- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
The UK’s Online Safety Act doesn’t just age-gate porn; it blocks material deemed “harmful” to minors. Days after the law went into effect, reports of non-explicit content on social media getting blocked in the region started to crop up. Subreddits from r/IsraelCrimes to r/stopsmoking are now walled in the UK. Video games, Spotify, and dating apps have instituted or will institute age checks.
Given the SCOTUS age verification decision [June '25], Stabile fears that people [in the US] will go “mask off” in the fall and spring, when state legislatures start getting back together. “People are going to attempt to restrict the internet even more aggressively,” Stabile said. “I think people are going to work to restrict all sorts of content, particularly LGBTQ content, but also content that is broadly defined as any sort of threat or propaganda to minors.” Other experts Mashable spoke to agree with him.
“I’m going to jump to the end step,” [Eric Goldman, law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law] said. “The end step is that most online users are going to be required to age authenticate most of the time they visit websites. That’s going to become the norm.” In a paper he wrote, Goldman called these statutes “segregate-and-suppress” laws.
The stated reason behind these laws is to “protect children.” But as journalist Taylor Lorenz pointed out, in the UK, age verification is already preventing children from accessing vital information, such as about menstruation and sexual assault.
“When we see crackdowns on spaces on the internet, we’re essentially stripping away that potential for self-actualization,” Goldman said. We’ve reached the dystopian stage of the internet, he added.
Of course it is about protecting children. We dont sell porn magazines in grocery stores anymore, despite the fact they are still “available”.
The internet is a public place, having awful things available for children to look at is not a good thing. Personal freedoms have to take a backseat to public health and safety.
If parents want their kids to not see porn, they should set up filters on their devices and monitor their computer use. That has been doable for decades.
The internet isn’t a shopping mall where everyone needs to follow some set of rules, it’s more like a neighborhood where you can go up and knock on anyone’s door. If you don’t like what they do at their house, the solution is to not visit their house, not force everyone to follow some set of rules on their own property. Websites shouldn’t have to go out of their way to block traffic that doesn’t follow some set of rules, people should go out of their way to not visit sites they don’t want to see.
That usually equates to removing all technology from kids hands as most are unable to research and properly secure what they give their children. Technology is needed, they can’t grow up without knowing how to use it and making that safer is fine by me.
If you want to look at adults only material prove you are an adult or go about it a different way. The internet isn’t the only place porn exists.
If the parents don’t want their kids to watch porn, why the fuck are they even letting their kids use phones or computers with zero oversight? It should NOT be the government’s responsibility to parent kids, parents should fucking learn how to set up protections and blocks on their devices and networks.
Besides, “prove you’re an adult on the internet” can be faked. ID? Ask an adult friend, or AI edit it. It doesn’t matter if some sites manage to catch it, some won’t and kids will go to those with weaker verification.
Credit Card? Some kids have their own, others can try to sneak their parents’ number.
As an adult, I do not want to give my ID or CC info to every porn site I visit, because I know they will keep that information forever. With so much individually identifiable information, said sites then become really big targets for hackers and government.
When people say this is not about protecting kids, that’s what they mean. At best, it creates a shitty, but hardly impassable barrier for kids to access porn. At worst, it creates immense centers of valuable data that can be used against individuals.
Last but not least, unless the law starts applying to chat groups, that’ll be the easiest solution for most kids who still want to watch porn. Discord, Telegram, Whatsapp are full of places where you can get lots of adult material.
Exactly, and it’s not even hard to find.
Just look at piracy, for example. Studios are really aggressive about taking down copyrighted material, yet it’s still really easy to find it. Porn sites, on the other hand, aren’t as aggressive, so it’s even easier to find.
These types of laws only hurt law abiding citizens.
I hate to break it to you but they dont need your cc or a picture of your face, porn websites make a lot of money off selling user data, and it regularly gets combined with other applications to identify you. Ever wonder how peoples porn accounts have been linked to them publicly?
This is about putting the responsibility on site owners to do their best to ensure content is appropriate for children or that it is unavailable to children.
This is simply people throwing a fit about “my freedoms”. Noone here actually cares about other people or society in general, just selfishness.
That’s true for the entire corporate run internet. As is, however, all porn sites work fine with an AdBlock, which also blocks tracking. Unless the user is logging in with an email they use for everything else, it’s not as easy to connect their porn history with the rest of their online activities. People that use burner emails and throwaway accounts for porn sites aren’t being exposed. The infamous Ashley Madison leak showed that a LOT of accounts used work emails - those people are asking for trouble.
You know that’s not true. No porn site will do “their best”, they’ll do the bare minimum not to get sued. Even YouTube, with infinite money from Google, doesn’t do “the best” to ensure kids don’t see shit they’re not supposed to. Instagram is frequently bombarding kids with content that is not age appropriate, if they start following the “right” accounts.
Look in the mirror. People are rightfully complaining that this will give too much burden and POWER to corporations that are already too big and hoarding too much data, and you want corporations to be the nannies of the internet, dictating whether a user is or isn’t an adult. What kind of mental gymnastics is needed to equate greater corporate and govt control of the internet with “you’re just throwing a fit, you’re all selfish”?
Corporations dont want to do this, it costs money. We can talk about possible misuses of data if you’d like but I’d say we are swimming in an ocean of misuse at this point.
I’m saying people are selfish because this type of stuff has happened over and over and noone cares, but as soon as it affects porn the internet throws a tantrum. Sorry for noticing a pattern there but it seems like people won’t admit how addicted to porn they really are.
No, it usually equates to parents not filtering anything because that’s the laziest option. That’s not great, but violating everyone’s privacy for an ineffective law is worse.
Commercial products exist for those who want them. Use those instead of asking governments to handle parenting for you.
If personal privacy is that important to you then download your porn from torrents, or just dont watch it. Porn isn’t a necessity. You aren’t owed porn.
But it’s not about porn, it’s about government interference on the internet.
Is it though? Seems funny to me that porn websites had to hang up “no kids” signs and now people are claiming its an issue about freedom and privacy.
The “no kids” signs were fine because they didn’t violate anyone’s privacy. The “scan your face” BS goes way too far.
Considering there are other options for age verification I’d imagine companies using face scan tech will take a huge hit in traffic. I doubt that will be a mainstream way of doing it, as it barely makes sense to begin with.
Freedom is a prerequisite to health and safety.
No its not, or else I’d be free to hurt people as well.
Funny how broad “awful things” gets determined to be. Can’t have people learning that the LGBT and political dissent exist, can we?
The dark web is a public place too. Are you expecting that to be banned as well?
People aren’t learning that lgbtq people exist by casually stumbling upon it on pornhub. This is besides the point.
It isn’t besides the point, you’ve just missed the point:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/childrens-online-safety-laws-are-failing-lgbtq-youth/
And you’ve conveniently ignored my second question.
The person you are talking to repeatedly and loudly advocates for fascist, oppressive, totalitarian policies. I would not expect any productive or good faith exchange with them.
Yeah, you’re right.
Well bless your heart for warning them, they might get into trouble if they talk to me! Oh no!
I can’t speak for people using the law to also target lgbtq people, it doesnt seem to be the goal of it but I’ll accept that there will be people who try to twist it. At this point it seems literally everything is twisted against that community.
As for the dark web, its so unpopular I dont consider it having a societal effect but If there was a site or service on there popular enough that it shows up in regular life for non-tech users, then yes it should regulated. I’m not for banning content, but rules and regulation can mitigate negative effects of something like widely available pornography.