847
and fuck the UK goverment
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Mildly Infuriating
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Unpopular opinion: this is a good thing - there should be more barriers to porn. I know some teens will find a way around it, but it has been proven to affect the developing brain negatively and normalizes some really harmful behaviour.
There is no meaningful barrier to porn without changing what makes the internet the internet. There are only old tech illiterate law makers virtue signaling about their children while those children run circles around arbitrary shit like this
What is worse is that the politicians have totally forgotten the typical behavior of youth. The are going to end up making porn seem really cool and rebellious which will increase porn addiction.
We can change anything, and if it makes society a better place then we actually have a moral obligation to try.
I’m also not asking for perfectly monitored total surveillance. Just some barriers for surface level use.
A kid can camp outside a liquor store, offering strangers money to buy them alcohol. But this is difficult, and has a chance of having them turned in.
In the same way an ID pop-up can be circumvented with savvy use of VPNs etc., but it will easily block many of the youngest and most vulnerable. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective.
Realistically, a kid that wants to see some funky stuff is going to find a way. Not every website cares about these stupid laws.
Instead of policing everyone, risking security leaks, and deanonymizing users, the parents who want to stop their children from viewing naked humans should just put up block lists on their network. It would filter a lot more than just adding age verification to reddit.
Also, most students have phones. The first time I saw someone I knew naked was some other kid showing me the photos she sent him. He and I weren't even friends, we just, sat next to each other in class.
Or even better, parents could have conversations about sex instead of letting the kids get sex ed from porn.
Americans are scared of sex education. The schools could just continue teaching it, but a lot of people don't like that.
Sure, we all have anecdotes of finding porn on the internet before it was reasonable. And everyone can eventually find ways around barriers. I also remember someone young googling terms and not realizing there was a setting blocking content. They had given up.
Barriers can meaningfully delay, giving young people more time to mature before they are exposed to this content. If every social media platform implemented this, it would have a significant impact. That’s why the porn industry lobbies so hard against these sorts of laws.
I think many underestimate how damaging porn use actually is, how toxic the industry is, and how much of the traffic is generated by the underaged.
I found porn in the woods my dude - friend's houses, parent's stashes. It's always been available, although not so readily.
While I tried to prevent access for my own kids also, I accepted that after a certain age they're going to be interested and be able to find it. Their mother and I had some tangential talks about it with them and let them know it's not realistic at all. As far as I know, everyone turned out okay. Normal lives and relationships and all.
I'm not convinced that whatever they found as they were growing up was as harmful as you're making it sound. You're making a lot of bold, unsourced claims. Although now that I think about it, I don't know how you can ethically do a lot of research on the topic.
I believe a bigger topic, and one that plays into what you're concerned about, is early use (especially unmonitored) of any networked computing devices. Maybe make smart phones or PCs adult only like alcohol, tobacco, or guns. If the family chooses to have one in the home it's up to the parents to make it safe.
Making the internet a walled garden will NOT make society a better place.
This is just a lack of imagination on your part.
You could theoretically come up with a system that is both decentralized and able verify age using dedicated protocols/API to respective governments. Just like how most Lemmy sites scan for and report CSAM.
Have you met some of these youth? They are never really stopped by restrictions. One person finds a way to bypass it and word spreads like wildfire.
The problem is that "better" in the context of society is usually subjective. We're talking about a form of censorship, for which change in a positive direction is very complicated at best.
Lawmakers in the US want people to think that ISPs taking responsibility for pirates on their network is a change for a "better" society, for example. Or that net neutrality is unfair to businesses and would result in a "better" society if abolished.
The truth is that it's a ploy to gather unprecedented amounts of data on citizens hiding behind a "won't they think of the children" moral take.
The law doesn’t exist to raise your kids to do the right thing. This is a massive privacy violation.
Advertisers have already been mining porn habits on Reddit to sell to third parties. Browser fingerprinting and the Reddit app identify you. If you were concerned about privacy you would not be using Reddit.
But a lot of children and teens do use Reddit, and we should do our best to limit their access to pornography, especially when this data is indiscriminately collected about them too.
Does the law exclude sites that don't violate your privacy? Is it limited to big sites like reddit or Facebook?
Then the parent(s) need to be parent(s) by monitoring their childrens online activity if they feel theyll have access to content they shouldnt. They should also explain what porn is, why they shouldnt view it, and what about it is harmful to prepare them for when they will, not might, but will encounter it so they have the tools and understanding necessary to handle and process what they are seeing. Porn exist. Its not going anywhere anytime soon. Making it harder to access for everyone isnt going to make it go away, stop witty teens from finding it, or stop content that slips through the moderation cracks in spaces that dont allow pornagraphic content.
Im not advocating for more porn or easier access to porn, but rather recognition that the parent(s) are responsible for their childrens wellbeing, education, and preparedness for adulthood where they will absolutely encounter adult content, online and off, regardless of if they voluntarily sought it out. Hiding it, pretending it doesnt exist, or avoiding the topic with them doesn't prepare them for reality in adulthood where they are expected to be able to handle uncensored life.
Not to mention, as it was pointed out several times in the comments, an ID mandate for a website is extremely easy to circumvent with a vpn, something that is incredible easy to obtain and set up. The only way, in my opinion at least, to effectively stop children from accessing porn is for the parent(s) to monitor their online activity and educate them on what and why this content is not okay for them to view as a child.
The problem is that porn and self pleasure are taboo topics. Parents seem to want to make their kids stay kids when in reality they need guidance on how to be an adult.
Parents should monitor their children’s behaviour AND society should also impose barriers. The “everything is on parents” is the same personal responsibility myth that conservatives use to justify removing government assistance and cutting things such as healthcare and schooling.
On their way home from school children cannot enter a bar and be served alcohol - or at least this is exceedingly difficult. This has undoubtedly saved people from substance abuse. The same can be said here.
Of course parents should discuss porn and its problems, just as they would with alcohol and other vices.
Also, I have taught young people technology. VPNs are not as intuitive for the mobile generation. Many will not bother, or when they figure it out they will be much closer to a reasonable age.
The barriers do not have to be perfect, but they will help.
Society does impose those barriers in the form of dedicated spaces for adult, dedicated spaces for children, and content moderation in spaces where both audiences are welcomed. I also didnt and am not claiming "everything is on the parents" because i think thats a ridiculous and unrealistic stance. I fully support government assistance programs. What Im claiming is theres a level of responsibility on the parent(s) to monitor their children, regulate the content they consume, and educate them about the things they may encounter outside of their ability to process as children and im making this claim specifically about online porn/adult content, the topic of the main post and conversation.
Alcohol is a different topic despite the overlap in it being considered for adults. Correct, children cant just walk into a bar and order a drink, but they can walk in with their parent and that parent can order it on their behalf and give it to them. The law obviously varries from place to place, but in general in the U.S., its that a bar cant serve children, not that they cant let them enter. Ultimately, its up to the parent to decide if its something they feel their child is allowed to consume and the bar owner if they want to allow that child to enter.
I think at this point it’s clear to everyone that content moderation done by humans is not viable at scale. In this sense the web is unique, and would require a more dragnet solution, like ID verification. This is done in China already to much success to limit game time for youths.
A child would be turned away at a strip club, so perhaps this is a better analogy than a bar.
Still, if a parent wanted their children to browse an unfiltered Reddit they could provide their ID, and in this way we have a similar analogy.
A strip club isnt really a better analogy since there are no laws in the U.S. barring children from entering, but again, this cam varry depending on location. A parent can still take their child there if the establishment owner allows it.
Except we're not talking about the physical world, we're talking about the digital where a simple ID verification is a piss poor effort of a barrier. Which then leaves us with, what, exactly? The mass surveilance, a.i. facial recognition, and deep privacy invasion used in china? Because, im never going to agree with you on this, period. If a parent has a problem with their kid visiting spaces clearly labeled and marked as for adults, then that parent needs to be a parent and kick their kid off the internet.
Man kids should not be able to enter strip clubs, that’s insane to me.
Mhm
the law isn't about access to porn it's about stopping access to lgbtq spaces (and anything else the government doesn't like)
If this is true, then this censorship is a terrible tragedy. I still would like government imposed ID age verification for porn though.
Edit: Judging by the spike in downvotes on this comment I can see assumptions are being made about my intentions.
You can limit pornography and not limit access to sex education services, or LGBT communities as they are not pornographic.
But if there was an LGBT forum posting LGBT pornography, then yes, it too should have age verification.
Yes, you probably could make access to those mutually exclusive, but why would they want to when the point IS blocking access to both? They might not say it outright, but there's a reason they call it TERF Island and it ain't because they love the LGBT community. This regressive view also goes hand in hand with villifying sex ed in general and it's easy for them to correlate it without saying the quiet part out loud.
All this to say I and many, many people don't trust the government to not abuse this and limit legitimate, lifesaving resources from being found by those that need them most.
Your intentions are good faith. The reality is that the government rarely does us the same favor nowadays.
You can just use a different porn site, there are millions of them and someone who wants to find them (horny teenagers) will find them. I will let you figure out yourself if the content on those sites is less harmful. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
Fuck off. Like, all the way off.
I seriously doubt this will do anything
The youth tend to be pretty good at pushing though boundaries and restrictions