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The final sentence is the kicker. No website on earth has managed to succeed with Age Verification, except places like us.gov for obvious reasons. Since the i

The final sentence is the kicker. No website on earth has managed to succeed with Age Verification, except places like us.gov for obvious reasons. Since the investment cost is infinite, and the cost of an error is legislated to be super high, companies will conclude the rational choice is to cancel service those jurisdictions. Effectively, the end of "legal" porn. All that will be left is the kind of site that isn't bound by US law, and now you have a much worse situation for the kids with phones. Like everything, this is a parenting issue.

bsder 3y ago
> Like everything, this is a parenting issue. True, but the "solution" is that kids shouldn't have unfettered smartphone or computer access at 9 years old. The problem is that a lot of irresponsible parents are giving their kids phones at those ages and making things really difficult for parents who are trying to be responsible. We really need old-school "You can talk and you can text and that's it" dumbphones back again.
- acdha 3y ago
  I don’t want to completely throw parents under the proverbial bus here: an awful lot of things depend on smartphones now. My wife has had her high school students break the school’s “no phones” policy because they need to do MFA, watch instructional videos when the school Wi-Fi is down, get stuff out of email, etc. and many kids use apps like Uber to get to/from school or need to use the same phone for some kind of after school job. Yes, you can in theory lock things down but that’s non-trivial to do and it’s not hard to hit exceptions which are not easy to fit into existing parental controls (e.g. just try to limit YouTube to only what videos their teachers use). I don’t really shed many tears for the commercial porn industry - they at least have some money to spend on compliance – but I do think smartphones will continue to lead kids to make mistakes which can’t be undone. Gross commercial porn can give kids unrealistic ideas but it probably isn’t as damaging as sending something to the wrong person and having it shared around the school, being bullied, etc. and those things don’t have as straightforward a solution as requiring identity checks.
  - bsder 3y ago
    There is a vast difference between giving a 9 year old a smartphone and giving a 17 year old a smartphone. If a school needs 9 year olds to have a smartphone, they are doing something very wrong.
    - acdha 3y ago
      There are students at middle schools here who use Uber / Lyft to get to/from school because their parents can’t accompany them on the subway. Smart door locks, etc. are also common and a surprising number of kids use the assistive features (e.g. background noise on headphones). I’m not saying it’s great but I see it more as a market failure that parents can’t confidently say they let their kid use a phone without being exposed to the worst of the internet.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
> Effectively, the end of "legal" porn. Why ? There's an older solution than the Web : age verification tied to payment.

bsder 3y ago

> Like everything, this is a parenting issue. True, but the "solution" is that kids shouldn't have unfettered smartphone or computer access at 9 years old. The problem is that a lot of irresponsible parents are giving their kids phones at those ages and making things really difficult for parents who are trying to be responsible. We really need old-school "You can talk and you can text and that's it" dumbphones back again.

acdha 3y ago
I don’t want to completely throw parents under the proverbial bus here: an awful lot of things depend on smartphones now. My wife has had her high school students break the school’s “no phones” policy because they need to do MFA, watch instructional videos when the school Wi-Fi is down, get stuff out of email, etc. and many kids use apps like Uber to get to/from school or need to use the same phone for some kind of after school job. Yes, you can in theory lock things down but that’s non-trivial to do and it’s not hard to hit exceptions which are not easy to fit into existing parental controls (e.g. just try to limit YouTube to only what videos their teachers use). I don’t really shed many tears for the commercial porn industry - they at least have some money to spend on compliance – but I do think smartphones will continue to lead kids to make mistakes which can’t be undone. Gross commercial porn can give kids unrealistic ideas but it probably isn’t as damaging as sending something to the wrong person and having it shared around the school, being bullied, etc. and those things don’t have as straightforward a solution as requiring identity checks.
- bsder 3y ago
  There is a vast difference between giving a 9 year old a smartphone and giving a 17 year old a smartphone. If a school needs 9 year olds to have a smartphone, they are doing something very wrong.
  - acdha 3y ago
    There are students at middle schools here who use Uber / Lyft to get to/from school because their parents can’t accompany them on the subway. Smart door locks, etc. are also common and a surprising number of kids use the assistive features (e.g. background noise on headphones). I’m not saying it’s great but I see it more as a market failure that parents can’t confidently say they let their kid use a phone without being exposed to the worst of the internet.

BlueTemplar 3y ago

> Effectively, the end of "legal" porn. Why ? There's an older solution than the Web : age verification tied to payment.