If not for the fact that I know conservatives are going to use it as a stepping stone to ban all porn in the future, I’m honestly fine with a porn age verification.
My concerns beyond that are that it would force what kind of porn you watch to be traceable. And just because what you like is legal now doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. Stuff like sadomasochism that’s already controversial as heck all the way to stuff like gay porn. If such things become illegal I don’t trust that “it was legal at the time” will be seen as a good defense.
And beyond that the “warning” they were ordered to put up is blatantly false and fucked up
Agreed. If not for the fact that these laws are obviously just a gateway to more porn restrictions, I’d support a strict pornography age verification. But because it’s coming from only the far right conservative group, I know where things will end up if we give an inch. As for your porn being traceable, it already is. Your ISP/VPN sees all of your internet traffic, and you’d be a fool to think that the government doesn’t have access to that info.
And I don’t want them to assume that it’s an adult, because I have young kids at home. I also don’t want them to be able to inspect packets to look for an authorization token or something, because that means my traffic isn’t secure.
I hate everything about this. If they force verification, I will be installing a VPN for my household to a place that doesn’t require it, because I’d rather my kids watch porn than reveal personally identifiable information online. I trust my kids a lot more than I trust websites.
There’s a big difference between identifying yourself to a neutral ISP versus identifying yourself to the government. In general, I’m not that skeptical of government, but this is one issue where I worry about the right wing loonies getting their way. God help us if it’s ever criminalized
Agreed. The level of access children have to pornography is likely something that should be better controlled. We need to really think about how to solve the problem while still allowing people to use the services and maintain privacy.
This is definitely one of those situations imo where such responsibility falls squarely on parents and inviting the government to handle such a thing will create far more issues than it would resolve.
I don’t know about anyone else but my ISP auto blocks pornography unless the account holder goes into the settings and enables it. They also block piracy sites, which again you can just disable the block in the settings, so I don’t know what the point in that is.
It’s not a great solution because it’s either all or nothing but the options are already there if a little poorly implemented.
Similar things can be said about alcohol, nicotine, driving a car, etc., but society recognizes that not all parents are responsible enough to make those decisions and have put up laws to protect the broader interests of society. It would be great if all parents could have a conservation about the harm that pornographty consumption has on development, but the fact that most fathers can’t even talk to their daughter about their periods (or mothers about their son’s problems) tells me that this probably isn’t going to happen.
If not for the fact that I know conservatives are going to use it as a stepping stone to ban all porn in the future, I’m honestly fine with a porn age verification.
Maybe if we had some good way of verifying age without literally sending them a picture of our ID and saying, “I’m gonna look at porn now, okay?”
No one is going to do that, because that doesn’t feel safe. That information will be stolen and used for blackmail.
My concerns beyond that are that it would force what kind of porn you watch to be traceable. And just because what you like is legal now doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. Stuff like sadomasochism that’s already controversial as heck all the way to stuff like gay porn. If such things become illegal I don’t trust that “it was legal at the time” will be seen as a good defense.
And beyond that the “warning” they were ordered to put up is blatantly false and fucked up
And even if it is legal, you probably don’t want that information to be made public when the site inevitably has a breach.
Agreed. If not for the fact that these laws are obviously just a gateway to more porn restrictions, I’d support a strict pornography age verification. But because it’s coming from only the far right conservative group, I know where things will end up if we give an inch. As for your porn being traceable, it already is. Your ISP/VPN sees all of your internet traffic, and you’d be a fool to think that the government doesn’t have access to that info.
Your isp doesn’t know it’s you. It could be anyone on your network. And if you have to identify yourself the government gets involved right away
And I don’t want them to assume that it’s an adult, because I have young kids at home. I also don’t want them to be able to inspect packets to look for an authorization token or something, because that means my traffic isn’t secure.
I hate everything about this. If they force verification, I will be installing a VPN for my household to a place that doesn’t require it, because I’d rather my kids watch porn than reveal personally identifiable information online. I trust my kids a lot more than I trust websites.
There’s a big difference between identifying yourself to a neutral ISP versus identifying yourself to the government. In general, I’m not that skeptical of government, but this is one issue where I worry about the right wing loonies getting their way. God help us if it’s ever criminalized
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Sure, but not using this intrusive, flawed, easily exploited method.
Agreed. The level of access children have to pornography is likely something that should be better controlled. We need to really think about how to solve the problem while still allowing people to use the services and maintain privacy.
This is definitely one of those situations imo where such responsibility falls squarely on parents and inviting the government to handle such a thing will create far more issues than it would resolve.
You are correct, parents should be involved. Also the tools parents are given to control access should be standardized, easy to use, and enforceable.
I don’t know about anyone else but my ISP auto blocks pornography unless the account holder goes into the settings and enables it. They also block piracy sites, which again you can just disable the block in the settings, so I don’t know what the point in that is.
It’s not a great solution because it’s either all or nothing but the options are already there if a little poorly implemented.
Be responsible for my own kids? No way! That’s the government’s job.
Similar things can be said about alcohol, nicotine, driving a car, etc., but society recognizes that not all parents are responsible enough to make those decisions and have put up laws to protect the broader interests of society. It would be great if all parents could have a conservation about the harm that pornographty consumption has on development, but the fact that most fathers can’t even talk to their daughter about their periods (or mothers about their son’s problems) tells me that this probably isn’t going to happen.