algorithms don’t work equally well for everyone. Research has consistently shown that they are less accurate for people with Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian backgrounds; that they often misclassify those adults as being under 18; and sometimes take longer to process, creating unequal access to online spaces. This mirrors the well-documented racial bias in facial recognition technologies. The result is that technology’s inherent biases can block people from speaking online or accessing others’ speech.”
“Age-verification systems are, at their core, surveillance systems. By requiring identity verification to access basic online services, we risk creating an internet where anonymity is a thing of the past. For people who rely on anonymity for safety, this is a serious issue. Domestic abuse survivors need to stay anonymous to hide from abusers who could track them through their online activities. Journalists, activists, and whistleblowers regularly use anonymity to protect sources and organize without facing retaliation or government surveillance. And in countries under authoritarian rule, anonymity is often the only way to access banned resources or share information without being silenced. Age-verification systems that demand government IDs or biometric data would strip away these protections, leaving the most vulnerable exposed”
Also the perspectives of young people are almost never considered in these conversations which is why I am glad the Electronic Frontier Foundation actually took the time to ask when KOSA was being considered but these comments in the following link apply to a lot of these other forms of legislation too.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/thousands-young-people-told-us-why-kids-online-safety-act-will-be-harmful-minors