7 ms·

A Utah Porn Filtering Bill Is Back, and It's Stupid

pavel_lishin 3y ago
> Most cases when minors view porn are primarily instances of “stumble upon” cases meaning that most minors navigate to age-restricted content by accident. Not sure I believe this part. If we're talking about 8 year olds or 12 year olds, sure, except in weird cases. But I was definitely consuming pornography at 17 years old, and I didn't trip and fall into it because I typed whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov.
__salt 3y ago
> And It’s Very Stupid I wish journalists would stop inserting their opinions in the title like it's their personal Twitter feed.
- pengaru 3y ago
  > I wish journalists would stop inserting their opinions in the title like it's their personal Twitter feed. This is techdirt ffs, it's literally a blog about news stories, not journalism: > Started in 1997 by Floor64 founder Mike Masnick and then growing into > a group blogging effort, the Techdirt blog relies on a proven economic > framework to analyze and offer insight into news stories about changes > in government policy, technology and legal issues that affect > companies’ ability to innovate and grow
  - cchance 3y ago
    Its commentary, sadly people don't understand the difference anymore, i mean the guys also not wrong this is fucking stupid
ndriscoll 3y ago
Depending on liability for when the filter lets something through (which anything other than a whitelist would, and a whitelist probably would too), this bill might well be stupid. But the quoted provision seems fine? It's illegal to give minors drugs, alcohol, and porn as it is. Imagining some miracle filter existed, why wouldn't it be illegal to disable it for a minor without parental consent? I'm big on free speech, but it gets real weird when people are against mandating parental controls exist and claim it's a form of censorship. Giving porn to children is already illegal[0], but little to nothing is done to enforce it on computers. It seems reasonable that people want to have consumer devices be capable of filtering, even if people more familiar with tech would know why that's challenging to do perfectly. Edit: It sounds like they have to ask the user's age on setup, and if the user answers that they're a minor, activate the filter. And liability > does not apply to a manufacturer that makes a good faith effort to provide a device that, upon activation of the device in the state automatically enables a generally accepted and commercially reasonable filter So I'm not really seeing the issue. It just says parental controls have to exist on the device, and you can't go turning off someone else's kids' parental controls. [0] Here's a federal law that carries up to 10 years in prison for knowingly providing porn to someone under 16 using the Internet. The law is almost as old as the web. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470
- slimrec77 3y ago
  Totally agree. I am a free speech absolutist but that is for adults. I was a teenager before the internet and it is not like you could just go to the store and browse Playboy and Penthouse when you were 15. If a store had magazines with nudity it was behind the counter and obviously illegal to sell to children. The people talking about free speech and censorship are obviously full of shit.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- cchance 3y ago
  Because its bullshit, in VA they banned porn without ID, guess what 99% of sites aren't hosted in the US, so beyond pornhub you can basically get porn easily, what next google needs to also have an ID so that kids have to login to that to filter their porn searches? Oh wait, nope that wont work because search engines can also run from other countries. The reason things like porn aren't regulated like drugs and alcohol, is because drugs and alcohol can't be consumed with a simple google search and a click to a website run somewhere else in the world.
bettercallsalad 3y ago
I like how the title already has decided it is __stupid__ instead of having an honest faith debate. My view on pornography as someone who suffered from addiction and still sometimes fall back to it is, it’s a symptom of a underlying societal pathology. Human beings are designed to crave physical intimacy. That’s what make a species successful at the evolutionary stage. If you believe in evolution and science then you must believe that’s true. If you go against that, you are doomed as a species. The problem is in many aspects, we are doing everything we can as a species to counter our evolutionary fitness. I bet if there was a societal dynamics where people were to find partners in organic manner and have meaningful relationships, worrying about pornography reaching to kids would be less of a thing. Too many of our personal relationships are polluted with doses of dopamine, coupled with dysfunction in the dynamics in relation to the way people seek their partner. There is a reason sperm count has dropped 50% just in a generation and 25% of young women are on SSRI. What is going on in America?Is it the food we are eating, garbage we are consuming in our phone everyday that cause us to live in a dysfunctional reality where porn becomes the mean to release your evolutionary urge? Why is every millennial and GenZ choosing to delay family and relationship formation? Is it rent seeking class choke holding an entire other class of people? Ultimately is that too a class war issue? no one is asking these questions. Our beloved journalists are busy studying the Russian aggression on Ukraine more than corporate invasion on every aspect of American soul.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  So you got addicted to porn and in what seems like insane overcorrection are yearning for Traditional Family Values? Yes, I am going to continue to call this brain-fart of a policy “stupid”.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    Why is it stupid to require devices have parental control settings that are default enabled when you indicate during device setup that the user is a child and, when enabled, turn on a "generally accepted and commercially reasonable filter", with a password for the parent or guardian to disable/re-enable? Or is it stupid that it's illegal to turn off parental controls for someone else's kid without the parent's consent (the article author is upset about this one for some reason)? Or what part of the policy is stupid?
data_maan 3y ago
> Most cases when minors view porn are primarily instances of “stumble upon” cases meaning that most minors navigate to age-restricted content by accident. Does the OP know what happens in band camp, in classrooms and basically and other setting where kids wit smartphones are left on their own?

> Most cases when minors view porn are primarily instances of “stumble upon” cases meaning that most minors navigate to age-restricted content by accident. Not sure I believe this part. If we're talking about 8 year olds or 12 year olds, sure, except in weird cases. But I was definitely consuming pornography at 17 years old, and I didn't trip and fall into it because I typed whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov.

__salt 3y ago

> And It’s Very Stupid I wish journalists would stop inserting their opinions in the title like it's their personal Twitter feed.

pengaru 3y ago
> I wish journalists would stop inserting their opinions in the title like it's their personal Twitter feed. This is techdirt ffs, it's literally a blog about news stories, not journalism: > Started in 1997 by Floor64 founder Mike Masnick and then growing into > a group blogging effort, the Techdirt blog relies on a proven economic > framework to analyze and offer insight into news stories about changes > in government policy, technology and legal issues that affect > companies’ ability to innovate and grow
- cchance 3y ago
  Its commentary, sadly people don't understand the difference anymore, i mean the guys also not wrong this is fucking stupid

ndriscoll 3y ago

Depending on liability for when the filter lets something through (which anything other than a whitelist would, and a whitelist probably would too), this bill might well be stupid. But the quoted provision seems fine? It's illegal to give minors drugs, alcohol, and porn as it is. Imagining some miracle filter existed, why wouldn't it be illegal to disable it for a minor without parental consent? I'm big on free speech, but it gets real weird when people are against mandating parental controls exist and claim it's a form of censorship. Giving porn to children is already illegal[0], but little to nothing is done to enforce it on computers. It seems reasonable that people want to have consumer devices be capable of filtering, even if people more familiar with tech would know why that's challenging to do perfectly. Edit: It sounds like they have to ask the user's age on setup, and if the user answers that they're a minor, activate the filter. And liability > does not apply to a manufacturer that makes a good faith effort to provide a device that, upon activation of the device in the state automatically enables a generally accepted and commercially reasonable filter So I'm not really seeing the issue. It just says parental controls have to exist on the device, and you can't go turning off someone else's kids' parental controls. [0] Here's a federal law that carries up to 10 years in prison for knowingly providing porn to someone under 16 using the Internet. The law is almost as old as the web. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1470

slimrec77 3y ago
Totally agree. I am a free speech absolutist but that is for adults. I was a teenager before the internet and it is not like you could just go to the store and browse Playboy and Penthouse when you were 15. If a store had magazines with nudity it was behind the counter and obviously illegal to sell to children. The people talking about free speech and censorship are obviously full of shit.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
cchance 3y ago
Because its bullshit, in VA they banned porn without ID, guess what 99% of sites aren't hosted in the US, so beyond pornhub you can basically get porn easily, what next google needs to also have an ID so that kids have to login to that to filter their porn searches? Oh wait, nope that wont work because search engines can also run from other countries. The reason things like porn aren't regulated like drugs and alcohol, is because drugs and alcohol can't be consumed with a simple google search and a click to a website run somewhere else in the world.

bettercallsalad 3y ago

I like how the title already has decided it is __stupid__ instead of having an honest faith debate. My view on pornography as someone who suffered from addiction and still sometimes fall back to it is, it’s a symptom of a underlying societal pathology. Human beings are designed to crave physical intimacy. That’s what make a species successful at the evolutionary stage. If you believe in evolution and science then you must believe that’s true. If you go against that, you are doomed as a species. The problem is in many aspects, we are doing everything we can as a species to counter our evolutionary fitness. I bet if there was a societal dynamics where people were to find partners in organic manner and have meaningful relationships, worrying about pornography reaching to kids would be less of a thing. Too many of our personal relationships are polluted with doses of dopamine, coupled with dysfunction in the dynamics in relation to the way people seek their partner. There is a reason sperm count has dropped 50% just in a generation and 25% of young women are on SSRI. What is going on in America?Is it the food we are eating, garbage we are consuming in our phone everyday that cause us to live in a dysfunctional reality where porn becomes the mean to release your evolutionary urge? Why is every millennial and GenZ choosing to delay family and relationship formation? Is it rent seeking class choke holding an entire other class of people? Ultimately is that too a class war issue? no one is asking these questions. Our beloved journalists are busy studying the Russian aggression on Ukraine more than corporate invasion on every aspect of American soul.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
So you got addicted to porn and in what seems like insane overcorrection are yearning for Traditional Family Values? Yes, I am going to continue to call this brain-fart of a policy “stupid”.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  Why is it stupid to require devices have parental control settings that are default enabled when you indicate during device setup that the user is a child and, when enabled, turn on a "generally accepted and commercially reasonable filter", with a password for the parent or guardian to disable/re-enable? Or is it stupid that it's illegal to turn off parental controls for someone else's kid without the parent's consent (the article author is upset about this one for some reason)? Or what part of the policy is stupid?

data_maan 3y ago

> Most cases when minors view porn are primarily instances of “stumble upon” cases meaning that most minors navigate to age-restricted content by accident. Does the OP know what happens in band camp, in classrooms and basically and other setting where kids wit smartphones are left on their own?