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UK plans age verification for porn websites from 2018
- kalekold 9y agoWhat about torture or murder? and I'd also argue many news sites should be 18+ too. So you're gonna need age verification to watch people engaging in a natural sexual act but if you want to see the Zeta's hacking off a rival's head with a chainsaw, go right ahead. Madness!
- Neliquat 9y agoThere should be no age restriction on reality. The censored images in news are an affront.
- Nursie 9y agoWhich will definitely, once and for all, stop teenagers looking at porn. Definitely.
- jaclaz 9y agoWell, that will depend on how exactly the way the customers "will have to prove they are 18", as an example we know how no teenager under 18 would ever tick a box near "Yes, I am 18 or older". On the other hand needing to provide a photo or scanned image of your driving license or passport AND give access to the web camera to the site to verify your identity, while reasonably effective might somehow produce as a side effect a reduction of customers.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoIt's in the article - sites will be required to request credit card details.
- xxs 9y agoExcept they quote gambling and age verification there (UK) is not related to credit cards.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoI appreciate that, but various other reports do seem to indicate that credit card details will be required. We'll have to see, though.
- Shivetya 9y agoso how do they think this will prevent it? cannot children just borrow the numbers from their parents cards? as long as no charge is made they should be safe. now it would get very interesting if any card used for verification was in turn required to send a letter to the card holder about such verification. still the requirements seem more lenient than what some online game (think MMO) services require when they request proof of identify to secure ownership of an account
- xxs 9y agoAge/identity verification for UK gambling (online) industry is somewhat 'challenging'. "Users may be asked to provide credit card details, as gambling websites do." this is not at all how verification works.
- Reason077 9y agoIf age verification does involve providing credit card details, I imagine that the porn industry will be 100% behind this!
- mattmanser 9y agoIt will be trivial for any horny teenager to circumvent it with a proxy.
- Grustaf 9y agoThey would be much more likely to use torrents, most people don't even know what a proxy is.
- DiThi 9y agoIn the UK one has to use a proxy to access torrent sites, at least for many ISPs there, DNSs are all transparently proxied to block websites.
- ksangeelee 9y agoOr simply install the Tor browser - additionally (and ironically) giving them access to a wide variety of extreme material.
- raesene6 9y agoNo matter how they do verification, the scheme won't have the intended effect as there are massive numbers of non-commercial sites which make porn available, including pretty much any site that allows user generated content. And on the other side we have a load of personal information given to a load more sites on the Internet, with all the potential for problems if/when they get hacked (e.g. Ashley Madison)
- Nursie 9y ago>> On the other hand ... might somehow produce as a side effect a reduction of customers. It may, on UK sites, on "legitimate" sites. Not so much on the darkweb, or via proxies, or IRC or Usenet or ....
- viraptor 9y agoNo need to get that technical. Reddit has lots of very targeted subreddits. All behind main Reddit HTTPS and with all the content on Imgur / Reddit images. (Also HTTPS enabled) There's lots of other domains like that which provide quality content and no real way of enforcing age limits.
- Freak_NL 9y agoThis legislation might make finding porn at least non-trivial if broad community sites likes Reddit, Tumblr, and 4chan are found to be applicable. These would then just be blocked by British ISPs until they do implement some form of adult verification check. Some might, some will simply dismiss the legislation as not something they want to be bothered with. Of course, blocking such sites might also trigger an unwanted backlash within the UK, which may be precisely why they might not be targeted at all. One does wonder if the drafters of this legislation even considered this.
- cm2187 9y agoLike it successfully prevented teenagers from drinking alcohol in the US.
- notahacker 9y ago> On the other hand needing to ... give access to the web camera to the site to verify your identity I can imagine some nefarious porn baron making an awful lot of money out of selling (or being paid not to sell) webcam footage of people browsing their website...
- TeMPOraL 9y agoIndeed. Just show an official-looking popup saying: "In compilance with UK [some government branch] [some law name/number], this site employs continuous age and identity verification. Your webcam will be active for the duration of your visit to ensure that only people of 18 and above are viewing the content of this website." I'm sure there would be people who'd accept that and continue with a webcam on and recording...
- paperpunk 9y agoI worry this will just funnel kids onto the kinds of porn web-sites that are unlikely to follow government regulations anyway, as they might have more damaging content. Are there any cases where something like this has been rolled out elsewhere where the effects can be looked at?
- friendly_chap 9y agoLikely this will be implemented at the ISP level, I expect 99.99 of the sites would not care otherwise.
- laumars 9y agoYou still cannot effectively block every adult site even at an ISP level. There will always be smaller sites on the fringe that get missed. It's basically the same problem as preventing online piracy.
- realusername 9y agoI confirm, their mobile blocking in the UK does not work very well, sometimes it also even blocks non-porn websites randomly.
- Rjevski 9y agoOff topic but if you're using Three I suggest you use the "3internet" APN - it has no effect on billing but you bypass any filters and get a direct connection with your own IP address (no NAT) and no filtering proxy in between.
- realusername 9y agoOh, that's good to know, I will use that now! Thank you!
- Broken_Hippo 9y agoAnd honestly - I suspect this will have the bigger effect of encouraging actual porn piracy instead of porn streaming. Wonderful way to re-introduce the popularity of a porn collection.
- ianopolous 9y agoI look forward to all teenagers learning what a vpn is and how to use one.
- RoryH 9y agoVPN stocks are surely going up on this news.
- OJFord 9y agoCan you name even a single publicly traded consumer VPN company?
- raesene6 9y agoor just going to non-commercial sites for their porn...
- ianopolous 9y agoThey are targeting all porn sites, commercial or not.
- raesene6 9y agoI don't think they are. From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40630582 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40630582 "This, she explained, was because the Act does not tackle the fact that services including Twitter and Tumblr contain hardcore pornography but will not be required to introduce age-checks. " It's only commercial porn sites that are being targeted. Sites that happen to host pornographic content (e.g. tumblr, reddit etc) aren't included
- ianopolous 9y agoI stopped reading the BBC 4 years ago because of their biased coverage. Here's a reputable source to my statement: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/nov/25/what-how-and-why-the-uks-new-online-porn-restrictions-explained https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/nov/25/what-how-and... The relevant section, "a sentence was slipped in that gives a regulator powers to act against sites “making prohibited material available on the internet to persons in the United Kingdom”" - That means any website hosting said content, whether they accept money or not.
- thesehands 9y agoI'm expecting that the agency set up to police this will eventually be enforcing a policy of only allowing internet access to users who have a government assigned unique ID which will be tied to your entire online activity. first they justify it for porn, then for terrorism
- rayui 9y agoThe plan is for the BBFC to police it, which is ridiculous.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoThis is obviously preposterous, and there is basically no chance of it lasting or being significantly effective. I am pretty curious though about what approach to safeguarding children might be effective – or indeed, if research suggests that it's required. It does seem reasonable that freely available pornography at a young age could have substantial effects on sexual and social development; before slamming into full-blown 'moral panic' mode, it might be good to know what those effects are.
- positivecomment 9y agoAnecdotal evidence (myself) suggests that those effects, if there is any at all, would not be significant :) I do wonder though, how do you scientifically analyse that? Ask people if they were exposed to porn as a kid to pick your evaluation candidates? That'd be unreliable. Expose some underage people to porn (horrible) and evaluate them after tens of years? I don't think so...
- fredley 9y agoThis is, of course, completely barmy regulation. The most interesting thing will be the decision over what classifies as a porn website. Currently, as a teenager, you're probably most likely to 'stumble across' (i.e. view unintentionally) pornography on non-porn sites like Reddit or Tumblr. Will the regulations require age verification for these sites? If not it will not even begin to achieve its stated aims.
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- raesene6 9y agoAFAIK it's commercial sites only, so you're dead right this legislation has failed before they even try and implement it.
- toyg 9y agoWell, youporn is mostly free - is that considered "commercial"?
- raesene6 9y agoI think the tube sites would be considered commercial 'cause they're run by the commercial porn companies. What won't be covered as far as I'm aware is things like reddit, tumblr etc
- gambiting 9y agoIs reddit commercial? You can pay for reddit gold and of course they make money on ads, although they don't make money on porn directly. How about imgur? They host a staggering amount of porn yet are not a porn website - how could they regulate that? How about erotic fan fiction websites where it's 100% text? How about ones where it's just hentai? It's just an idiotic legislations that most likely has nothing to do with porn - it just wants to establish a framework on which the government can ban anything it doesn't like.
- geff82 9y agoUk guys, I will offer you private VPN access for a small fee :)
- jonathanstrange 9y agoHow will this work with image search in Google, Bing, Yandex, etc.? Last time I checked you only need to enter an explicit search term and uncheck the filter, and you're flooded in porn. Will they be forced to make their filters mandatory if the IP number looks as if it comes from the UK? How will this work with porn sites outside the UK (such as most of them)? Will they all be blocked by default on the basis of some UK government censorship list or authority?
- jchw 9y agoIt seems like governments have decided that if you're on the Internet, you effectively have to follow the intersection of all laws from all countries that are also on the Internet. I think looking at IP ranges is pretty effective actually. Google already does send people to different regional sites based on where they're coming from.
- jchw 9y agoThey might as well call it Operation Could-Not-Possibly-Go-Wrong. >Companies breaking the rules set out in the Digital Economy Act face being blocked by their internet provider. Seems to imply it would be the burden of individual sites. I'm sure many of which already have low margins since advertising in this space is extremely hard. So I'm going to guess most of them would sooner IP block all of Europe before bothering with this.
- Zak 9y agoA company operating outside the UK's jurisdiction wouldn't be affected at all from my reading of that. The UK could direct UK ISPs to block noncompliant sites entirely, but then they're in the position of trying to enumerate every site in the world that hosts porn. Good luck with that.
- jchw 9y ago>but then they're in the position of trying to enumerate every site in the world that hosts porn HAH. No problem. I have a succinct filter that covers most of them: 0.0.0.0/0 ...The only real flaw is that it doesn't cover IPv6.
- toyg 9y ago> Good luck with that. Web-filter companies: "challenge accepted". Make no mistake, there is an entire industry which has been dedicated to this exact task for decades now. They will be very happy to help the UK government... for a fee.
- bluedino 9y agoThis is the same country where you have to buy a television stamp isn't it?
- Quarrelsome 9y agoyeah but that bit is cool cause the publicly funded BBC outputs good content with zero ads.
- DropbearRob 9y agoAustralia has ad free tv too, and radio stations and all the same kinds of initiatives as the BBC (admittedly the tv is terrible by comparison to the BBC so) called the ABC. there are no TV licenses in Australia though.. its just included in your tax which is how it should be here in the UK. Paying people to police the TV license is absolutely retarded
- vacri 9y agoThe ABC is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay underfunded compared to the BBC. And conservative governments hate it and throttle it wherever they can. Despite being shown time and time again to be even-handed by both internal and external reviews, the conservatives treat it as a mouthpiece of the progressives.
- lb1lf 9y agoThis, if enacted, will do more than any effort by the EFF or others to enhance online privacy. VPN usage, TOR and bitcoin/ethereum acceptance online will skyrocket. After all, what the UK government is proposing is basically to learn its citizens from an early age how to evade censorship by giving them a proper incentive to figure out how to go under the radar.
- andmarios 9y agoAh, as usual, why solve something with education when you can solve it via forcing anyone who wants to watch porn to give their credit card details to a shady xxx website.
- romanovcode 9y agoI see they take after Russia.
- DropbearRob 9y agoWon't someone please think of the children!! How about this for how to enforce parental controls... Encourage parents to supervise their childrens internet usage and educate the parents how to set up pfsense to control their own home. I know its not for everyone, however we also have to ask the question, just how big is the problem of internet porn for society when viewed by minors? I don't have kids and haven't seen any studies, so honestly I just don't know. Surely there are ways that you can educate, inform your kids, and maybe prepare them for what access to an unregulated stream of all of humanities information could contain.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vortico 9y agoGreat idea, teens will just switch to Tor to get extremely unlimited genres of porn.
- SirHound 9y agoCertainly one way to raise a savvy digital generation.
- okket 9y agoIn a weird way it may be a good thing to teach our offspring how to deal with and work around censorship on a small, non-political scale. Also, this topic assures they learn the lesson thoroughly, both because a lot of self-interest (unlike with 'boring' politics) and because of the obvious stupidity of this censorship.
- dalbasal 9y agoI would like to present to the court exhibit 1: The EU/ or UK "Cookie Laws" AKA "ePrivacy directive." In the months before and after its implementation there was a lot of discussion around the (vast) grey areas in the laws. After some months, the internet has coalesced on answers. All sites need to implement a nag screen for unknown users, in order to get "informed consent". This consent will be stored as a cookie and users should not delete cookies, or we will have to nag you next time you visit. We will also create a cottage industry of "compliance" specialists that will help you with the language of your nag screens and TCs. Websites got slightly more annoying. Two-bit consultants made some money. User privacy was not improved in any way.Legislation regulating the internet is tricky business.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoI've never heard a peep from anyone about the site I admin which still doesn't have one of those cookie-naggers. Hopefully, when the UK leaves the EU, the one good thing that might come out of it will be getting rid of that silly legislation.
- Symbiote 9y agoIt would have been better if more had been required. "As you browse this site, a record of everywhere you click is sent to the following companies: Google, Facebook, MysteryAdNetwork. These companies use this information to sell targetted advertising. We use the data to inform improvements to the site."
- Freak_NL 9y agoIf you're getting this kind of idiotic legislation in return, the net result does not appear positive.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoDon't get me wrong: the net result is definitely not positive as far as I'm concerned!
- 9y ago
- avh02 9y ago>Mr Hancock said: "All this means that while we can enjoy the freedom of the web, the UK will have the most robust internet child protection measures of any country in the world." This had me chuckling - I grew up in the Gulf region - they have the "nobody gets access" policy - way more robust.
- positivecomment 9y agoYeah, also the same for Turkey under the dictatorship of Erdoğan. Internet there is amazingly robust. They also iterate among beautiful blocked page designs for artistic freedom: https://www.google.com/search?q=eri%C5%9Fim+engellenmi%C5%9Ftir&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=eri%C5%9Fim+engellenmi%C5%9F... Back when this craziness started, they had even blocked the sites giving STI information because they had "sex" in them. Not sure how it is right now. The promotion in any form for alcoholic beverages are banned too. This is the web site for the biggest beer maker: http://efespilsen.com.tr/ http://efespilsen.com.tr/ (It says basically that according to a change in regulation, they aren't allowed to have a customer-facing website anymore).
- RobertoG 9y agoIs this really addressed to minors? Because making identification mandatory is going to affect everybody behaviour. It also makes a perfect excuse to control what is accessible and that could be expanded to other kinds content. Also, it's frequently the case (I can't think of exceptions) that the people in power always try to control the sexual behaviour of others. I would like to know the reason for politic and religious authorities to be so obsessed with sex. In other gregarious species, who can reproduce is decided by the high status individuals. Maybe is related to that.
- patrickaljord 9y agoFunny that the British conservative party that came up with the term "Nanny State" is literally behaving like a nanny now.
- kristopolous 9y agothe political claims have always been silly. They support small tiny government except for the big expansive military. They want big government out of people's lives except for what they consume and do in the bedroom.
- vacri 9y agoPeople shouldn't be doing perverted stuff in the bedroom, y'see. It should be in the invitation-only high-class clubs!
- davidpardo 9y agoWhen I was a teenager there always were a few used mags that we swapped or gave each other. If kids have smartphones, they'll resort to video sharing, and there are few ways to avoid it. I'm not sure that's a good way to spend the taxpayer money.
- olegkikin 9y agoThey are having troubles blocking ThePirateBay. Good luck blocking ALL porn websites that don't implement this nonsense.
- averagewall 9y agoThis sounds silly, but the existing situation is also silly. Kids aren't allowed to go to pornographic movies in cinemas. What's the point of those restrictions, which people have been happy with for probably 100 years, when they are allowed to do all that online? It sounds like the law should be harmonized one way or another - open everything up or close everything down, otherwise it's pointless.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoI'm not sure that analogy holds; the Internet is just such a different thing from cinemas. Still, I'm sure no-one actually has a problem with the concept of preventing under-18s from watching porn online, it's the implementation that's the tricky bit. For example, no-one has a problem with cinema restrictions, but they might do if you had to hand over credit card details to watch a film, and if it were still trivially easy for under-18s to sneak into the cinema.
- yorwba 9y ago> Still, I'm sure no-one actually has a problem with the concept of preventing under-18s from watching porn online I'm sure lots of under-18s would have a problem with that. The vast majority is unlikely to accidentally end up on a porn site.
- kofejnik 9y ago> it's pointless you're starting to get it
- raesene6 9y agoThis is an awful piece of legislation and will pretty inevitably produce dangerous side effects whilst not in any way meeting its goals. It's a shame to see this kind of uninformed law get introduced in a supposedly advanced country. It won't meet its aims as the targets (teenagers) are well aware of how to geo-shift their access using Proxies and VPNs and also it doesn't (AFAIK) cover non-commercial sites, so imgur, reddit etc don't count and they've got a load of porn for anyone who spends more than about 5 seconds looking. On the flip-side there are significant downsides here. One UK adults will need to give their identifying details to commercial sites if they want access. In some cases those adults will not want it publicly known that they use those sites. When they inevitably get hacked, we'll have an Ashley Madison style problem again with the possibility for blackmail as a result. Also I'd imagine even more sites will mirror the content of the commercial porn sites and these less reputable sites have a rep. for hosting malware, so we'll likely see more devices gettting infected... So far from coverage I've seen on the "mainstream" UK media, none of these issues gets a mention...
- manarth 9y agoThankfully there's absolutely no porn on peer-to-peer services.
- tici_88 9y agoThis has probably very little to do with porn and is most likely the first step in the UK's government attempt to track more closely who is accessing what on the internet and even have the power to blacklist and make inaccessible areas of the internet they deem inappropriate or inconvenient. The enforceability of this is hugely questionable (they have heard of VPN right?) and the societal benefit of less porn is also hard to quantify asaik. Porn is not like hard drug use, cancer or drinking-and-driving where there is a definite and significant cost to society in terms of measurable harm etc. The UK has a lot of issues to address currently with Brexit looming, so focusing on porn could also be a 'clever; political distraction from the pending mess Brexit is shaping up to be.
- flexie 9y agoThese firewalls are traditionally viewed as censorship from a free speech perspective. And I don't disagree with that. But I have started to wonder whether the Great Chinese Firewall, the Turkish one, and what seriously looks like a budding British firewall shouldn't also be viewed as import regulation like any other: China wants to sell cars in the US: The US imposes import duties on the cars. The effect is that the US automobile industry is protected, survives and can develop. The US wants to sell web or smart phone applications (often really advertisement) in China: China blocks it. The effect is that the Chinese IT industry is protected, survives and can develop. Whereas I don't like trade barriers, there is an unbalance in the way trade in bytes crosses borders without tariffs and the way goods are subject to import duties, taxes and sometimes outright banned due to policies deemed vital to the importing country such as environmental concerns, health regulation etc. We also protect our industries through government subsidies. The US East Coast and Northern Europe would completely dominate search, social media, email etc. all over the world and not just in the Western world, if it wasn't regulated. That would be fine if our part of the world opened up for the goods and services they produce in Asia and Africa. But we don't. We are quick to throw around accusations of censorship, but for billions in the developing world, access to our markets would probably mean more to their life and to further democracy than the opportunity to like kittens on facebook or read nightly tweets from Trump. No doubt sovereign firewalls are often used by regimes to repress free speech. But let's also not forget the financial part of it. In the Western world we exceedingly sell bytes. We cannot expect for the developing world (of which the UK is not part, I know) to allow our software if we don't allow their hardware.
- eb0la 9y agoRegulation, no matter what you think about it, is and will always be a great source of business opportunities. Hard to implement? Business opportunities (aka money) don't come freely ;-)
- revelation 9y agoWhere is all this anti porn stuff coming from in the UK? I thought as a civilization as a whole we were moving away from that medieval thinking.
- pmlnr 9y agoThis is the question I've been asking as well, especially since London and the Soho exists.
- jonathanstrange 9y agoThis is probably the aftershock of the Jimmy Savile scandal plus various child sex scandals involving catholic priests, etc. UK politicians feel obliged to protect the children but at the same time are reluctant to address the real systemic issues - none of the many abuse scandals had anything specific to do with the Internet, of course. The real crimes are enabled by bigotry and awkward silence, not by anything on the Internet. Who knows, maybe those politicians who are suppressed perverts or pedophiles themselves cry out the loudest.
- Rjevski 9y agoI was curious about a law we have here where supermarkets have to be closed early on sundays. One of the reasons the supporters of this law quoted was "it would reduce church attendance otherwise". Probably the anti-porn ideas come from this same cesspool.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoI understand this is unpopular on HN and I don't think this is the right approach either but what is the solution? Or do you think there's no problem at all? I think it is a potential problem where some young people don't realize that some fairly disgusting and extreme sex acts are not the norm and start dating thinking that is what you do instead of loving someone, that would cause them serious issues in developing relationships.
- mherrmann 9y agoI don't think anyone would confuse the sex acts in porn with love in the real world. You may be right about the expectations going into the first sexual relationships. But the youngsters find out soon enough that it's not normal what you see in porn when their spouses tell them they don't want to do these things. TL;DR: It's a non-problem
- easytiger 9y agoi don't like this but you are vastly underestimating the effect of pornography on people's psyche. Not everyone, indeed increasingly few, can be called well adjusted. Societal ills begotten by distance from our primal vestiges are definitely a future problem
- pmlnr 9y agoYes, they do. Even Pornhub realised this: https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/02/pornhub-just-launched-a-sex-ed-portal-for-its-users/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/02/pornhub-just-launched-a-...
- salvar 9y agoIs this conclusion based on your gut feeling or something more substantial?
- munin 9y agoMaybe the way to counter that is with healthy, full throated and sex positive sex education? Instead of trying to bury or hide the "bad" information counter it with lots and lots of good information? Just a thought.
- jimparkins 9y agoThe key part of this is whole thing is the mechanism of enforcement - at the ISP. To do this UK ISPs will need increased government controlled infrastructure operating within their ISP core networks. This to me sounds like post Brexit GCHQ wants to significantly increase the amount of access and control it has to all UK web browsing traffic...
- falcor84 9y ago>online pornography ... had been seen by 65% of 15-16 year olds and 48% of 11-16 year olds. I don't think percentages work the way you think they work.
- INTPenis 9y agoThe answer is to educate teens in school and at home. To put a big lock on porn sites will not help and it's not even feasible to completely shelter them from that topic.
- noufalibrahim 9y agoThis sounds like yet another solution that can be easily bypassed by the typical technically proficient teenager with raging hormones. I recently read an article about how easy access to an almost unlimited amount of pornography is giving boys unrealistic sexual expectations and placing unreasonable demands on girls. I can't find the link to the article right now but from this and several others that I've read, this is a real problem. Issues like personal freedom, consent and others are all true. However, the typical website has a vested interest in making sure that it's offerings reach a large audience and I'm sure they're not beyond pushing the envelope a little to make that happen. What is a solution?
- amelius 9y agoThere's a website and community dedicated to that problem, [1], and they cite numerous articles of the kind you mentioned. Quoting: > To date every study offers support for the porn addiction model (no studies falsify the porn addiction model). The results of these 34 neurological studies (and upcoming studies) are consistent with 220+ Internet addiction "brain studies", many of which also include internet porn use. All support the premise that internet porn use can cause addiction-related brain changes [1] http://www.yourbrainonporn.com http://www.yourbrainonporn.com
- werber 9y agoMaybe this will help stop young people from accidentally stumbling into XXX content, but it seems to me like it would be a push into darker corners of the web for those that are actively seeking it out.
- have_faith 9y agoI agree with most here, it's a wasted effort and mostly the start of a slippery slope towards future policies. But to the problem it purports to solve, underage kids viewing material that they shouldn't be viewing, what do you propose as a workable solution? I don't mean a 15 year old occasionally viewing a normal porn video, porn sites these days house all sorts of things you wouldn't want your kids to stumble across.
- throw2016 9y agoSome parents will always find the appeal of the nanny state irresistible but it's an extraordinarily self serving desire the exists outside the concept of freedom and democracy and like all utopian solutions sound good in practice but doesn't work in the real world. How many things is the state going to control? How many moles are you going to whack? Most networks are able to keep out pornography quite easily with consequences for those who seek to work around. This is an opportunity for those can can secure networks and provide products and services to parents. The parent is in control to place constraints they see fit and parent, rather than seeking state intervention and empowering those who seek control and power. A nanny state built on 'saving children' is never about saving children but feeding on the vulnerable and self righteous sections of society to concentrate power. There are always those in power who will latch on any excuse they can find and like always they remain the biggest threat to not just children but everyone in a free society.
- petraeus 9y agoIts a red herring used by the government to build a stronger surveillance state. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety
- kwhitefoot 9y ago> which doesn't solve the problem the regulation is trying to solve at all What problem is it, really?