I know I'm banging on the same drum here, but every website, every search engine, every private chat or e-mail server might potentially be a host for pornographic content. These laws are a recipe for requiring ID to access the internet at all. This isn't about protecting children: it's about stripping you of your anonymity, and the right needs to stop encouraging it.
You go on some of these porn sites, and they practically brag about how young the median person is the first time they watch porn. So I don't take the industry at its word that they care about the "rights" of their users.
That said, it'd be nice if the industry and/or governments actually put some thought into solutions other than "you have to snap a photo of yourself holding your driver's license" or "we're just shutting off the site in this jurisdiction". And I think a big part of the problem is that the tech industry as a whole doesn't see this as a problem, so they aren't particularly incentivized to think very hard about a solution.
Here's one possible solution I spent 30 seconds thinking about: a "trusted certificate authority" issues "proof of age of majority" certificates the same way they would issue an email cert, a PDF signing cert, or an SSL cert for a web site. All it attests is the person to whom the cert was issued is over 18. Issue it on a secure dongle or smart card so it's harder to put them online, add browser support for the things, and you're off.
Is it perfect? No. Is it better than an "are you over 18?" prompt that gives you unlimited chances to click "yes" if you're stupid enough to click "no" the first time? Yes. Could someone come up with a better solution if they had a team of engineers spend a bunch of time and money taking the problem actually seriously (at least as serious as they treated the "problem" of "online 'disinformation'")? Almost certainly.
Honestly some targeted industry pressure would be enough. We could always find that stuff on the net but back in the day it used to take a few more steps. It's the commercial websites and social media groomers making it easy for most kids to see these days. There used to be the tech savvy kid who would bring internet porn to school to show his friends. Now spez doles out his favorite interracial fetish videos like candy on reddit, and google despite having an adult content policy lets them put a reddit icon on your home screen to make it easier.
People are upset these days that people post pseudonymously. Lots o noobs, basically, saying dumb shit with their real name right on it. They think they are protected from the consequences because they hold popular political opinions
Bingo. They specifically avoid addressing the actual root of the problems because they're using the problems as a tool to push the grossly unpopular solutions they actually wanted all along.
That's exactly the direction the UK is heading with their requirement for Government photo ID and live facial recognition system they favour for implementation next year for anything not "safe for kids". People have mistakenly believed this is just for pornography but they'll be in for a shock when a wide range of websites will have to comply.
Even if the short term outcome is good (fuck PornHub, they're evil, it would be great if they left every state), this whole "internet ID" thing - regardless of context - is a terrible fucking idea. And something we've generally been against for over a decade. They just tacked "anti-porn" and "think of the children" onto it, and this time some people are buying the schtick.
There are two big points I like to bring out when this conversation comes up. One, to the people who say "well, if you're not a child, what's the big deal?"...yeah, adults have to prove they're not children. i.e. you, a legal adult, have to provide ID to access a website...because the government said so. "Slippery slope" doesn't even begin to describe it; what an utter disaster.
Two, if we're policing context that isn't suitable for a group, why not apply it to other things? "Limited scope" and "government control" generally don't go hand in hand. They've been trying to crack down on militia content, for example. They've been trying to raise the gun purchasing age to twenty-one. It's a short hop from ID to access porn to blocking legal adults (18-20) from accessing basic firearm sites with zero extremist content or link to extremism.
No matter how you feel about porn, or porn companies, the idea of the government requiring you to ask for permission to access information/content on the internet is the absolute death of any pro-freedom or anti-government movements.
"Won't someone PLEASE watch over the children?!?!!" they cry out. "Oh, but not the parents. We can't have mothers watching their own kids and raising them. That would be sexist and wrong. And assuming fathers are helping raise their own kids is white supremacy somehow. So specificially, won't someone PLEASE get the government to watch over the children?!?!?!!?!"
Literally the entire "think of the children!" argument boils down to rich narcissists not wanting to spend a couple minutes of their lives raising their own kids. And for some reason, the conservative crowd just gets on their knees and opens their mouths, ready to lap it up. Oh please daddy government, raise our kids in our place harder.
I'm casually listening to the radio and right now, I just heard a segment "can we protect children from 'harm' on the Internet". They're not just targeting pornography. Activists for online safety in the UK if they get their way would love the idea of locked down devices and a national Intranet where everything is licensed and deemed safe for children by Ofcom while the gateways to the Internet are monitored and regulated in the same way Border Force do with physical border crossings (not that it stops migrants getting in).
Sadly, these activists are the ones who are invited into Parliament and have the ear of the main party leaders while civil liberty campaigners are dismissed as threats to children.
They have a track record of doing EVERYTHING including using libertarian groups to stop age verification and when they can't, they dip. Like they don't want to stop kids accessing porn...
This is why I'm not full any political ideology and more my own thing because porn industry use libertarians, free speech and more corporate free market groups to block regulations to then push leftist trans porn and just porn addiction in general to kids.
I'd rather just have it so the person who pays for the Internet connection has to admin unlock for adult content so if these parents really try the 'I can't stop them, we need censorship' they're the ones at fault like if you give your kids access to your bank cards..
They have a track record of doing EVERYTHING including using libertarian groups to stop age verification and when they can't, they dip. Like they don't want to stop kids accessing porn...
Age verification is not the primary feature of these systems, it's identity verification. If Pornhub doesn't want to collect a goldmine of identity theft and blackmail material even when ordered to by the government, that's a good sign.
Kids should not have unregulated access to the internet in general. It's not just about porn - the world is full of bastards, and you should be just as worried about your kid being radicalised by climate cultists or groomed by trans activists as you are about them stumbling on some piece of degenerate porn.
Kids should not have unregulated access to the internet in general.
Near every problem in this country comes on the heels of "we don't want to raise our kids, government fix this."
This is no different. Rather than having to monitor and control their kid's access to the internet, they will set the foundation for completely destroying the entire internet by giving The Government the foot in the door to oppress us all. And the whole way giving them the easy "protecting the children" cover.
They expect the government to fix it because the government has exercised unprecedented daily intrusions of power in the past decade, if not longer.
Don't want your kid to get their genitals lopped off? That's a paddling. Disagree with trans library time? Sniper teams on the roof. Protest an election? Into the gulag.
I see the recent spread of ID laws when it comes to porn access as normie parents slowly starting to wake up to clown world and expect the old ways of managing things to fix it. They've yet to realize that this stuff only goes one way, that the methods their using already belong to the enemy, and that the only options to seriously fix all this are narrowing to a severe degree.
Parents expect the government to fix this because parents are no longer given full control of their kids lives. I can't blame them much for realizing this and acting accordingly to their PoV.
If I want to take responsibility for my kid, and make sure to closely monitor what they're doing online, what happens when they go to school? Sure as sugar the teacher isn't going to be watching every kid and their "firewalls" are a joke.
Now, am I as a parent allowed into the school to make sure my kids are properly supervised? Give that a try and see how far you get. Government says: We're education professionals, and you're just a retard with the necessary equipment.
I wonder how much of this is straight up schools trying to avoid lawsuits because they're terrible at blocking pron and are worried about lawsuits?
Most techies think the porn age laws are antiquated and aren't particularly interested in taking the problem seriously. So when the government decides to get involved, the only "solution" is a draconian one.
The classic pattern: "reasonable" people declare a problem to be "unsolvable", so the only people offering solutions are "unreasonable".
I think you have to give your ID to YouTube if you want to monetize or even upload 15 minutes video, maybe 10 minutes video. some years ago they already requested ID to just watch lewd videos as swell
reminder that the tools exist to keep children off of adult websites without requiring an ID everywhere. destroying anonymity on the internet is not the solution.
Y'know, porn is dangerous, yes, but nobody on pornhub ever lures a kid into a white panel van through their DMs.
I'm way more concerned about social media, which has been clearly shown to cause mental illness in children, than about porn, whose effects seem to be a lot more vague.
The whole point of these age verification laws being in the way they are is to allow the state to ban pornography without facing the charge of banning it because they're written and implemented in such a way that it makes it impossible for such websites to continue to function in that state. Even if they went ahead with it, it would be long before "hackers" leaked all the users of that site as a "perverts database" as a final measure to deter people from going to those sites.
Next year, the UK will introduce even stricter age verification than being implemented in US states where the favoured requirement will not just be Government photo ID (passport or driving licence) but also live, ongoing facial recognition. And the criteria for who will need to comply will be any site or service that is not "safe for kids". On the basis that they need to see who is accessing a website at any time in the same way you're in person when showing ID for age restricted products in a store. It also stops an adult showing ID and then handing their device over to a child.
Consider this in the case of digital ID. It's totally possible that this process becomes two way, where the government can see everytime you show ID and to who.
Blackmail seems quite possible, or even just saying that someone was accessing horrific porn and everyone taking their word because it's the government.
In the UK, we've had a scandal involving a Tory donor that happened in 2019. They waited until now when the new definition of extremism was announced for that to come out. It would not be out of the realm of possibility for a Government in power to log the web access to certain websites and then use that to discredit an opponent when the time comes.
The porn is bad we need age verification to save the children has to be the most fucking obvious example of government trying to pass authoritarian control laws under the guise of "safety of children" ever seen in the history of this being a thing.
The fact some people even on here still don't get it because their hatred of porn is just too large to see it shows how effective it is.
Just an FYI, banning porn isn't going to make men try harder to acquire women; therefore, fixing modern relationships, nor is banning porn going to stop women having unreasonable expectations in men for sex; therefore, fixing modern relationships nor is banning porn going to all of a sudden stop all the LGBTQ+/Trans prevalence, nor is banning porn going to save a plethora of children from being exploited for sex. Banning porn is going to accomplish diddly squat for any of the underlying problems facing society. It's like trying to ban bandaids to stop cuts.
yeah.. i used to upload onto pornhub and xvideos, but they required you to scan your drivers license and do biometric photo with your webcam lol. its super intrusive and retarded.
I know I'm banging on the same drum here, but every website, every search engine, every private chat or e-mail server might potentially be a host for pornographic content. These laws are a recipe for requiring ID to access the internet at all. This isn't about protecting children: it's about stripping you of your anonymity, and the right needs to stop encouraging it.
It's both, not one or the other. We need to stop these ID laws...
...while striking the entire porn industry HARD for exploitation and (self admitted by undercover reporting) targeted grooming of children.
You go on some of these porn sites, and they practically brag about how young the median person is the first time they watch porn. So I don't take the industry at its word that they care about the "rights" of their users.
That said, it'd be nice if the industry and/or governments actually put some thought into solutions other than "you have to snap a photo of yourself holding your driver's license" or "we're just shutting off the site in this jurisdiction". And I think a big part of the problem is that the tech industry as a whole doesn't see this as a problem, so they aren't particularly incentivized to think very hard about a solution.
Here's one possible solution I spent 30 seconds thinking about: a "trusted certificate authority" issues "proof of age of majority" certificates the same way they would issue an email cert, a PDF signing cert, or an SSL cert for a web site. All it attests is the person to whom the cert was issued is over 18. Issue it on a secure dongle or smart card so it's harder to put them online, add browser support for the things, and you're off.
Is it perfect? No. Is it better than an "are you over 18?" prompt that gives you unlimited chances to click "yes" if you're stupid enough to click "no" the first time? Yes. Could someone come up with a better solution if they had a team of engineers spend a bunch of time and money taking the problem actually seriously (at least as serious as they treated the "problem" of "online 'disinformation'")? Almost certainly.
Honestly some targeted industry pressure would be enough. We could always find that stuff on the net but back in the day it used to take a few more steps. It's the commercial websites and social media groomers making it easy for most kids to see these days. There used to be the tech savvy kid who would bring internet porn to school to show his friends. Now spez doles out his favorite interracial fetish videos like candy on reddit, and google despite having an adult content policy lets them put a reddit icon on your home screen to make it easier.
Anyone on the internet who wants to know who you are is a predator.
This used to be common wisdom, but it has apparently been lost and needs to be recovered.
"Welcome to the internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents."
"Never post any personal information on the internet."
"Assume everything posted on the internet could be a lie or a manipulation."
We used to hold these standards as, well, standard. The old ways of the internet.
People are upset these days that people post pseudonymously. Lots o noobs, basically, saying dumb shit with their real name right on it. They think they are protected from the consequences because they hold popular political opinions
Bingo. They specifically avoid addressing the actual root of the problems because they're using the problems as a tool to push the grossly unpopular solutions they actually wanted all along.
That's exactly the direction the UK is heading with their requirement for Government photo ID and live facial recognition system they favour for implementation next year for anything not "safe for kids". People have mistakenly believed this is just for pornography but they'll be in for a shock when a wide range of websites will have to comply.
I hate how some people are falling for this.
Even if the short term outcome is good (fuck PornHub, they're evil, it would be great if they left every state), this whole "internet ID" thing - regardless of context - is a terrible fucking idea. And something we've generally been against for over a decade. They just tacked "anti-porn" and "think of the children" onto it, and this time some people are buying the schtick.
There are two big points I like to bring out when this conversation comes up. One, to the people who say "well, if you're not a child, what's the big deal?"...yeah, adults have to prove they're not children. i.e. you, a legal adult, have to provide ID to access a website...because the government said so. "Slippery slope" doesn't even begin to describe it; what an utter disaster.
Two, if we're policing context that isn't suitable for a group, why not apply it to other things? "Limited scope" and "government control" generally don't go hand in hand. They've been trying to crack down on militia content, for example. They've been trying to raise the gun purchasing age to twenty-one. It's a short hop from ID to access porn to blocking legal adults (18-20) from accessing basic firearm sites with zero extremist content or link to extremism.
No matter how you feel about porn, or porn companies, the idea of the government requiring you to ask for permission to access information/content on the internet is the absolute death of any pro-freedom or anti-government movements.
"Won't someone PLEASE watch over the children?!?!!" they cry out. "Oh, but not the parents. We can't have mothers watching their own kids and raising them. That would be sexist and wrong. And assuming fathers are helping raise their own kids is white supremacy somehow. So specificially, won't someone PLEASE get the government to watch over the children?!?!?!!?!"
Literally the entire "think of the children!" argument boils down to rich narcissists not wanting to spend a couple minutes of their lives raising their own kids. And for some reason, the conservative crowd just gets on their knees and opens their mouths, ready to lap it up. Oh please daddy government, raise our kids in our place harder.
Why does “protect the children” work on this but not when addressing the LGBBQ and tranny communities?
Is this because the mainstream media is paid off to support internet ID?
"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."
Aka, it's good/bad until it's needed to be otherwise.
I'm casually listening to the radio and right now, I just heard a segment "can we protect children from 'harm' on the Internet". They're not just targeting pornography. Activists for online safety in the UK if they get their way would love the idea of locked down devices and a national Intranet where everything is licensed and deemed safe for children by Ofcom while the gateways to the Internet are monitored and regulated in the same way Border Force do with physical border crossings (not that it stops migrants getting in).
Sadly, these activists are the ones who are invited into Parliament and have the ear of the main party leaders while civil liberty campaigners are dismissed as threats to children.
They have a track record of doing EVERYTHING including using libertarian groups to stop age verification and when they can't, they dip. Like they don't want to stop kids accessing porn...
This is why I'm not full any political ideology and more my own thing because porn industry use libertarians, free speech and more corporate free market groups to block regulations to then push leftist trans porn and just porn addiction in general to kids.
I'd rather just have it so the person who pays for the Internet connection has to admin unlock for adult content so if these parents really try the 'I can't stop them, we need censorship' they're the ones at fault like if you give your kids access to your bank cards..
Age verification is not the primary feature of these systems, it's identity verification. If Pornhub doesn't want to collect a goldmine of identity theft and blackmail material even when ordered to by the government, that's a good sign.
Kids should not have unregulated access to the internet in general. It's not just about porn - the world is full of bastards, and you should be just as worried about your kid being radicalised by climate cultists or groomed by trans activists as you are about them stumbling on some piece of degenerate porn.
Near every problem in this country comes on the heels of "we don't want to raise our kids, government fix this."
This is no different. Rather than having to monitor and control their kid's access to the internet, they will set the foundation for completely destroying the entire internet by giving The Government the foot in the door to oppress us all. And the whole way giving them the easy "protecting the children" cover.
They expect the government to fix it because the government has exercised unprecedented daily intrusions of power in the past decade, if not longer.
Don't want your kid to get their genitals lopped off? That's a paddling. Disagree with trans library time? Sniper teams on the roof. Protest an election? Into the gulag.
I see the recent spread of ID laws when it comes to porn access as normie parents slowly starting to wake up to clown world and expect the old ways of managing things to fix it. They've yet to realize that this stuff only goes one way, that the methods their using already belong to the enemy, and that the only options to seriously fix all this are narrowing to a severe degree.
Parents expect the government to fix this because parents are no longer given full control of their kids lives. I can't blame them much for realizing this and acting accordingly to their PoV.
Consider all the computers now in schools.
If I want to take responsibility for my kid, and make sure to closely monitor what they're doing online, what happens when they go to school? Sure as sugar the teacher isn't going to be watching every kid and their "firewalls" are a joke.
Now, am I as a parent allowed into the school to make sure my kids are properly supervised? Give that a try and see how far you get. Government says: We're education professionals, and you're just a retard with the necessary equipment.
I wonder how much of this is straight up schools trying to avoid lawsuits because they're terrible at blocking pron and are worried about lawsuits?
Most techies think the porn age laws are antiquated and aren't particularly interested in taking the problem seriously. So when the government decides to get involved, the only "solution" is a draconian one.
The classic pattern: "reasonable" people declare a problem to be "unsolvable", so the only people offering solutions are "unreasonable".
right virtue signaling also foot in the door for mega social credit score dystopia.
btw mucho websites have porn like see Reddit for example, are we going to give Reddit our ID from now on?
How about Youtube?
There's plenty of fetish stuff that doesn't actually show nips but is clearly sexual in nature, where is the line?
I think you have to give your ID to YouTube if you want to monetize or even upload 15 minutes video, maybe 10 minutes video. some years ago they already requested ID to just watch lewd videos as swell
At risk of not being groomed, that is.
reminder that the tools exist to keep children off of adult websites without requiring an ID everywhere. destroying anonymity on the internet is not the solution.
https://cleanbrowsing.org/
Good start, lets then raid and destroy their offices, servers and imprison/execute those in charge.
Reported for antisemitism
Reported and deported for antisemitism, 1st degree noticing, and felony falsehooding!
Seems I've gotten a few people riled up with my antisemitism lol
More ID requirements for anything on the Internet is a bad development.
It's not kids who will have to ID themselves, it's all the adults.
You're the parent, remove or lock their devices with the truckload of "parental control" avaliable already.
Y'know, porn is dangerous, yes, but nobody on pornhub ever lures a kid into a white panel van through their DMs.
I'm way more concerned about social media, which has been clearly shown to cause mental illness in children, than about porn, whose effects seem to be a lot more vague.
The whole point of these age verification laws being in the way they are is to allow the state to ban pornography without facing the charge of banning it because they're written and implemented in such a way that it makes it impossible for such websites to continue to function in that state. Even if they went ahead with it, it would be long before "hackers" leaked all the users of that site as a "perverts database" as a final measure to deter people from going to those sites.
Next year, the UK will introduce even stricter age verification than being implemented in US states where the favoured requirement will not just be Government photo ID (passport or driving licence) but also live, ongoing facial recognition. And the criteria for who will need to comply will be any site or service that is not "safe for kids". On the basis that they need to see who is accessing a website at any time in the same way you're in person when showing ID for age restricted products in a store. It also stops an adult showing ID and then handing their device over to a child.
Consider this in the case of digital ID. It's totally possible that this process becomes two way, where the government can see everytime you show ID and to who.
Blackmail seems quite possible, or even just saying that someone was accessing horrific porn and everyone taking their word because it's the government.
In the UK, we've had a scandal involving a Tory donor that happened in 2019. They waited until now when the new definition of extremism was announced for that to come out. It would not be out of the realm of possibility for a Government in power to log the web access to certain websites and then use that to discredit an opponent when the time comes.
The porn is bad we need age verification to save the children has to be the most fucking obvious example of government trying to pass authoritarian control laws under the guise of "safety of children" ever seen in the history of this being a thing.
The fact some people even on here still don't get it because their hatred of porn is just too large to see it shows how effective it is.
Just an FYI, banning porn isn't going to make men try harder to acquire women; therefore, fixing modern relationships, nor is banning porn going to stop women having unreasonable expectations in men for sex; therefore, fixing modern relationships nor is banning porn going to all of a sudden stop all the LGBTQ+/Trans prevalence, nor is banning porn going to save a plethora of children from being exploited for sex. Banning porn is going to accomplish diddly squat for any of the underlying problems facing society. It's like trying to ban bandaids to stop cuts.
pornhub caused this and now we all suffer for it.
yeah.. i used to upload onto pornhub and xvideos, but they required you to scan your drivers license and do biometric photo with your webcam lol. its super intrusive and retarded.
They know easily 75% of their audience is underaged.
And it’s easily here to spot the porn addicts.
Well obviously those underage users are innocent victims of porn addiction and requiring ID is unfair discrimination against them /s