Starting today, UK adults will have to prove their age to access porn online. Experts warn that a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech and ultimately harm children and adults alike.
It’s more like who supports this in theory vs. who supports this how it’s written and implemented.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for (Edit) “sex” and just get a million images of genitals and porn. I’m not a parent, but I know my parents when I was a teenager would have loved something like this. Kids are sneaky and smart, and this is a blanket thing parents think will once again put porn behind a barrier.
In a perfect world, a system could very easily exist that would 1) allow for a super-secure government owned digital ID system that isn’t a surveillance nightmare, 2) that system use a hash to verify over 18 age anonymously in real time. That’s how it’s supposed to work with digital IDs - only the data you need to verify is displayed to a vendor. Over 18 is a binary yes/no - a full DOB or name isn’t even needed.
The government ID wallet or site would use a no-log system to generate a hash value for you when you ask for one. You ask your ID app or site for an age verification hash. You get one that’s valid for about 2 minutes. Copy, paste as needed. The site uses the hash to only know “is this person over 18 or not?” and nothing else. The ID system shouldn’t keep the logs of which site asked back to confirm “is this hash valid?” This is exactly as secure as going to a liquor store with your passport or ID card and having tape over the name, address, and doc number. It’s even better because your face is not displayed, and your actual DOB should not be displayed either.
However, in our present shitty reality, companies who are trying to get contracts for these systems can’t help but feed their existing, and lucrative, addiction to selling our data and using poor security to store that data. So they want your Google/Apple/Samsung wallets connected to a government system that is actually ran by a 3rd party vendor with questionable security practices, and to provide far more information because no one has set an international standard for neither digital ID checks, nor IDs in general, enough to make it anything less than the surveillance state nightmare that is holding a government ID with all your info, while you move your face around and give them a 3D face scan that the platform doesn’t keep, but the verification company does.
Hard disagree with your initial premise that seeing boobs in google images is somehow a bad thing. What is it supposed to achieve? Hide the existence of breasts from kids until they turn 18? Thats absurdly repressive.
Fine, changed the search term to “sex.” Fewer letters in fact. I was trying to just provide a subtle example, I didn’t expect people to need to be hit over the head with it.
So you love the idea of young children seeing porn? Because studies and surveys routinely find that kids as young as 7 are seeing porn online, and many under age 12. Really? You think that’s perfectly fine for a 12, 10, or 7 year old with granma’s iPad doing an image search and getting even accidental porn?
And hey, I spent my teen years scouring the earth for playboys and staying up until 3 am to catch boobs in R rated movies. I get it. I’m not saying that any system or method will prevent anyome from seeing all adult content their whole life short of being Amish. But as a tender 13 year old, did I need to see all the porn in the universe? Probably not. Adding friction (pun not intended) to general access, without violating privacy, is all I’m saying might be a good idea.
Nah 7 year olds should not be using any internet without parental controls either way so the protection is absolutely moot here. Also your “sex” example returns absolutely zero sexual content on google, Bing or duckduckgo images while boob does.
Also tbh I’m not particularly convinced that seeing porn is all that damaging. Doing quick research it seems that there are no proven damages or development impacts and real actual danger of porn is teaching teens and young adults distorted views of sex and gender roles. Seems like kids in your example aren’t even capable of such frameworks to begin with.
So despite how nasty it sounds there’s no convincing evidence that its even a real danger. In fact, it seems like exposure to violent images like gore and freak accidents thats having real damage.
If you have some oposing evidence I’d gladly take a look but I’m really unconvinced here that googling boob could be in any way detrimental.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for “boobs” and just get a million images of boobs.
First. let’s not pretend the idea of a kid seeing “boobs” is in any way shape or form actually harmful. Pushing that taboo is why there is any issue in the first place.
Second: This is always a slippery slope. Even if we gave the benefit of the doubt that these things are done in with honest intentions, someone will abuse the system eventually. At least in the US the fascists have already laid out intention to classify LGBTQ people as “porn” in an effort to both silence us online and ban us in public. And what of the countless queer kids in an abusive home?
And even without someone explicitly exploiting it, there had already been instances where kids who were being actively sexually abused by the adults in their life were blocked from resources that could get them help because of content blocking like this.
Thirdly: People can take responsibility for their crotch spawn and be a fucking parent.
Saying “boobs” was trying to be subtle about it - any child of any age is at all times, unless their parents filter their device, 3 clicks and 3 letters (autocomplete could even oopsie that for them) away from seeing very explicit images. It’s absurd to think that it’s “puritanical” to have nothing in between 10 years olds (or younger) being able to so easily access pull on porn. This isn’t about what you personally want or care about, this is also about the fact that every country in the world has this same issue. Taboos are cultural, but you don’t set the culture of Honduras, or Gabon, or France, or India. So each cultural context needs to be respected, not only your personal cultural context.
It shouldn’t need to be a slippery slope is the thing. In technical terms, this isn’t even a heavy lift. To my original point, it’s the in theory part of this I support because, in a perfect world, giving everyone the tools to effectively accomplish this isn’t hard. But it’s a lot of work that is actually fairly technical or fairly terrible from a privacy standpoint to place adult content filters on a child’s devices. Not every parent has the skills to do this, and so when a blanket option is available that is sold as a solution like this, of course they’ll go for it. But, as I said before, in our current shitty reality, we only have the worst of all worlds - a system that exists to exploit trying to limit a system that exists to exploit, all baked into a system that exists to exploit, and kids still able to see porn online easily.
I’m very much a staunch privacy advocate, and I won’t fucking touch a digital ID system because it’s nothing but a surveillance state level at this point to persecute specifically trans people and brown people - for now. I see the writing on the wall with this, and it’s terrifying. And no one is going to force this into the working system category, so it’s just going to be the shitpile system designed to victimize added to the systems of exploitation.
It’s more like who supports this in theory vs. who supports this how it’s written and implemented.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for (Edit) “sex” and just get a million images of genitals and porn. I’m not a parent, but I know my parents when I was a teenager would have loved something like this. Kids are sneaky and smart, and this is a blanket thing parents think will once again put porn behind a barrier.
In a perfect world, a system could very easily exist that would 1) allow for a super-secure government owned digital ID system that isn’t a surveillance nightmare, 2) that system use a hash to verify over 18 age anonymously in real time. That’s how it’s supposed to work with digital IDs - only the data you need to verify is displayed to a vendor. Over 18 is a binary yes/no - a full DOB or name isn’t even needed.
The government ID wallet or site would use a no-log system to generate a hash value for you when you ask for one. You ask your ID app or site for an age verification hash. You get one that’s valid for about 2 minutes. Copy, paste as needed. The site uses the hash to only know “is this person over 18 or not?” and nothing else. The ID system shouldn’t keep the logs of which site asked back to confirm “is this hash valid?” This is exactly as secure as going to a liquor store with your passport or ID card and having tape over the name, address, and doc number. It’s even better because your face is not displayed, and your actual DOB should not be displayed either.
However, in our present shitty reality, companies who are trying to get contracts for these systems can’t help but feed their existing, and lucrative, addiction to selling our data and using poor security to store that data. So they want your Google/Apple/Samsung wallets connected to a government system that is actually ran by a 3rd party vendor with questionable security practices, and to provide far more information because no one has set an international standard for neither digital ID checks, nor IDs in general, enough to make it anything less than the surveillance state nightmare that is holding a government ID with all your info, while you move your face around and give them a 3D face scan that the platform doesn’t keep, but the verification company does.
Hard disagree with your initial premise that seeing boobs in google images is somehow a bad thing. What is it supposed to achieve? Hide the existence of breasts from kids until they turn 18? Thats absurdly repressive.
SMH
Fine, changed the search term to “sex.” Fewer letters in fact. I was trying to just provide a subtle example, I didn’t expect people to need to be hit over the head with it.
So you love the idea of young children seeing porn? Because studies and surveys routinely find that kids as young as 7 are seeing porn online, and many under age 12. Really? You think that’s perfectly fine for a 12, 10, or 7 year old with granma’s iPad doing an image search and getting even accidental porn?
And hey, I spent my teen years scouring the earth for playboys and staying up until 3 am to catch boobs in R rated movies. I get it. I’m not saying that any system or method will prevent anyome from seeing all adult content their whole life short of being Amish. But as a tender 13 year old, did I need to see all the porn in the universe? Probably not. Adding friction (pun not intended) to general access, without violating privacy, is all I’m saying might be a good idea.
Nah 7 year olds should not be using any internet without parental controls either way so the protection is absolutely moot here. Also your “sex” example returns absolutely zero sexual content on google, Bing or duckduckgo images while boob does.
Also tbh I’m not particularly convinced that seeing porn is all that damaging. Doing quick research it seems that there are no proven damages or development impacts and real actual danger of porn is teaching teens and young adults distorted views of sex and gender roles. Seems like kids in your example aren’t even capable of such frameworks to begin with.
So despite how nasty it sounds there’s no convincing evidence that its even a real danger. In fact, it seems like exposure to violent images like gore and freak accidents thats having real damage.
If you have some oposing evidence I’d gladly take a look but I’m really unconvinced here that googling boob could be in any way detrimental.
First. let’s not pretend the idea of a kid seeing “boobs” is in any way shape or form actually harmful. Pushing that taboo is why there is any issue in the first place.
Second: This is always a slippery slope. Even if we gave the benefit of the doubt that these things are done in with honest intentions, someone will abuse the system eventually. At least in the US the fascists have already laid out intention to classify LGBTQ people as “porn” in an effort to both silence us online and ban us in public. And what of the countless queer kids in an abusive home?
And even without someone explicitly exploiting it, there had already been instances where kids who were being actively sexually abused by the adults in their life were blocked from resources that could get them help because of content blocking like this.
Thirdly: People can take responsibility for their crotch spawn and be a fucking parent.
Saying “boobs” was trying to be subtle about it - any child of any age is at all times, unless their parents filter their device, 3 clicks and 3 letters (autocomplete could even oopsie that for them) away from seeing very explicit images. It’s absurd to think that it’s “puritanical” to have nothing in between 10 years olds (or younger) being able to so easily access pull on porn. This isn’t about what you personally want or care about, this is also about the fact that every country in the world has this same issue. Taboos are cultural, but you don’t set the culture of Honduras, or Gabon, or France, or India. So each cultural context needs to be respected, not only your personal cultural context.
It shouldn’t need to be a slippery slope is the thing. In technical terms, this isn’t even a heavy lift. To my original point, it’s the in theory part of this I support because, in a perfect world, giving everyone the tools to effectively accomplish this isn’t hard. But it’s a lot of work that is actually fairly technical or fairly terrible from a privacy standpoint to place adult content filters on a child’s devices. Not every parent has the skills to do this, and so when a blanket option is available that is sold as a solution like this, of course they’ll go for it. But, as I said before, in our current shitty reality, we only have the worst of all worlds - a system that exists to exploit trying to limit a system that exists to exploit, all baked into a system that exists to exploit, and kids still able to see porn online easily.
I’m very much a staunch privacy advocate, and I won’t fucking touch a digital ID system because it’s nothing but a surveillance state level at this point to persecute specifically trans people and brown people - for now. I see the writing on the wall with this, and it’s terrifying. And no one is going to force this into the working system category, so it’s just going to be the shitpile system designed to victimize added to the systems of exploitation.