- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
As age verification bills pass across the world under the guise of “keeping children safe online,” governments are increasingly giving themselves the authority to decide what topics are deemed “safe” for young people to access, and forcing online services to remove and block anything that may be deemed “unsafe.”
In the 90s when porn was still being figured out and some sites had ID verification for some god damn reason, i found porn on usenet. There will always be a way to make it work.
Lock the internet behind a gate? Trust me kids will make a local internet.
It was never really about kids accessing porn though, so they don’t really care about stuff like this.
It’s about being perceived to be doing something about kids accessing porn, and setting up a system that makes the internet easier for government to control and gatekeep
And it’s not like usenet ever went away, just not used as much nowadays. Hell, even BBSs are still kicking.