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> The Internet should be Unrated and thus Adults Only by default. As much as I kind of agree, I want to fight so much for open access to the internet because i

> The Internet should be Unrated and thus Adults Only by default. As much as I kind of agree, I want to fight so much for open access to the internet because it was so useful to me as a child, thirsty for information and starving for nourishment. I will say I think these laws are bonkers. Restrict what companies can do with child data, make it clear an account is a minors, that should be more than sufficient.

haswell 2y ago
> I want to fight so much for open access to the internet because it was so useful to me as a child As a child of the 80s who benefited greatly from the Internet as a kid (repressive religious parents, and the Internet was a lifeline), I feel extremely conflicted. On the one hand, I absolutely want to preserve the kind of benefit we received growing up. On the other, the Internet looks nothing like it did when I was a kid.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The dangers of the modern internet aren't boobs though. The 20th century internet had boobs. The modern dangers are state-funded and international they're not going to be thwarted by an age-verification law, are they?
  - haswell 2y ago
    > The 20th century internet had boobs Porn on the Internet today isn’t like it was either.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      There is more of it now, certainly. Is it worse than goatse?
      - eszed 2y ago
        Goatse was shock, not porn. Kid sees that, gets mildly traumatized and figures it out later and laughs about it when they're an adult. I'm far more worried about them internalizing mysogyny from mainstream porn; that shit sinks deep.
      - haswell 2y ago
        More of it yes, but the themes and extremes have been shifting over the years as well, with family fantasies and misogyny/sexual violence becoming increasingly prevalent. This was actually on the front page recently [0], and while I'm no prude, I do think it's worth taking the trends in porn seriously when comparing the old Internet to the current day. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196585
        dijit 2y ago
        Oh, I vehemently disagree. The platforms that are popular today (Pornhub, XHamster etc;) have restrictions on what they will publish, pornhub in particular has cracked down hard on pornography that does not have a chain of custody. Rape fantasy and domination kinks are more difficult to find than when I was a kid, you don't stumble upon it. If you are a kid looking for boobs the most likely place you wind up is Pornhub or xhamster too. The internet when I was a kid was more like efukt except even less moderated. As for misogyny, it's hard to discuss because everyone has a slightly different definition - even in extreme cases that some people think sex itself is misogyny: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5050613-to-think-sex-is-a-misogynistic-concept https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5050613...
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Then you have a different problem. Suppose you have some content that depicts healthy and loving relationships, but is also sexually explicit. The prudes are going to want that inside the porn filter along with the rest of it, even though it's something that does the opposite of what you're concerned about. Meanwhile, insert "watch it for the plot" joke, because we all know that kind of content gets produced when the goal is to appeal to the prurient interest without allocating a lot of budget to writers. But that's actually the problem. Age gates and things are friction. Suppose you want to create something good that appeals to a mass audience because it's thoughtful, but it's also sexually explicit. As soon as you put it behind the wall you lose the large majority of the audience, not because they're minors but because they're adults not willing to swipe their ID in order to watch "porn", whether out of the assumption that anything with that tag on the gate is inherently immoral or concern that someone else would assume that if anyone found out they were watching it. And then the wholesome and salutary stuff doesn't get produced. You'll notice that such content is uncommon, because it's effectively banned in most of the places with even moderate production values. You can't put it on broadcast TV, "porn" is banned wholesale on YouTube, corporations the likes of Disney would generally be skittish about producing it etc. You'll occasionally get something like that on HBO or Netflix but even then the incentive to produce it is lower because they wouldn't be able to license it to as many other places. Which means the main place it gets created is in places like the old Tumblr before the prudes killed it. But killing Tumblr doesn't get rid of porn, it just lowers the quality of it, where "lower quality" is more rather than less misogynistic and insalubrious.
  - verisimi 2y ago
    > The modern dangers are state-funded and international they're not going to be thwarted by an age-verification law, are they? As they write the laws, and mostly people follow them, no, they will not be thwarted.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  > On the one hand, I absolutely want to preserve the kind of benefit we received growing up. On the other, the Internet looks nothing like it did when I was a kid. This is how I feel, too. Nothing like TikTok or YouTube Shorts existed while I was growing up. I know how dangerous those are to me, I can't imagine how dangerous they could be to children. Mostly because anything I come up would probably be a wild overestimation, but I won't know by how much. Rather than rotting my brain away with shorts as a child I spent my time trying to find every possible way to game every possible system. That was my idea of fun. Still is, though it's gotten harder and harder for me to find systems that are easy to game, because the types of systems you encounter as an adult tend to have already been gamed to death by everyone else.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Uh in the early days porn was even less restricted online than it is now. You could grab it at many websites and on Usenet (which was still very common in those days). There wasn't even a "Yeah I'm 18+, stop bothering me" button. Only the quality was worse but that was purely due to technical constraints (no streaming video)
SamuelAdams 2y ago
I agree with your ethos, but you must admit that the internet of 2025 is very different from the internet of 1980.

haswell 2y ago

> I want to fight so much for open access to the internet because it was so useful to me as a child As a child of the 80s who benefited greatly from the Internet as a kid (repressive religious parents, and the Internet was a lifeline), I feel extremely conflicted. On the one hand, I absolutely want to preserve the kind of benefit we received growing up. On the other, the Internet looks nothing like it did when I was a kid.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The dangers of the modern internet aren't boobs though. The 20th century internet had boobs. The modern dangers are state-funded and international they're not going to be thwarted by an age-verification law, are they?
- haswell 2y ago
  > The 20th century internet had boobs Porn on the Internet today isn’t like it was either.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    There is more of it now, certainly. Is it worse than goatse?
    - eszed 2y ago
      Goatse was shock, not porn. Kid sees that, gets mildly traumatized and figures it out later and laughs about it when they're an adult. I'm far more worried about them internalizing mysogyny from mainstream porn; that shit sinks deep.
    - haswell 2y ago
      More of it yes, but the themes and extremes have been shifting over the years as well, with family fantasies and misogyny/sexual violence becoming increasingly prevalent. This was actually on the front page recently [0], and while I'm no prude, I do think it's worth taking the trends in porn seriously when comparing the old Internet to the current day. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196585
      - dijit 2y ago
        Oh, I vehemently disagree. The platforms that are popular today (Pornhub, XHamster etc;) have restrictions on what they will publish, pornhub in particular has cracked down hard on pornography that does not have a chain of custody. Rape fantasy and domination kinks are more difficult to find than when I was a kid, you don't stumble upon it. If you are a kid looking for boobs the most likely place you wind up is Pornhub or xhamster too. The internet when I was a kid was more like efukt except even less moderated. As for misogyny, it's hard to discuss because everyone has a slightly different definition - even in extreme cases that some people think sex itself is misogyny: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5050613-to-think-sex-is-a-misogynistic-concept https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5050613...
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Then you have a different problem. Suppose you have some content that depicts healthy and loving relationships, but is also sexually explicit. The prudes are going to want that inside the porn filter along with the rest of it, even though it's something that does the opposite of what you're concerned about. Meanwhile, insert "watch it for the plot" joke, because we all know that kind of content gets produced when the goal is to appeal to the prurient interest without allocating a lot of budget to writers. But that's actually the problem. Age gates and things are friction. Suppose you want to create something good that appeals to a mass audience because it's thoughtful, but it's also sexually explicit. As soon as you put it behind the wall you lose the large majority of the audience, not because they're minors but because they're adults not willing to swipe their ID in order to watch "porn", whether out of the assumption that anything with that tag on the gate is inherently immoral or concern that someone else would assume that if anyone found out they were watching it. And then the wholesome and salutary stuff doesn't get produced. You'll notice that such content is uncommon, because it's effectively banned in most of the places with even moderate production values. You can't put it on broadcast TV, "porn" is banned wholesale on YouTube, corporations the likes of Disney would generally be skittish about producing it etc. You'll occasionally get something like that on HBO or Netflix but even then the incentive to produce it is lower because they wouldn't be able to license it to as many other places. Which means the main place it gets created is in places like the old Tumblr before the prudes killed it. But killing Tumblr doesn't get rid of porn, it just lowers the quality of it, where "lower quality" is more rather than less misogynistic and insalubrious.
- verisimi 2y ago
  > The modern dangers are state-funded and international they're not going to be thwarted by an age-verification law, are they? As they write the laws, and mostly people follow them, no, they will not be thwarted.
LoganDark 2y ago
> On the one hand, I absolutely want to preserve the kind of benefit we received growing up. On the other, the Internet looks nothing like it did when I was a kid. This is how I feel, too. Nothing like TikTok or YouTube Shorts existed while I was growing up. I know how dangerous those are to me, I can't imagine how dangerous they could be to children. Mostly because anything I come up would probably be a wild overestimation, but I won't know by how much. Rather than rotting my brain away with shorts as a child I spent my time trying to find every possible way to game every possible system. That was my idea of fun. Still is, though it's gotten harder and harder for me to find systems that are easy to game, because the types of systems you encounter as an adult tend to have already been gamed to death by everyone else.
wkat4242 2y ago
Uh in the early days porn was even less restricted online than it is now. You could grab it at many websites and on Usenet (which was still very common in those days). There wasn't even a "Yeah I'm 18+, stop bothering me" button. Only the quality was worse but that was purely due to technical constraints (no streaming video)

SamuelAdams 2y ago

I agree with your ethos, but you must admit that the internet of 2025 is very different from the internet of 1980.