37 ms·

Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

26 points by mysto 2y ago

sylware 2y ago
In my country, there are time limited age verification wallet code. Namely, you don't need to use your credit card online (yeay!).
markx2 2y ago
Those that do not wish to verify and cannot afford a VPN could start using 'free' VPN sites / extensions and in doing so open up their computer / network to more malicious content. Those that do not use a VPN will be justifiably concerned that a breach at some later date will expose them. Expected: articles from the likes of TorrentFreak which detail 'no logging' vpn sites. The children will all be safe though, so there's that. Pornhub's stats, which they publish, will make for interesting reading.
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  That assumes children don't use "free" VPN sites/extensions.
cedws 2y ago
The UK government was warned almost 10 years ago this is bad idea, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. They've decided to push it through anyway. Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on, but the solution is not the government nannying everyone.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I’m in favor of the ban, but the 1990s privacy nerds had a good point when they said it would lead to other kinds of censorship: https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-post-the-u-k-is-now-jailing-people-for-social-media-comments/ https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-... The slippery slope happened a lot faster than most people thought.
  - Jigsy 2y ago
    It's a country that doesn't believe in freedom of artistic expression, either.
- ghssds 2y ago
  > Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on I learned to distrust both my intuition and common knowledge but I may be convinced by solid scientific arguments and statistics.
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  It's not about children. They've done their dash with using 'terrorism' as an excuse to erode civil liberties, and so now they've switched to 'saving the children'.
avgDev 2y ago
A horny teenager won't be stopped by age verification. They will find other ways to access the content.
metalman 2y ago
VPN = Virtual Porn Network some kind of ad blaster, and non-bank currency is going to become so much more common, than if there was a simple,"its my phone,buzz off mind your OWN business" check box that is legaly required, and protected and minors could get a "juvi sim" till they reach the age of majority, which of course, would only deter the lazy ones.
hnpolicestate 2y ago
What's stopping the U.K from banning VPN's for private use? Creating a carve out for workplace usage, or requiring a license and acceptable reason like firearms? I doubt there would be much public pushback. I mention this because people always mention these workarounds as being impregnable. If the U.K is okay with telling ISP's to block websites they certainly will have no problem banning VPN's
mysterium 2y ago
Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age verification service (e.g. a government run service, or a bank), but crucially not the reason _why_ you're proving your age (i.e. the bank doesn't know if you're visiting a porn site or a casino). That service gives you a bunch of signed tokens proving you're over the age of 18/21/whatever, and you can redeem a token on the porn/gambling/alcohol-purchasing website for access. It uses various fun bits of cryptography (e.g. blind signatures) to ensure anonymity for the user. With such technologies, anonymous age verification becomes achievable. Now, whether age verification is inherently "bad" is up for debate, but that's a matter of opinion. Obviously this technology isn't infallible and it will be possible to work around, but we don't need a perfect solution here. Preventing 99% of children that would have viewed violent pornography from viewing it is a massive win, and the fact that we can do it in a provably-privacy-preserving manner using cryptography is very very cool.
- awkward 2y ago
  It's definitely possible to do it in a way that's less invasive but still effective. The question is whether that will actually happen.
- saurik 2y ago
  My concern is that the existence of such technology doesn't mean that it will be required -- and as more private technology often has a cost or a downside, it kind of has to be required for uptake -- and even further doesn't at all imply that it is even on the radar. If you want to be for this, you shouldn't be for this because it COULD be done well: you should insist that you will only be for this IF AND ONLY IF it WILL be done well, and if the draft laws don't say this then we should then not be for it.
  - mysterium 2y ago
    Very reasonable, and indeed the July deadline will make it very likely that they _don't_ use a privacy-preserving method like Privacy Pass (and it's very reasonable for people to raise concerns). My main issue is whenever the topic of age verification is raised, the consensus from the tech community is "the only way to achieve age verification is mass surveillance and I won't stand for it!", and as someone who works in an adjacent field to this, I feel the need to dispel that notion. We should be directing our collective energy into ensuring age verification is secure and private, not fighting against the notion entirely.
Fischgericht 2y ago
Kids are shown weapons everywhere. They are afraid to watch news and therefore only consume "news" from socical media, which we made an AI shithole and threat to a civilized society. They see how we have in large parts poisoned or destroyed large parts of their planet. They have to get drilled to learn how to get not shot in school shootings or elsewhere. And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet? Wow. Humanity really needs to see a Psychiatrist.
- Our_Benefactors 2y ago
  > And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet? Most porn is a far cry from “making love”.
  - Fischgericht 2y ago
    Matter of definition. Stuff on most porn sites is at least consensual. My point is: Seriously and honestly talk to a kid these days. Or read detailed reports on where the suicide rates in young peoples are sourced in. Even porn where whatever a granny dressed up as a horse is pissing into someone else's mouth. Might be very troubling to a teen trying to understand their sexuality. Surely not a good start as sex ed. But that's still a far cry from kids seeing people killing each other FOR REAL. Talk to the kids. Porn is nowhere near the Top 10 of what's causing their anxieties and depressions. This is grown-ups taking their standard route: Let's not change anything of relevance, but instead let's put a useless ban on something that won't go away by a ban, anyway.
John23832 2y ago
The GLARING hole in all of these age verification schemes is social media. That is the mechanism by which most people, particularly children get access to porn. If you don't treat twitter/reddit like porn vectors, you're doing nothing.
nojvek 2y ago
States where pornhub is banned due to age verification: Alabama Arkansas Florida Idaho Indiana Kansas Kentucky Mississippi Montana Nebraska North Carolina Oklahoma South Carolina Texas Utah Virginia Louisiana Essentially Republicans who advocate for small government went aggressive on ban and propped up the industry for VPNs. UK, Canada, Australia and NZ are likely to follow suit.
asadyare2023 2y ago
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asadyare2023 2y ago
[dead]

26 points by mysto 2y ago

In my country, there are time limited age verification wallet code. Namely, you don't need to use your credit card online (yeay!).

markx2 2y ago

Those that do not wish to verify and cannot afford a VPN could start using 'free' VPN sites / extensions and in doing so open up their computer / network to more malicious content. Those that do not use a VPN will be justifiably concerned that a breach at some later date will expose them. Expected: articles from the likes of TorrentFreak which detail 'no logging' vpn sites. The children will all be safe though, so there's that. Pornhub's stats, which they publish, will make for interesting reading.

RandomBacon 2y ago
That assumes children don't use "free" VPN sites/extensions.

cedws 2y ago

The UK government was warned almost 10 years ago this is bad idea, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. They've decided to push it through anyway. Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on, but the solution is not the government nannying everyone.

rayiner 2y ago
I’m in favor of the ban, but the 1990s privacy nerds had a good point when they said it would lead to other kinds of censorship: https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-post-the-u-k-is-now-jailing-people-for-social-media-comments/ https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-... The slippery slope happened a lot faster than most people thought.
- Jigsy 2y ago
  It's a country that doesn't believe in freedom of artistic expression, either.
ghssds 2y ago
> Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on I learned to distrust both my intuition and common knowledge but I may be convinced by solid scientific arguments and statistics.
bigfatkitten 2y ago
It's not about children. They've done their dash with using 'terrorism' as an excuse to erode civil liberties, and so now they've switched to 'saving the children'.

avgDev 2y ago

A horny teenager won't be stopped by age verification. They will find other ways to access the content.

metalman 2y ago

VPN = Virtual Porn Network some kind of ad blaster, and non-bank currency is going to become so much more common, than if there was a simple,"its my phone,buzz off mind your OWN business" check box that is legaly required, and protected and minors could get a "juvi sim" till they reach the age of majority, which of course, would only deter the lazy ones.

hnpolicestate 2y ago

What's stopping the U.K from banning VPN's for private use? Creating a carve out for workplace usage, or requiring a license and acceptable reason like firearms? I doubt there would be much public pushback. I mention this because people always mention these workarounds as being impregnable. If the U.K is okay with telling ISP's to block websites they certainly will have no problem banning VPN's

mysterium 2y ago

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age verification service (e.g. a government run service, or a bank), but crucially not the reason _why_ you're proving your age (i.e. the bank doesn't know if you're visiting a porn site or a casino). That service gives you a bunch of signed tokens proving you're over the age of 18/21/whatever, and you can redeem a token on the porn/gambling/alcohol-purchasing website for access. It uses various fun bits of cryptography (e.g. blind signatures) to ensure anonymity for the user. With such technologies, anonymous age verification becomes achievable. Now, whether age verification is inherently "bad" is up for debate, but that's a matter of opinion. Obviously this technology isn't infallible and it will be possible to work around, but we don't need a perfect solution here. Preventing 99% of children that would have viewed violent pornography from viewing it is a massive win, and the fact that we can do it in a provably-privacy-preserving manner using cryptography is very very cool.

awkward 2y ago
It's definitely possible to do it in a way that's less invasive but still effective. The question is whether that will actually happen.
saurik 2y ago
My concern is that the existence of such technology doesn't mean that it will be required -- and as more private technology often has a cost or a downside, it kind of has to be required for uptake -- and even further doesn't at all imply that it is even on the radar. If you want to be for this, you shouldn't be for this because it COULD be done well: you should insist that you will only be for this IF AND ONLY IF it WILL be done well, and if the draft laws don't say this then we should then not be for it.
- mysterium 2y ago
  Very reasonable, and indeed the July deadline will make it very likely that they _don't_ use a privacy-preserving method like Privacy Pass (and it's very reasonable for people to raise concerns). My main issue is whenever the topic of age verification is raised, the consensus from the tech community is "the only way to achieve age verification is mass surveillance and I won't stand for it!", and as someone who works in an adjacent field to this, I feel the need to dispel that notion. We should be directing our collective energy into ensuring age verification is secure and private, not fighting against the notion entirely.

Fischgericht 2y ago

Kids are shown weapons everywhere. They are afraid to watch news and therefore only consume "news" from socical media, which we made an AI shithole and threat to a civilized society. They see how we have in large parts poisoned or destroyed large parts of their planet. They have to get drilled to learn how to get not shot in school shootings or elsewhere. And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet? Wow. Humanity really needs to see a Psychiatrist.

Our_Benefactors 2y ago
> And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet? Most porn is a far cry from “making love”.
- Fischgericht 2y ago
  Matter of definition. Stuff on most porn sites is at least consensual. My point is: Seriously and honestly talk to a kid these days. Or read detailed reports on where the suicide rates in young peoples are sourced in. Even porn where whatever a granny dressed up as a horse is pissing into someone else's mouth. Might be very troubling to a teen trying to understand their sexuality. Surely not a good start as sex ed. But that's still a far cry from kids seeing people killing each other FOR REAL. Talk to the kids. Porn is nowhere near the Top 10 of what's causing their anxieties and depressions. This is grown-ups taking their standard route: Let's not change anything of relevance, but instead let's put a useless ban on something that won't go away by a ban, anyway.

John23832 2y ago

The GLARING hole in all of these age verification schemes is social media. That is the mechanism by which most people, particularly children get access to porn. If you don't treat twitter/reddit like porn vectors, you're doing nothing.

nojvek 2y ago

States where pornhub is banned due to age verification: Alabama Arkansas Florida Idaho Indiana Kansas Kentucky Mississippi Montana Nebraska North Carolina Oklahoma South Carolina Texas Utah Virginia Louisiana Essentially Republicans who advocate for small government went aggressive on ban and propped up the industry for VPNs. UK, Canada, Australia and NZ are likely to follow suit.

asadyare2023 2y ago

[dead]

asadyare2023 2y ago

[dead]