One of the experiences I will never forget was “teaching” an ICT class about 2 decades ago (I was a TA who got left to cover a class - good times).
The older ones of you will remember the trick (many of us used it for playing flash games like adventure quest!) - have two browser windows open, minimise the one with the thing you were not supposed to be doing on it when the teacher comes around - no evidence right?
These kids were doing the same thing - I swear I’ve never seen so much porn in my entire life. Oh and yes, a lot of it involved Japanese animation. This was on a network with parental controls enabled by the way, because it didn’t block those sites.
Here’s the thing - and we all know it, no matter what measures you put in place kids will find away around it. More crudely put “If little Timmy wants titties, Timmy going to move heaven and earth to find them”.
They’ll sneak a parental passport at 3am when you’re sleeping, or just VPN on in, or even invest in a fake ID. Nothing you do is going to stop that; you have to sleep some time, you have a lot of goals, they can stay up all night, and they only have one.
Catching your kids with porn and dealing with it is a game of whack-a-mole every parent has to play, and honestly it’s one they need to play. It’s about having those difficult talks and saying “it’s ok to want to look as long as you realise it isn’t real”.
Mass surveillance isn’t the way - if I were a government hostile to the USA (and soon the UK), I’d be working on making the best free porn site ever made. Think of all the free documents and credentials, think of all the blackmail material, think of all the harm that could be inflicted.
Admittedly, skin cream is likely to face less of a rabid drive from kids, and isn’t something you’d blackmail over. Then again, maybe little Timmy needs some lotion, or maybe president Puta wants to use my girlfriend’s skin lotion addiction to compel me to spy for Russia?
Like, I remember the pirate radio station making a big hubbub during that time when rock n roll was banned in the UK. I could see illegal porn sites operating on ships in international waters, outside the boundaries of US enforcement using satellite connections to get their content out there. Problem is, the US is a little more trigger happy and might just send Navy ships out to sink them. If it happens in international waters nobody has to know.
We have a lot of land in the US that is a pain in the ass to get to, would be harder to set up but I could see some spiteful folks setting up something in the remote asshole of the mountain ranges. Would also be a lot harder to follow them if they pissed off as well.
I have to agree with PornHub’s idea.
A device should be able it indicate in its browser headers whether its primary user is an adult or a minor and the service can react accordingly.
It won’t protect all the children but children of parents who can’t be assed to setup a device properly will have problems no matter how much we increase the surveillance state.
These ideas are all fundamentally misguided. Let’s take a step back what we are trying to do here: We want to create a system so that the government can withhold certain information from certain people. That’s both difficult and dangerous.
PornHub’s idea requires cooperation from the hosters. You are not likely to get global agreement on that. So you will still need to do something about those foreign sites, such as blocking them.
At that point, such a law would achieve 2 things:
- Society has decided to create a technical censorship infrastructure.
- Domestic porn providers have an incentive to support to it because it removes foreign competition.
Blocklists that parents can install on their devices already exist, so there would be no change in that regard.
Of course, minors have no trouble circumventing such software. They have plenty of time and they are horny. You can’t win. The only faint hope might be to include such features at deeper levels, similar to existing DRM schemes. This would be ripe for abuse by bad actors or governments. It certainly would be used against the consumer by the copyright industry and tech monopolies; just like existing DRM schemes.
So we really should ask why we would want to walk further down this expensive, hostile, and dangerous path. Are we afraid that masturbation causes blindness?
Kids are babied already but if 14 year olds can vote in party elections, and 16 year olds can consent to sexual intercourse with adults, then I don’t think restricting porn is our problem. Either kids can make decisions, or all of these laws need to align with each other more logically.
We have taken parents rights away to allow children to make decisions on their gender and name changes, yet we expect parent to be responsible for their actions like accessing porn.
I could not care less about whatever the final say is on age restrictions, but if there are gonna be rules, at least make them make sense you know? I also do not love that I have to verify my identity to use the internet. Look at the UK and how that’s working out there even without IDs. Talk about authoritarian control.
This stuff is the whole reason I switched to this platform.
We have taken parents rights away to allow children to make decisions on their gender and name changes, yet we expect parent to be responsible for their actions like accessing porn.
That’s not a contradiction. Gender and name are about who the child is. Porn is about who the child wants to imagine having sex with. One of them, 99% of children are perfectly capable of making a good decision on. One of them can potentially be traumatising, and certainly isn’t absolutely necessary for a good life and healthy development.
That said, it’s not the government’s job to control it. An “I am 18” button and a lesson in health class are enough.
If porn sites must be legislated, here’s a better way: force them to display information to users on unrealistic depictions, the dangers of underage sex, and counselling resources.
We disagree on the foundation of your argument, and that’s okay. The end state, I can 100% get behind and that’s some common ground.
I am actually in full agreement.
A header would put the setting on the device and only indicate “Minor” or “Not Minor” which would allow to restrict or allow porn without having to collect everyone’s PII just so they can crank their hog.
If you read previous things though such an indicator would put a lot more responsibility onto Social Media platforms to not show harmful content to minors. Today they get away with it because “TOS says only 18 year olds are allowed to us this service”
South Park kind of nailed the attitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_(Not_Suitable_for_Children)
But how would that header be verified?
It has to be verified at some point by someone.
That header could also easy be used to exploit children online. All I would need to do is a simple intercept to log headers.
Either trust parents to do their jobs fully, and then hold them accountable, or draw a line at which point a child can be reasonably held responsible.
If a 6 year old steals, it’s the 6 year olds fault. They’re tried differently, but they still know bette, this isn’t any different. But obviously a 6 year old should not be accessing porn for a plethora of reasons.
Sites and services today that we are considering forcing to collect PII (driver’s license) for age verification would be compelled to check the header as it would provide what these laws are chasing in a way more respectful towards privacy
As far as exploiting children online. My point has been clear that is already happening, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram ALL exploit children online today. They do not face consequences because they can hide behind their TOS this would put responsibility with regards to not breaking our already existing laws back into their hands
I trust parets. I have kids myself the plethora of tools and systems available to invade you kids’ privacy is great… and those are also even way worse than a header (especially when you consider what they do to work)
Fair point on the TikTok thing. I guess I’m struggling with understanding why in any circumstance it would be good for an adult.
Like okay, to protect kids is the clear first order effect, but the second order effect is exposing adults to identity theft.
Third, real person tracing and tracking.
Government control over what individual people can and can’t see.
I know I’m pushing that pretty rapidly to a 4/5th degree effect, but that’s slippery slope I’m considering so you see my headspace.
I mean with ID verification, you can tie real life names to IP address easily, and then nmap a route to it to find the location. Pretty basic stuff and you can now stalk an adult, or worse, a child.
A device should be able it indicate in its browser headers whether its primary user is an adult or a minor and the service can react accordingly.
I can already see that being used for targeting children with specific ads on the internet.
The laws around advertising are fucked to begin with but the headers SHOULD be used in advertising 100%
The minor flag would actually remove the LARGE gray area that platforms take advantage of to push harmful ADs and content to kids (Today they just get to play dumb)
This would actually create a framework to enforce existing advertising laws as well as data collection laws with regards to minors.
Examples: Minors should not see ads for holsters, knives, ammo, ED medications, Diet drugs, muscle building drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco products, Online Gambling
These are all things I have seen advertised on YouTube to me; Granted I am not a minor but I am also just using Youtube by going to the site with no account.
If I was an advertiser for those products I’d be pissed that my ad dollars are going non targets anyway. So it would be a win win
advertising some products to kids will probably make them future customers. tobacco/vape/gambling etc.
Kids are the target of gambling ads because it conditions them into thinking it’s normal
I imagine other products see similar benefits
What’s gonna stop a pedo from changing the headers to child so that they can access the child internet where all the children are? Like it’s not a great solution to me.
The idea isn’t to let sites restrict adults, just let them restrict kids. So there wouldn’t be a child internet.
Then what’s to stop a kid from spoofing the adult headers? Wouldn’t that make the whole thing needlessly complicated?
😂 if my son gets how to spoof headers, he can watch all the porn he wants
But then what’s the point of age verification, it’s pointless.
Couldn’t a kid “borrow” their parent’s ID for the age verification? Isn’t it just as pointless today?
If I were building the feature, I’d put the “adult” header behind a password.
But that’s a solution only for the one browser. You’d need to forbid the OS account in use from installing new apps so the kid can’t get a different browser. And now it’s starting to be inconvenient for the parent.
Such laws are guaranteed to fail in their written objectives. The intended objective is to lead idiots to believe they help.
idiots
You include the people who voted for it?
That isn’t me. You are looking in a mirror.
Again.
I’m sure big tech is stoked on this idea. I mean, they were always able to figure out who most people were but now people have to straight up enter their identification and positively confirm.
I’m sure no one will use that information for nefarious reasons, right?
In the laws references in the article, the need for #1 and #3 were caused by social media. Yet we target the individual rather than the social media company for the fix. Let’s don’t fix the source of the problem but we can make life more difficult for many millions of people. How dumb are we in this country?
Same issue as recycling. Shift responsibility to the individual for something completely out of their control.
This is all dumb. If you’re worried about kids surfing porn sites then the legal guardian should act accordingly. There are so many methods to blocking porn sites that it’s almost hilarious. Web filtering; most ISPs are able to support website filtering on their supplied gateway or DNS. Parental controls on device; most devices come with opyional locks built-in at this point especially if it’s aimed towards children.
Sure, it’s not perfect but it’s better than removing yet another layer of web anonymity. We see how well browser fingerprinting is going, let’s not make it easier to track who is browsing where than it already is. But that’s the real point behind these bills, isn’t it?
Edit: I guess I was ranting mainly about the porn, but honestly, these are all things that parents should be aware of their children doing. If it’s an awareness issue, then that should be the next step. The government going straight from “oh there’s a problem” to “let’s make it illegal” without trying to raise awareness is extremely heavy handed.
I love that we’ve gone so far that finally the left and right are on the same page. This is the progress I’ve dreamed of.
Giving the government more power is like letting someone beat you up for his fare when you could just walk 1km.
