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.
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.