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As already stated, fining a child or sending them to jail for viewing porn would be silly. The point was, lacking the willingness to do that, having commerciall

As already stated, fining a child or sending them to jail for viewing porn would be silly. The point was, lacking the willingness to do that, having commercially operated porn sites verify ages does not actually prevent or disincentivize children from accessing porn. A good intent does not itself make a law effective, it has to be something you're willing to incentivise compliance with from those who'd be breaking it and children are not going to stop viewing porn because pornhub.com (or any other website) won't let them without a verification check. The comparison to social media is a bit rough because the laws and focus there are around preventing children from creating accounts where their data is mined to be sold, the feeds are tailored to them, and their identities are publicly shared. The same laws do not actually attempt to prevent children without an account from viewing vacation photos. What applies in preventing account creation for social media does not necessarily apply to preventing content consumption itself in other cases.

palata 1y ago
I agree, but in your comment above it sounded to me that it was a general statement about "the kind of laws that want to check the age". I don't have a definitive opinion on Zero Knowledge Proof for social media access, but it seems like it may make it harder for children to access social media (the EFF is not really into those ZKPs, so apparently there are downsides too).
- deleted 1y ago
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- zamadatix 1y ago
  I'd say my comment could refer to any law attempting to curtail consumption of content itself by purely trying to limit distribution channels only. Social media laws aren't really about limiting consumption of the content, they are about limiting who can sign up to actively contribute and otherwise participate as an active member to the social media site. What checks are or aren't done by the laws is a bit besides that point as they aren't what make such laws ineffective (though they can be problematic for other reasons depending what and how). This includes ZKPs as they, similarly, only increases the burden on those actually attempting to consume the content legitimately. If you want to prevent most teens from consuming porn on the internet then they're the ones you have to somehow convince the risk isn't worth it. If you're not willing to do that in a meaningful way (which most, reasonably, aren't) then no amount of technobabble or pages of law are going to put a dent in their porn consumption.
  - palata 1y ago
    > Social media laws aren't really about limiting consumption of the content, they are about limiting who can sign up to actively contribute First, I can't really consume content on Facebook or TikTok because I don't have an account. So I believe that your statement is not entirely correct. Second, for social media there is the network effect. If suddenly most kids can't access them anymore, then they lose value for them. You'd need most of them to work around the check. Porn you can find in torrent, but a social media account you can't. Again, I totally understand the issue with the check: who will be left out? What if adults get disconnected because they don't have a way to verify their age? Not sure that it would be a big issue for TikTok, but it would be a problem for WhatsApp (assuming that one would want age verification for WhatsApp).

palata 1y ago

I agree, but in your comment above it sounded to me that it was a general statement about "the kind of laws that want to check the age". I don't have a definitive opinion on Zero Knowledge Proof for social media access, but it seems like it may make it harder for children to access social media (the EFF is not really into those ZKPs, so apparently there are downsides too).

deleted 1y ago
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zamadatix 1y ago
I'd say my comment could refer to any law attempting to curtail consumption of content itself by purely trying to limit distribution channels only. Social media laws aren't really about limiting consumption of the content, they are about limiting who can sign up to actively contribute and otherwise participate as an active member to the social media site. What checks are or aren't done by the laws is a bit besides that point as they aren't what make such laws ineffective (though they can be problematic for other reasons depending what and how). This includes ZKPs as they, similarly, only increases the burden on those actually attempting to consume the content legitimately. If you want to prevent most teens from consuming porn on the internet then they're the ones you have to somehow convince the risk isn't worth it. If you're not willing to do that in a meaningful way (which most, reasonably, aren't) then no amount of technobabble or pages of law are going to put a dent in their porn consumption.
- palata 1y ago
  > Social media laws aren't really about limiting consumption of the content, they are about limiting who can sign up to actively contribute First, I can't really consume content on Facebook or TikTok because I don't have an account. So I believe that your statement is not entirely correct. Second, for social media there is the network effect. If suddenly most kids can't access them anymore, then they lose value for them. You'd need most of them to work around the check. Porn you can find in torrent, but a social media account you can't. Again, I totally understand the issue with the check: who will be left out? What if adults get disconnected because they don't have a way to verify their age? Not sure that it would be a big issue for TikTok, but it would be a problem for WhatsApp (assuming that one would want age verification for WhatsApp).