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France to introduce controversial age verification system for adult websites

193 points by docdeek 6y ago

milsorgen 6y ago
What is the controversial part, if I may be so bold as to ask?
- Hermel 6y ago
  It might for example require reddit to ask you for your credit card before it lets you see an nsfw subreddit. And then again the same procedure on the target site. Not everyone is comfortable with giving adult websites their credit card information. (I for sure would not be.)
  - randomchars 6y ago
    And at the same time you'd give your NSFW internet usage patterns to your credit card company. I image they'd love it, even more information to sell about you!
- reedf1 6y ago
  A similar system was attempted in the UK. The controversial part here was that there would be some central body with potential knowledge of the sites you visit associated with your passport/credit card/ official license. In addition the potential for fraud in spoofing the verification process etc... There was much humorous satire e.g. calling the Queen for access to porn. Before some tech contracts fell through and the whole system was abandoned at the end of the Theresa May government. I was looking forward to the tertiary effect of kids becoming network experts in the next 20 years.
- fwn 6y ago
  Many consider it bad to create a regulatory environment that leads to the creation of lists where real world identities are tied to specific sexual preferences. This is because in the contemporary western world, sexual preferences are considered intimate and highly personal. Creating such a data basis enables future discrimination. It doesn't mandate it, just enables it. There's a famous (and arguably untimely crass) example of such data gathering in the German past. It's different in scope and consequence (smaller scope, bigger consequences), but maybe still interesting. Sadly there's no English Wikipedia article about it: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRosa_Liste https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3... (At least that's the memory of German school history classes I immediately recalled while reading the linked article.)
helixhelix 6y ago
Tor with obfs4 gets around this.
Waterfall 6y ago
As a kid, I was able to figure out limewire, Emule, torrents and I'm sure kids today will be able to download a free vpn or use similar tools I used as a preteen to figure out how to circumvent these pointless blocks. I started with free video samples and only moved onto methods by high school to get access to premium websites. As a human, our strength is not only the ability to do these things but to also teach others to do it. I was able to help my friends to get access as well. If one ape discovered fire it would die with them, but our ability to spread information, like a virus is what gives humanity intelligence. One kid like me at school is all it takes to make this stupid law useless. Adult websites want brownie points and also don't like nonpayers, but mess with their revenue and you'll get a push back.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  A mistake many people do. Maybe there are people now wary of children being subjected to certain content on the net. They are forgetting at least three things: They also were exposed and survived just fine Their kids are probably going to be better with tech at some point. The vast majority of pornographic content is available without being on the market which makes regulation nearly impossible. Yes, you can maybe attack the platforms hosting it, but I don't see this going anywhere. You would punish commercial distribution on push other content underground. Many in porn are already directly financed by their viewers. Wasn't the Australia block circumvented within 24h by a ~14-year old kid? Some people suggested to make brushing teeth illegal so that kids do it in secret in a dark corner.
  - yomly 6y ago
    I agree - for many of people(including teens) circumventing restrictions is part of the thrill. That said I do think there has been an escalation of porn over the years. It's really apparent when you look at things from the 70s. Though apparently banning porn from cinemas shifted content to more "trashy" VHS/DVD/Online videos I feel data-driven analytics has probably accelerated this, like a race to the bottom (pun unintended). Extremity probably drives engagement so the porn kids are exposed to today is much more extreme than what we may have been as up and coming internet users.
speedgoose 6y ago
I guess DNS over HTTPS will become popular much faster in France.
- enitihas 6y ago
  It won't help alone without encrypted SNI.
  - 5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E 6y ago
    eSNI can't come soon enough.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      Sure but eSNI only works for this on the theory that large CDNs are too big to block. It’s domain fronting as a service. The problem is that if you’re too big to block you’re big enough that governments can drag you into court.
gorgoiler 6y ago
Websites that don’t follow the new AV laws will have to sanctioned. If the website is local, you can go ‘round to their office and arrest the owners. Lock ‘em up and throw away the key, it being the only language they understand etc. However, if the website is not local then it must be blocked, either by statute, by the courts, or by a regulator. This may require a National Firewall to block sites (eg The PRC.) As a bonus, your blocking infra can also be used for monitoring and logging. If you’re lucky though the nation state will implement its Great Firewall using a borked DNS infra (eg The UK) that isn’t even mandatory for ISPs with a small enough userbase. Exciting times, er, temps fantastiques, even. What tech does En Marche intend to mandate for blocking hairy armpits? Hopefully nothing too competent.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Websites may already be blocked in France upon order from the Government, based on anti-terror laws. Basically, the Ministry of the Interior decides and orders all Internet access providers to block a site. Courts are not involved on the premise that this must sometimes be carried out as quickly as possible, though there is a right to contest a decision a posteriori.
  - mantap 6y ago
    There's no such thing as blocking a site. You can direct DNS providers to block DNS, which doesn't help for anyone using Firefox. You can direct ISPs to block an IP but then you have hard decisions when the site you want to block is hosted by a foreign cloud provider.
    - enitihas 6y ago
      How does foreign cloud provider matters. As of now encrypted SNI is not there, so they can block simply based on SNI. If SNI info is not correct, they can ask the foreign cloud provider to block the website. Any cloud provider where SNI block won't work well is large enough to not deny requests from the french government.
csunbird 6y ago
Yes, it is entirely safe to post PII to sites that are known to be targeted by hackers heavily and daily, to extract data that can be used to blackmail people. The adult websites are never hacked before right? /sarcasm off
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  Proponents of these types of laws are anti-porn. If fear of sharing the required PII with porn sites reduces the number of visitors to those sites, all the better in their mind. The 'save-the-children' vibe is a smoke screen for banning porn.
jaclaz 6y ago
Only for the record, the (of course, and as often happens not possible in practice) Italian norm has nothing to do with credit cards and age verification by the content provider. It says essentially that phone, TV and internet providers must by default prevent access to some type of contents and that this access can only be unblocked by the subscriber of the contract through an explicit request. I.e. it is more like a form of Parental Control", and of course the basic issue (since the "not suitable to minors" includes not only pornography, but also violence and other objectionable content) deciding which is which is either impossible or needing to implement some sort of automatic filters that inevitably will tag objectionable contents as "fine" or viceversa block access to perfectly suitable content, in this latter case with obvious consequences to freedom of expression.
- peroporque 6y ago
  That's the best method I've seen so far. Kinda like Google Search setting with "no", "moderate", or "strict" filter.
- desas 6y ago
  The UK has a similar system - agreed between the four main ISPs and the government, rather than legally binding. The code of practice says that subscribers must be forced to make a choice between a filtered or unfiltered internet connection.
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
I wonder if people will abandon France as fast as they abandoned Tumblr when they banned adult content? Or 70 million people download Tor.
- tasogare 6y ago
  I did it. In fact, for a lot of people who got an higher education the main question for after graduation is not what will you do but where will you go (where being implicitly abroad). This is of course not because of porn sites, but the general negative and insecure (economically, etc.) climate. The ship is sinking and people are asking for more of the things that precisely made it this way. This is painful to see.
  - Tade0 6y ago
    Hailing from a former communist state from which quite a few people emigrated to France I wonder what are your options as a French person? What countries are France's France, or in other words, places where salaries are easily 2-3x as high and the general standard of living is proportionally better?
    - atxbcp 6y ago
      Canada, US, UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Japan, etc... Salaries don't have to be 2-3x as high (past a certain level it doesn't matter all that much), salary isn't the main reason why french people emigrate.
      - desas 6y ago
        London is the city with the sixth biggest French population. There are more French people living in London than in Bordeaux or Strasbourg for example.
        jjgreen 6y ago
        ... and it's still hard to find a decent pain au chocolat here
eric1293 6y ago
France would like to ban the Internet in general. They ban everything: Amazon, google, Uber, websites, ...
- jamil7 6y ago
  Maybe they're still sour that minitel[0] never took off outside of France. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
Barrin92 6y ago
I wonder why they're using credit cards or leave it to the platforms to figure out verification mechanisms. In Germany the national ID card has age verification mechanisms built in[1]. This also has the advantage of not handing personal information over to the porn websites as all the veriifcation is done by the official eID server. Given that the article also addresses future standardized European solutions this seems like a pretty reasonable step forward. [1]https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic-Identification/Electronic-Identification_node.html https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic-...
- randomchars 6y ago
  I couldn't find much information, but in this case, doesn't the government directly have access to the sites you used this feature on?
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    I suppose they would know which provider requests the authentification. However in one document I found the process is described as 'ephemeral' which I suppose suggests they don't store these requests.
    - randomchars 6y ago
      And would you trust them not to store them? I certainly wouldn't.
- chromanoid 6y ago
  Germany is pretty pedantic regarding age verification. For porn only closed user groups are legal. I guess providing the ID card would be not enough for the KJM, but I didn't read through all accepted systems. (edit: There is the AUTHADA ID system where you have to enter your eID PIN each time you login). There are very few third-party age verification providers that are deemed OK by the KJM. This describes a typical process they like: > The Age Verification System is easy to use: the customer simply needs to take a photo of the front and back of their ID card as well as of their face. Then the system makes sure that the ID card is authentic and matches the photo of the customers face to the one on the card using biometric data. If successful, the age is verified – in under a minute. Companies can incorporate this fast and easy process directly into their procedures and identification systems. After first registration, the user has to use SMS TANs to authenticate each time. See also https://www.kjm-online.de/aufsicht/technischer-jugendmedienschutz/unzulaessige-angebote/altersverifikationssysteme/ https://www.kjm-online.de/aufsicht/technischer-jugendmediens... Other systems include stuff like logging in with your online banking account so the risk of giving this data to your children is low. This is all pretty useless since foreign adult sites are not blocked. It just really restricts German companies. This all seems hypocritical to me, especially when you consider how Germany deals with prostitution. I hope we adopt the Nordic model in this regard. Anyway I don't get why the UN don't try to push a viable solution that works international. Everything else is pointless.
VladimirGolovin 6y ago
They tried it in Russia with Telegram. All they did is teach the entire country how to use VPNs.
- lord_sauron 6y ago
  And blocked most of AWS in the process, I understand ...
- grishka 6y ago
  Oh, thank you for reminding me that I'm still paying for a VDS that runs a Telegram proxy. I think this whole story made people a tiny bit more technically literate. It also made it abundantly clear how clueless governments are about modern technology.
torgian 6y ago
Oh so using sex to implement fear and uncertainty and despair ( FUD ) among the populace? Think of the children! By the way, here’s a firewall to block whatever websites we don’t like. Oh and you’re being monitored 24/7 now. But not now. In like, five years.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- astrobe_ 6y ago
  I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but the 'D' usually stands for Doubt (sometimes Deception).
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    Not in this case, since it's about filtering porn. /s
arnaudsm 6y ago
We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds. If this law fails to educate on pornography, at least it'll educate youngsters on DNS. I'm ok with both scenarios.
- andybak 6y ago
  > We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds. There's a fair amount to unpack here. "We tend to forget" seems to indicate this is proven and beyond dispute. I'm not sure that is true. "damage" is a very strong word that implies permanent harm - almost at the cellular level. Not everyone would accept that "damage" is even the right way to frame this. It's part of a complex social and behavioural pattern that is very hard to pick apart. "young minds" - how young? Is it dependent on countering with good sex education or is the "damage" something that would resist all countermeasures?
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    You can probably find more information than I did with a Google Scholar search for the effects of porn on adolescents and children - though this is a very hard thing to "prove beyond dispute" for several reasons - people react to media in very different ways, effects may only be activated by pre-existing patterns of behaviour and attitudes, there is a large influence from religiosity, among other things; and of course, it'd be unethical to expose children to porn in a lab setting. The best you're going to get is controlled suveys and questionnaires, from researchers working at a school, for example. Consider that we know cannabis and alcohol can have a detrimental effect on young people, but we're obviously not able to watch them smoke or drink it in a controlled environment. All that said (and note that the authors of the first paper are probably the foremost scholars of porn effects research in psychology): "Additionally, there is meta-analytic evidence to indicate that viewing more pornography and viewing extreme pornography is associated with the sexual objectification of women and more aggressive attitudes (Hald et al., 2010)[0]. Some longitudinal findings link sexual aggression and use of violent pornography, for example, one study of 10-15 year olds in the US found that those who intentionally viewed violent X-rated materials were nearly six times more likely than others to report sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra et al. 2011)[1]."[2] The research on effects of porn is chequered and often has methodological problems, replication problems, and unfortunately assumes one kind of mainstream porn (leaving out, say, erotica, fanfiction overwhelmingly written and read by teens, online erotic roleplaying, etc.) - that said, from my own amateur reading around the topic, there is a strong pointer to substantial negative effects which are usually (though not always) mediated, much in the same way alcohol consumption effects are. [0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non-experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328 [1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J. (2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37, 1–18. [2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
lord_sauron 6y ago
The United States is the basic flaw in this scheme. Multiple laws (The CDA and COPA) requiring age verification for porn were enjoined by the courts many years ago and it’s not going to be easy to reinstate something similar any time soon. So kiddies, you can always set your exit node to be in the US and wank with us!
FeistyOtter 6y ago
It's a continuation of an ongoing trend nowadays to elevate to a government level issues that should be solved in the family. Instead french government should spend its efforts on actual society problems that affect every child, like fixing french school system. But then they have to spend brain power and money while fighting entrenched interest groups, so as always, low hanging fruit is easier to pick.
- loulou24 6y ago
  I wonder if we could pinpoint when this awful trend got started (in France and elsewhere).
  - smt88 6y ago
    Every theocracy did it, and most non-theocratic governments did too. It's not a new trend.
  - justnotworthit 6y ago
    My guess is that most people believe that their own family is functional, but that other people's families are creating delinquents.
terminalcommand 6y ago
The thing that cracks me most is that they suggested to mandate the use of e-government authentication tools for accessing adult content. If they want to fight this, the most effective way would be a nation-wide ban of VPNs, ip blocking and deep packet inspection to discover and ban other tunnels/VPNs. Sure, you can rent your own server and run shadowsocks on it but it will complicate the process. In Turkey, I feel like most VPNs are actively banned, it’s a roulette basically to get a working one. The only reliable solution is to rent your own server and setup your own VPN. I think in China, they can also find out and block those.
MattGaiser 6y ago
We could do all that and kids would still watch porn. They would just share the downloaded video files.
- loulou24 6y ago
  So more hassle. Which could be the difference between teenage curiosity and the beginning of a debilitating addiction (depending on the transfer speed).
Softcadbury 6y ago
This will never work, there are too many websites and too many ways of getting around this limitation. BUT, there are plenty of parental control softwares for computers and phones, I think this is the only valid solution. So instead of passing some stupid laws, we just have to teach parents. Otherwise, it's like trying to replace all knifes by platic ones; no we let parents teach kids it's dangerous.
- enitihas 6y ago
  I don't think people making these laws care of 1-5 % people using a workaround. If 95% people are blocked, I think they are good.
  - randomchars 6y ago
    I think you get the percentages wrong: 95% of kids who want to watch porn will easily find a workaround.
    - enitihas 6y ago
      Unless 95% of kids can get a VPN, I doubt how kids can find a workaround for SNI based blocks.
      - randomchars 6y ago
        There are quite a few free VPN apps, so getting porn would be only one more step away.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        There would be informal distribution networks via groups on various messaging apps or general-purpose cloud storage services. This might spell the end for the major "tube" sites if they can't make enough ad revenue, but this is definitely not going to be the end of porn.
    - loulou24 6y ago
      And pornographers will also find a workaround to reach there addicts... euh... audience.
oijewoif32m 6y ago
Living in the EU is worse than being in a jail. At least you have more freedoms in jail.
doublerabbit 6y ago
Children should be deterred from looking at pornography. Watching pornography of normal acts with male or female anatomy I doubt will cause issues. But what about other nasty content? It's easy to fall down a rabbit hole and such content is available with just three words in google. The internet is not a safe place and when a child watches obscene content that very well starts to warp their mind and perception. They hunt for further gratification and this can lead in to more murky content. Pornography can be malicious and internet pornography addiction is real too. I am in favor of restricting content however for the reason that there really is nasty content which young children are discovering and it's leading them to grow up corrupt. If there was a way to divide the two but you can't, however the way it is it's either all or nothing. Filter it, let a child hack around the filter expanding their computer skills and reward it. That it self is far more positive then being able to view all the content that is available. Innocence can be lost prematurely and that's disastrous for the child if it is lost. Pornography nowadays isn't like it was during the MTV years which many will compare from.
- chii 6y ago
  who is to decide what is obscene and what is not?
  - doublerabbit 6y ago
    Whoever pays for the internet.
  - loulou24 6y ago
    I don't know who is to decide. But it shouldn't be children or pornographers.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    Me. I declare censorship an absolute obscenity in a free society. There now that we have rendered that stupid question meaningless we can move on as a society.
- flyingfences 6y ago
  > Children should be deterred Yes, absolutely, but by the government?
Algent 6y ago
Something interesting about being forced to use the "FranceConnect" OpenID service for adult websites is it's what we use in France to connect official taxes, health insurance, retirement and car registration website. It also use social security number as login depending on which website you bounce from.
- mgbmtl 6y ago
  That sounds scary if used by companies who rely on advertising and, when they get hacked, extortionists.
bovermyer 6y ago
Ignoring the subject matter of the article, one phrase in particular stood out to me - "digital sovereignty." This is the first time I've heard that phrase. I've never conceived of the web being carved up into territory by governments before. However, when I think about it now, the Web is being fought over by governments - China, India, the USA, etc. That makes me a little sad.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Always remember the true meaning of sovereignty. If the universe was really a MMO server and the PVP flag was switched off and magically nobody could kill or steal, detonating a bomb only endangered the bombmaker if it was in a blast radius, and even drunk drivers could only harm themselves it would be a catastrophy for sovereignty.
lemoncookiechip 6y ago
Honestly, this is completely ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It'll not only disturb people's lives if it goes on ahead, but could also have the potential risk of identity theft increasing depending on how it is implemented. And the saddest part of all, is that this is completely pointless. It's extremely easy to circumvent, including for those with little to no tech knowledge, not to mention you can find hardcore pornography on platforms such as Twitter by typing 3 letters "Sex" and one click, plus all the hundreds of thousands of keywords that will lead you there, including such words as "Amateur", "Schoolgirl"... They learned nothing from the UK.
- Mangalor 6y ago
  If a 9-year-old types into Google, they will easily find porn. But, maybe it shouldn't be so easy. And yes, once they're in middle school and high school they'll just figure out alternatives, but I don't think it's unreasonable to put up some dead simple barriers to protect innocence. Just because it was easy for those of us growing up in the 90s and after doesn't mean all children have to be exposed like that.
oxAAAFFB 6y ago
I just arrived in France. What should I see?
mensetmanusman 6y ago
It is so interesting to see various country approaches to the flow of information, i.e. internet regulation. At its foundation, the idea amounts to ‘there exists information that is dangerous and it is our job to protect them (the people).’ Based on the range of human abilities, few could argue against the idea that ‘there exists dangerous information’ (that is dangerous to some people). In the U.S. those on the left are asking corporations to protect people by banning ‘dangerous information’ In China, the CCP has spend a large percentage of their GDP and has defined almost all information not related to consumerism and good manners as ‘dangerous’ In France, this. If everyone were perfect, there would be no dangerous information, because people would be able to read things in perfect context. That will never happen.
throwawayiionqz 6y ago
There should be much smarter moves to work with porn sites towards better sex education. Force porn websites to do age verification on their models (most high traffic site currently do). For all videos and especially those that display acted scenes where consent is unclear, prominently display next to the video in English+local language that the video actors and actresses are performing willingly consentual sex acts, even if the video scenario suggests otherwise for some fantasy's sake.
kwhitefoot 6y ago
Why are only porn sites regarded as harmful? What about violence? What about sites peddling snake oil?
- falsaberN1 6y ago
  "Core values".
loulou24 6y ago
Putting aside for a moment the (important) issue of privacy. I'm wondering if people here would react the same if "adult websites" was replaced with "added sugar". Would people use arguments like - kids will always find ways to become diabetic! or - I use to eat plums, I never had problems.
- enitihas 6y ago
  I think the main difference is that far too many people eat sugar, and even more importantly, far too many people can proudly admit in public that they eat sugar.
  - loulou24 6y ago
    Far too many people watch porn excessively too. People just don't realize it precisely because we don't talk about it, people around don't notice it and you can keep the same pair of trousers (unlike when you drink too much soda). I think that in a few years, opinion will shift and we'll consider porn as a public health problem.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      When will we consider prudes a public health issue? Their shaming is unhealthy and when they get power cause generations of harm. Worse they have no care for it so long as they get their righteous indignation high! Given the sheer toll of prohobition judgementalness is the most insidious and deadly of all of the vices.
      - loulou24 6y ago
        Shaming? prudes? judgmental?? What on earth are you talking about? Look, an increasing number of people (not just me) are realizing how detrimental to their life this little habit has been. Many wish they realized it sooner. And when they realize they are far from being alone [1], they naturally tend to think the effect of porn might be understated in our society. I'm not judging anyone, if people enjoy it and it doesn't affect negatively their lives, good for them. And if I'm wrong and people like me end up being just a minute minority, then Great News! But I really don't understand why I get downvoted for this and I understand even less this rambling about 'prudes'. [1]: https://forum.nofap.com/index.php https://forum.nofap.com/index.php
mtnGoat 6y ago
It's been a while since I worked in adult, but I recall when Germany did something similar, no one outside their jurisdiction had to follow the rules, so no one did. Additionally it just required the user to enter an ID number the site owner had to validate against a government API, that charged per request. This was flawed because... Kids could find/share the ID card numbers and bad actors could run up your bills by dictionary attacking the validation form. It was a need and was utterly unenforceable. The solution is parents need to be parenting. Where there is a will, there is a way (and that's directed to both sides).
xfitm3 6y ago
Blocking content is absolutely pointless, and ironically increases demand. Circumventing controls and doing something you shouldn't is exciting. Personally I don't have a problem with porn and I'd rather not see this used as a way to weasel in real id verification systems into websites which I think is the real motivation here. Next it will require real id for comment forums to quell "hate speech", and then eventually to identify dissenters and other utopian pursuits.
- loulou24 6y ago
  Governments taking the role of parents.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Parents aren't technically competent enough to do this kind of thing properly. Governments, on the other hand… aren't technically competent enough either.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tpmx 6y ago
Do you remember when France banned encryption software from being used by non-government entities in the 90s? I do. https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to-reconsider-its-cryptography-laws https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to-recons... > Until 1996 one had to ask permission to use any form of encryption, or pay a 6000-500000 FF fine with 2-6 months of prison if found out. Currently encryption that the french authorities can break is legal, but this is not secure enough to encourage e-commerce. (1999)
- jackjeff 6y ago
  Yeah. My university had the choice of either breaking the law, get hacked or not providing remote SSH access to students. They broke the law...
  - tpmx 6y ago
    To us other europeans, those years were kind of formative to us about viewing France as a relic to be laughed about. What great french internet startups have ended up expanding outside their country in a meaningful way?
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      That also explains a whole lot of French tech jealousy politics and their many stupid failed ventures. They always were moronic control freaks essentially and won't change, the only solution is to replace the damn fools.
      - tpmx 6y ago
        Everything can be solved with a multi billion euro EU-funded project!
photon12 6y ago
There's a meta-issue with pushing regulatory requirements that are trivial to bypass: you effectively normalize bypassing regulations and effectively create a culture where regulatory bypass is seen as "not a big deal" even if that wasn't your original intent. People have been using VPNs because they think region-locking streaming content is something where the risk-reward calculus is fairly obvious, and from what I can see that's a fairly normalized cultural trend. If you do the same thing with porn, you are now adding another layer of depth to the emergent cultural phenomena. If you think there needs to be a serious conversation about porn access and psychology, implementing restrictions trivial to bypass only serves to reduce the legitimacy of agents trying to make the case for such education. Edit: you also see this phenomenon with respect to COVID mask mandates
jackjeff 6y ago
I wonder to what extent a state can block a website. ESNI - HTTPS - cloudflare That’s all it takes to bypass the porn filters in the UK and other websites banned by the high court such as the Pirate Bay. It only takes one geek kid to figure it out and they’ll all know it.
octygen 6y ago
More thrill to get the content, more dopamine hit once you get to the goal, the more likely it is to be more addictive. If it's not forbidden, it's not nearly as exciting.
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
I am French and this is the first time I hear of that. After checking the sources, there is indeed a law passed, it needs an extra vote end July and then it is up to the site to cooperate. Otherwise the can be blocked after a trial. Which means in clear text that this is a law passed so that someone can put a checkmark on a list. The funny thing is that there wqs a proposal to use FranceConnect, or uber serious portal allowing unified login to serious sites (tax, health,...). Having a porn site using this would be memorable.
thrwaway69 6y ago
If you are a parent - use https://nextdns.io https://nextdns.io AFTER having a conversation to filter porn. Why let government do it? Why not state funded child education and parenting centres if you can't even do this or educate yourself about it? As an underage person, I would just run wireguard on the router with open wrt if I wanted to bypass filter. Being brutally honest, if your kid is at high risk of porn addiction or is already addicted - you have failed miserably at parenting. You really want to look at other aspect to life to evaluate and fix the problem. Porn addiction is a result of some other problem in 95% cases.
davidjhall 6y ago
For some reason, I thought of the Leisure Suit Larry age verification system which asked questions that only an 18 year old ( at the time, with no internet ) could answer: https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.ht...

193 points by docdeek 6y ago

milsorgen 6y ago

What is the controversial part, if I may be so bold as to ask?

Hermel 6y ago
It might for example require reddit to ask you for your credit card before it lets you see an nsfw subreddit. And then again the same procedure on the target site. Not everyone is comfortable with giving adult websites their credit card information. (I for sure would not be.)
- randomchars 6y ago
  And at the same time you'd give your NSFW internet usage patterns to your credit card company. I image they'd love it, even more information to sell about you!
reedf1 6y ago
A similar system was attempted in the UK. The controversial part here was that there would be some central body with potential knowledge of the sites you visit associated with your passport/credit card/ official license. In addition the potential for fraud in spoofing the verification process etc... There was much humorous satire e.g. calling the Queen for access to porn. Before some tech contracts fell through and the whole system was abandoned at the end of the Theresa May government. I was looking forward to the tertiary effect of kids becoming network experts in the next 20 years.
fwn 6y ago
Many consider it bad to create a regulatory environment that leads to the creation of lists where real world identities are tied to specific sexual preferences. This is because in the contemporary western world, sexual preferences are considered intimate and highly personal. Creating such a data basis enables future discrimination. It doesn't mandate it, just enables it. There's a famous (and arguably untimely crass) example of such data gathering in the German past. It's different in scope and consequence (smaller scope, bigger consequences), but maybe still interesting. Sadly there's no English Wikipedia article about it: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRosa_Liste https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3... (At least that's the memory of German school history classes I immediately recalled while reading the linked article.)

helixhelix 6y ago

Tor with obfs4 gets around this.

Waterfall 6y ago

As a kid, I was able to figure out limewire, Emule, torrents and I'm sure kids today will be able to download a free vpn or use similar tools I used as a preteen to figure out how to circumvent these pointless blocks. I started with free video samples and only moved onto methods by high school to get access to premium websites. As a human, our strength is not only the ability to do these things but to also teach others to do it. I was able to help my friends to get access as well. If one ape discovered fire it would die with them, but our ability to spread information, like a virus is what gives humanity intelligence. One kid like me at school is all it takes to make this stupid law useless. Adult websites want brownie points and also don't like nonpayers, but mess with their revenue and you'll get a push back.

deleted 6y ago
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raxxorrax 6y ago
A mistake many people do. Maybe there are people now wary of children being subjected to certain content on the net. They are forgetting at least three things: They also were exposed and survived just fine Their kids are probably going to be better with tech at some point. The vast majority of pornographic content is available without being on the market which makes regulation nearly impossible. Yes, you can maybe attack the platforms hosting it, but I don't see this going anywhere. You would punish commercial distribution on push other content underground. Many in porn are already directly financed by their viewers. Wasn't the Australia block circumvented within 24h by a ~14-year old kid? Some people suggested to make brushing teeth illegal so that kids do it in secret in a dark corner.
- yomly 6y ago
  I agree - for many of people(including teens) circumventing restrictions is part of the thrill. That said I do think there has been an escalation of porn over the years. It's really apparent when you look at things from the 70s. Though apparently banning porn from cinemas shifted content to more "trashy" VHS/DVD/Online videos I feel data-driven analytics has probably accelerated this, like a race to the bottom (pun unintended). Extremity probably drives engagement so the porn kids are exposed to today is much more extreme than what we may have been as up and coming internet users.

speedgoose 6y ago

I guess DNS over HTTPS will become popular much faster in France.

enitihas 6y ago
It won't help alone without encrypted SNI.
- 5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E 6y ago
  eSNI can't come soon enough.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Sure but eSNI only works for this on the theory that large CDNs are too big to block. It’s domain fronting as a service. The problem is that if you’re too big to block you’re big enough that governments can drag you into court.

gorgoiler 6y ago

Websites that don’t follow the new AV laws will have to sanctioned. If the website is local, you can go ‘round to their office and arrest the owners. Lock ‘em up and throw away the key, it being the only language they understand etc. However, if the website is not local then it must be blocked, either by statute, by the courts, or by a regulator. This may require a National Firewall to block sites (eg The PRC.) As a bonus, your blocking infra can also be used for monitoring and logging. If you’re lucky though the nation state will implement its Great Firewall using a borked DNS infra (eg The UK) that isn’t even mandatory for ISPs with a small enough userbase. Exciting times, er, temps fantastiques, even. What tech does En Marche intend to mandate for blocking hairy armpits? Hopefully nothing too competent.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
Websites may already be blocked in France upon order from the Government, based on anti-terror laws. Basically, the Ministry of the Interior decides and orders all Internet access providers to block a site. Courts are not involved on the premise that this must sometimes be carried out as quickly as possible, though there is a right to contest a decision a posteriori.
- mantap 6y ago
  There's no such thing as blocking a site. You can direct DNS providers to block DNS, which doesn't help for anyone using Firefox. You can direct ISPs to block an IP but then you have hard decisions when the site you want to block is hosted by a foreign cloud provider.
  - enitihas 6y ago
    How does foreign cloud provider matters. As of now encrypted SNI is not there, so they can block simply based on SNI. If SNI info is not correct, they can ask the foreign cloud provider to block the website. Any cloud provider where SNI block won't work well is large enough to not deny requests from the french government.

csunbird 6y ago

Yes, it is entirely safe to post PII to sites that are known to be targeted by hackers heavily and daily, to extract data that can be used to blackmail people. The adult websites are never hacked before right? /sarcasm off

pnw_hazor 6y ago
Proponents of these types of laws are anti-porn. If fear of sharing the required PII with porn sites reduces the number of visitors to those sites, all the better in their mind. The 'save-the-children' vibe is a smoke screen for banning porn.

jaclaz 6y ago

Only for the record, the (of course, and as often happens not possible in practice) Italian norm has nothing to do with credit cards and age verification by the content provider. It says essentially that phone, TV and internet providers must by default prevent access to some type of contents and that this access can only be unblocked by the subscriber of the contract through an explicit request. I.e. it is more like a form of Parental Control", and of course the basic issue (since the "not suitable to minors" includes not only pornography, but also violence and other objectionable content) deciding which is which is either impossible or needing to implement some sort of automatic filters that inevitably will tag objectionable contents as "fine" or viceversa block access to perfectly suitable content, in this latter case with obvious consequences to freedom of expression.

peroporque 6y ago
That's the best method I've seen so far. Kinda like Google Search setting with "no", "moderate", or "strict" filter.
desas 6y ago
The UK has a similar system - agreed between the four main ISPs and the government, rather than legally binding. The code of practice says that subscribers must be forced to make a choice between a filtered or unfiltered internet connection.

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

I wonder if people will abandon France as fast as they abandoned Tumblr when they banned adult content? Or 70 million people download Tor.

tasogare 6y ago
I did it. In fact, for a lot of people who got an higher education the main question for after graduation is not what will you do but where will you go (where being implicitly abroad). This is of course not because of porn sites, but the general negative and insecure (economically, etc.) climate. The ship is sinking and people are asking for more of the things that precisely made it this way. This is painful to see.
- Tade0 6y ago
  Hailing from a former communist state from which quite a few people emigrated to France I wonder what are your options as a French person? What countries are France's France, or in other words, places where salaries are easily 2-3x as high and the general standard of living is proportionally better?
  - atxbcp 6y ago
    Canada, US, UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Japan, etc... Salaries don't have to be 2-3x as high (past a certain level it doesn't matter all that much), salary isn't the main reason why french people emigrate.
    - desas 6y ago
      London is the city with the sixth biggest French population. There are more French people living in London than in Bordeaux or Strasbourg for example.
      - jjgreen 6y ago
        ... and it's still hard to find a decent pain au chocolat here

eric1293 6y ago

France would like to ban the Internet in general. They ban everything: Amazon, google, Uber, websites, ...

jamil7 6y ago
Maybe they're still sour that minitel[0] never took off outside of France. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

Barrin92 6y ago

I wonder why they're using credit cards or leave it to the platforms to figure out verification mechanisms. In Germany the national ID card has age verification mechanisms built in[1]. This also has the advantage of not handing personal information over to the porn websites as all the veriifcation is done by the official eID server. Given that the article also addresses future standardized European solutions this seems like a pretty reasonable step forward. [1]https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic-Identification/Electronic-Identification_node.html https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic-...

randomchars 6y ago
I couldn't find much information, but in this case, doesn't the government directly have access to the sites you used this feature on?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I suppose they would know which provider requests the authentification. However in one document I found the process is described as 'ephemeral' which I suppose suggests they don't store these requests.
  - randomchars 6y ago
    And would you trust them not to store them? I certainly wouldn't.
chromanoid 6y ago
Germany is pretty pedantic regarding age verification. For porn only closed user groups are legal. I guess providing the ID card would be not enough for the KJM, but I didn't read through all accepted systems. (edit: There is the AUTHADA ID system where you have to enter your eID PIN each time you login). There are very few third-party age verification providers that are deemed OK by the KJM. This describes a typical process they like: > The Age Verification System is easy to use: the customer simply needs to take a photo of the front and back of their ID card as well as of their face. Then the system makes sure that the ID card is authentic and matches the photo of the customers face to the one on the card using biometric data. If successful, the age is verified – in under a minute. Companies can incorporate this fast and easy process directly into their procedures and identification systems. After first registration, the user has to use SMS TANs to authenticate each time. See also https://www.kjm-online.de/aufsicht/technischer-jugendmedienschutz/unzulaessige-angebote/altersverifikationssysteme/ https://www.kjm-online.de/aufsicht/technischer-jugendmediens... Other systems include stuff like logging in with your online banking account so the risk of giving this data to your children is low. This is all pretty useless since foreign adult sites are not blocked. It just really restricts German companies. This all seems hypocritical to me, especially when you consider how Germany deals with prostitution. I hope we adopt the Nordic model in this regard. Anyway I don't get why the UN don't try to push a viable solution that works international. Everything else is pointless.

VladimirGolovin 6y ago

They tried it in Russia with Telegram. All they did is teach the entire country how to use VPNs.

lord_sauron 6y ago
And blocked most of AWS in the process, I understand ...
grishka 6y ago
Oh, thank you for reminding me that I'm still paying for a VDS that runs a Telegram proxy. I think this whole story made people a tiny bit more technically literate. It also made it abundantly clear how clueless governments are about modern technology.

torgian 6y ago

Oh so using sex to implement fear and uncertainty and despair ( FUD ) among the populace? Think of the children! By the way, here’s a firewall to block whatever websites we don’t like. Oh and you’re being monitored 24/7 now. But not now. In like, five years.

deleted 6y ago
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astrobe_ 6y ago
I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but the 'D' usually stands for Doubt (sometimes Deception).
- ur-whale 6y ago
  Not in this case, since it's about filtering porn. /s

arnaudsm 6y ago

We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds. If this law fails to educate on pornography, at least it'll educate youngsters on DNS. I'm ok with both scenarios.

andybak 6y ago
> We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds. There's a fair amount to unpack here. "We tend to forget" seems to indicate this is proven and beyond dispute. I'm not sure that is true. "damage" is a very strong word that implies permanent harm - almost at the cellular level. Not everyone would accept that "damage" is even the right way to frame this. It's part of a complex social and behavioural pattern that is very hard to pick apart. "young minds" - how young? Is it dependent on countering with good sex education or is the "damage" something that would resist all countermeasures?
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  You can probably find more information than I did with a Google Scholar search for the effects of porn on adolescents and children - though this is a very hard thing to "prove beyond dispute" for several reasons - people react to media in very different ways, effects may only be activated by pre-existing patterns of behaviour and attitudes, there is a large influence from religiosity, among other things; and of course, it'd be unethical to expose children to porn in a lab setting. The best you're going to get is controlled suveys and questionnaires, from researchers working at a school, for example. Consider that we know cannabis and alcohol can have a detrimental effect on young people, but we're obviously not able to watch them smoke or drink it in a controlled environment. All that said (and note that the authors of the first paper are probably the foremost scholars of porn effects research in psychology): "Additionally, there is meta-analytic evidence to indicate that viewing more pornography and viewing extreme pornography is associated with the sexual objectification of women and more aggressive attitudes (Hald et al., 2010)[0]. Some longitudinal findings link sexual aggression and use of violent pornography, for example, one study of 10-15 year olds in the US found that those who intentionally viewed violent X-rated materials were nearly six times more likely than others to report sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra et al. 2011)[1]."[2] The research on effects of porn is chequered and often has methodological problems, replication problems, and unfortunately assumes one kind of mainstream porn (leaving out, say, erotica, fanfiction overwhelmingly written and read by teens, online erotic roleplaying, etc.) - that said, from my own amateur reading around the topic, there is a strong pointer to substantial negative effects which are usually (though not always) mediated, much in the same way alcohol consumption effects are. [0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non-experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328 [1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J. (2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37, 1–18. [2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

lord_sauron 6y ago

The United States is the basic flaw in this scheme. Multiple laws (The CDA and COPA) requiring age verification for porn were enjoined by the courts many years ago and it’s not going to be easy to reinstate something similar any time soon. So kiddies, you can always set your exit node to be in the US and wank with us!

FeistyOtter 6y ago

It's a continuation of an ongoing trend nowadays to elevate to a government level issues that should be solved in the family. Instead french government should spend its efforts on actual society problems that affect every child, like fixing french school system. But then they have to spend brain power and money while fighting entrenched interest groups, so as always, low hanging fruit is easier to pick.

loulou24 6y ago
I wonder if we could pinpoint when this awful trend got started (in France and elsewhere).
- smt88 6y ago
  Every theocracy did it, and most non-theocratic governments did too. It's not a new trend.
- justnotworthit 6y ago
  My guess is that most people believe that their own family is functional, but that other people's families are creating delinquents.

terminalcommand 6y ago

The thing that cracks me most is that they suggested to mandate the use of e-government authentication tools for accessing adult content. If they want to fight this, the most effective way would be a nation-wide ban of VPNs, ip blocking and deep packet inspection to discover and ban other tunnels/VPNs. Sure, you can rent your own server and run shadowsocks on it but it will complicate the process. In Turkey, I feel like most VPNs are actively banned, it’s a roulette basically to get a working one. The only reliable solution is to rent your own server and setup your own VPN. I think in China, they can also find out and block those.

MattGaiser 6y ago

We could do all that and kids would still watch porn. They would just share the downloaded video files.

loulou24 6y ago
So more hassle. Which could be the difference between teenage curiosity and the beginning of a debilitating addiction (depending on the transfer speed).

Softcadbury 6y ago

This will never work, there are too many websites and too many ways of getting around this limitation. BUT, there are plenty of parental control softwares for computers and phones, I think this is the only valid solution. So instead of passing some stupid laws, we just have to teach parents. Otherwise, it's like trying to replace all knifes by platic ones; no we let parents teach kids it's dangerous.

enitihas 6y ago
I don't think people making these laws care of 1-5 % people using a workaround. If 95% people are blocked, I think they are good.
- randomchars 6y ago
  I think you get the percentages wrong: 95% of kids who want to watch porn will easily find a workaround.
  - enitihas 6y ago
    Unless 95% of kids can get a VPN, I doubt how kids can find a workaround for SNI based blocks.
    - randomchars 6y ago
      There are quite a few free VPN apps, so getting porn would be only one more step away.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      There would be informal distribution networks via groups on various messaging apps or general-purpose cloud storage services. This might spell the end for the major "tube" sites if they can't make enough ad revenue, but this is definitely not going to be the end of porn.
  - loulou24 6y ago
    And pornographers will also find a workaround to reach there addicts... euh... audience.

oijewoif32m 6y ago

Living in the EU is worse than being in a jail. At least you have more freedoms in jail.

doublerabbit 6y ago

Children should be deterred from looking at pornography. Watching pornography of normal acts with male or female anatomy I doubt will cause issues. But what about other nasty content? It's easy to fall down a rabbit hole and such content is available with just three words in google. The internet is not a safe place and when a child watches obscene content that very well starts to warp their mind and perception. They hunt for further gratification and this can lead in to more murky content. Pornography can be malicious and internet pornography addiction is real too. I am in favor of restricting content however for the reason that there really is nasty content which young children are discovering and it's leading them to grow up corrupt. If there was a way to divide the two but you can't, however the way it is it's either all or nothing. Filter it, let a child hack around the filter expanding their computer skills and reward it. That it self is far more positive then being able to view all the content that is available. Innocence can be lost prematurely and that's disastrous for the child if it is lost. Pornography nowadays isn't like it was during the MTV years which many will compare from.

chii 6y ago
who is to decide what is obscene and what is not?
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  Whoever pays for the internet.
- loulou24 6y ago
  I don't know who is to decide. But it shouldn't be children or pornographers.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Me. I declare censorship an absolute obscenity in a free society. There now that we have rendered that stupid question meaningless we can move on as a society.
flyingfences 6y ago
> Children should be deterred Yes, absolutely, but by the government?

Algent 6y ago

Something interesting about being forced to use the "FranceConnect" OpenID service for adult websites is it's what we use in France to connect official taxes, health insurance, retirement and car registration website. It also use social security number as login depending on which website you bounce from.

mgbmtl 6y ago
That sounds scary if used by companies who rely on advertising and, when they get hacked, extortionists.

bovermyer 6y ago

Ignoring the subject matter of the article, one phrase in particular stood out to me - "digital sovereignty." This is the first time I've heard that phrase. I've never conceived of the web being carved up into territory by governments before. However, when I think about it now, the Web is being fought over by governments - China, India, the USA, etc. That makes me a little sad.

Nasrudith 6y ago
Always remember the true meaning of sovereignty. If the universe was really a MMO server and the PVP flag was switched off and magically nobody could kill or steal, detonating a bomb only endangered the bombmaker if it was in a blast radius, and even drunk drivers could only harm themselves it would be a catastrophy for sovereignty.

lemoncookiechip 6y ago

Honestly, this is completely ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It'll not only disturb people's lives if it goes on ahead, but could also have the potential risk of identity theft increasing depending on how it is implemented. And the saddest part of all, is that this is completely pointless. It's extremely easy to circumvent, including for those with little to no tech knowledge, not to mention you can find hardcore pornography on platforms such as Twitter by typing 3 letters "Sex" and one click, plus all the hundreds of thousands of keywords that will lead you there, including such words as "Amateur", "Schoolgirl"... They learned nothing from the UK.

Mangalor 6y ago
If a 9-year-old types into Google, they will easily find porn. But, maybe it shouldn't be so easy. And yes, once they're in middle school and high school they'll just figure out alternatives, but I don't think it's unreasonable to put up some dead simple barriers to protect innocence. Just because it was easy for those of us growing up in the 90s and after doesn't mean all children have to be exposed like that.

oxAAAFFB 6y ago

I just arrived in France. What should I see?

mensetmanusman 6y ago

It is so interesting to see various country approaches to the flow of information, i.e. internet regulation. At its foundation, the idea amounts to ‘there exists information that is dangerous and it is our job to protect them (the people).’ Based on the range of human abilities, few could argue against the idea that ‘there exists dangerous information’ (that is dangerous to some people). In the U.S. those on the left are asking corporations to protect people by banning ‘dangerous information’ In China, the CCP has spend a large percentage of their GDP and has defined almost all information not related to consumerism and good manners as ‘dangerous’ In France, this. If everyone were perfect, there would be no dangerous information, because people would be able to read things in perfect context. That will never happen.

throwawayiionqz 6y ago

There should be much smarter moves to work with porn sites towards better sex education. Force porn websites to do age verification on their models (most high traffic site currently do). For all videos and especially those that display acted scenes where consent is unclear, prominently display next to the video in English+local language that the video actors and actresses are performing willingly consentual sex acts, even if the video scenario suggests otherwise for some fantasy's sake.

kwhitefoot 6y ago

Why are only porn sites regarded as harmful? What about violence? What about sites peddling snake oil?

falsaberN1 6y ago
"Core values".

loulou24 6y ago

Putting aside for a moment the (important) issue of privacy. I'm wondering if people here would react the same if "adult websites" was replaced with "added sugar". Would people use arguments like - kids will always find ways to become diabetic! or - I use to eat plums, I never had problems.

enitihas 6y ago
I think the main difference is that far too many people eat sugar, and even more importantly, far too many people can proudly admit in public that they eat sugar.
- loulou24 6y ago
  Far too many people watch porn excessively too. People just don't realize it precisely because we don't talk about it, people around don't notice it and you can keep the same pair of trousers (unlike when you drink too much soda). I think that in a few years, opinion will shift and we'll consider porn as a public health problem.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    When will we consider prudes a public health issue? Their shaming is unhealthy and when they get power cause generations of harm. Worse they have no care for it so long as they get their righteous indignation high! Given the sheer toll of prohobition judgementalness is the most insidious and deadly of all of the vices.
    - loulou24 6y ago
      Shaming? prudes? judgmental?? What on earth are you talking about? Look, an increasing number of people (not just me) are realizing how detrimental to their life this little habit has been. Many wish they realized it sooner. And when they realize they are far from being alone [1], they naturally tend to think the effect of porn might be understated in our society. I'm not judging anyone, if people enjoy it and it doesn't affect negatively their lives, good for them. And if I'm wrong and people like me end up being just a minute minority, then Great News! But I really don't understand why I get downvoted for this and I understand even less this rambling about 'prudes'. [1]: https://forum.nofap.com/index.php https://forum.nofap.com/index.php

mtnGoat 6y ago

It's been a while since I worked in adult, but I recall when Germany did something similar, no one outside their jurisdiction had to follow the rules, so no one did. Additionally it just required the user to enter an ID number the site owner had to validate against a government API, that charged per request. This was flawed because... Kids could find/share the ID card numbers and bad actors could run up your bills by dictionary attacking the validation form. It was a need and was utterly unenforceable. The solution is parents need to be parenting. Where there is a will, there is a way (and that's directed to both sides).

xfitm3 6y ago

Blocking content is absolutely pointless, and ironically increases demand. Circumventing controls and doing something you shouldn't is exciting. Personally I don't have a problem with porn and I'd rather not see this used as a way to weasel in real id verification systems into websites which I think is the real motivation here. Next it will require real id for comment forums to quell "hate speech", and then eventually to identify dissenters and other utopian pursuits.

loulou24 6y ago
Governments taking the role of parents.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Parents aren't technically competent enough to do this kind of thing properly. Governments, on the other hand… aren't technically competent enough either.
deleted 6y ago
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tpmx 6y ago

Do you remember when France banned encryption software from being used by non-government entities in the 90s? I do. https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to-reconsider-its-cryptography-laws https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to-recons... > Until 1996 one had to ask permission to use any form of encryption, or pay a 6000-500000 FF fine with 2-6 months of prison if found out. Currently encryption that the french authorities can break is legal, but this is not secure enough to encourage e-commerce. (1999)

jackjeff 6y ago
Yeah. My university had the choice of either breaking the law, get hacked or not providing remote SSH access to students. They broke the law...
- tpmx 6y ago
  To us other europeans, those years were kind of formative to us about viewing France as a relic to be laughed about. What great french internet startups have ended up expanding outside their country in a meaningful way?
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    That also explains a whole lot of French tech jealousy politics and their many stupid failed ventures. They always were moronic control freaks essentially and won't change, the only solution is to replace the damn fools.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      Everything can be solved with a multi billion euro EU-funded project!

photon12 6y ago

There's a meta-issue with pushing regulatory requirements that are trivial to bypass: you effectively normalize bypassing regulations and effectively create a culture where regulatory bypass is seen as "not a big deal" even if that wasn't your original intent. People have been using VPNs because they think region-locking streaming content is something where the risk-reward calculus is fairly obvious, and from what I can see that's a fairly normalized cultural trend. If you do the same thing with porn, you are now adding another layer of depth to the emergent cultural phenomena. If you think there needs to be a serious conversation about porn access and psychology, implementing restrictions trivial to bypass only serves to reduce the legitimacy of agents trying to make the case for such education. Edit: you also see this phenomenon with respect to COVID mask mandates

jackjeff 6y ago

I wonder to what extent a state can block a website. ESNI - HTTPS - cloudflare That’s all it takes to bypass the porn filters in the UK and other websites banned by the high court such as the Pirate Bay. It only takes one geek kid to figure it out and they’ll all know it.

octygen 6y ago

More thrill to get the content, more dopamine hit once you get to the goal, the more likely it is to be more addictive. If it's not forbidden, it's not nearly as exciting.

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

I am French and this is the first time I hear of that. After checking the sources, there is indeed a law passed, it needs an extra vote end July and then it is up to the site to cooperate. Otherwise the can be blocked after a trial. Which means in clear text that this is a law passed so that someone can put a checkmark on a list. The funny thing is that there wqs a proposal to use FranceConnect, or uber serious portal allowing unified login to serious sites (tax, health,...). Having a porn site using this would be memorable.

thrwaway69 6y ago

If you are a parent - use https://nextdns.io https://nextdns.io AFTER having a conversation to filter porn. Why let government do it? Why not state funded child education and parenting centres if you can't even do this or educate yourself about it? As an underage person, I would just run wireguard on the router with open wrt if I wanted to bypass filter. Being brutally honest, if your kid is at high risk of porn addiction or is already addicted - you have failed miserably at parenting. You really want to look at other aspect to life to evaluate and fix the problem. Porn addiction is a result of some other problem in 95% cases.

davidjhall 6y ago

For some reason, I thought of the Leisure Suit Larry age verification system which asked questions that only an 18 year old ( at the time, with no internet ) could answer: https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.ht...