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Flip it on its head. An age verification requirement might stop your 12-year-old from accessing a porn site headquartered or hosted in the US, but it will do n

by kelnos 1y ago

Flip it on its head. An age verification requirement might stop your 12-year-old from accessing a porn site headquartered or hosted in the US, but it will do nothing to keep your kid from finding porn on any of the thousands (tens of thousands? more?) of websites hosted in various other countries who don't care about this sort of thing. These sites are (or will be, if US-based sites become inaccessible) just as easy to find, and just as hard to block with normal parental-controls style content blocking. Requiring age verification in the US doesn't solve the problem. It just stifles free speech and turns us even more into a Christian nanny-state. The people pushing these laws don't care about children, in reality. They care about banning pornography in the US, and this is one step on that road. > If you believe it's hard to do it without satisfying privacy concerns, totally true! That's not the issue. The issue is that it's impossible to achieve the stated goal (making it impossible or even hard for children to access adult content), period. Whether or not the age-verification is done in a privacy-preserving manner is irrelevant. There are two ways to "solve" this problem. One is better parental controls, but this will always be a cat-and-mouse game, and will never be perfect. The other is to accept that your kids will sometimes see things that you don't want them to see. That's how the world has always worked, and will continue to always work. Be there for them to provide context and support when they run across these things by accident and are confused or upset, and punish when they seek it out against the rules and boundaries you've set for them. You know... be a parent, and parent them.

ndriscoll 1y ago
Are they actually just as hard to block though? e.g. I don't see much reason to allow traffic to any Russian or Chinese IPs for any reason from my network. To be honest a default blacklist to any non-American IP seems like it'd not cause much trouble for my family, and then if there were some educational or FOSS or whatever sites in Europe, those could be whitelisted on a case by case basis. Similarly the only expected VPN traffic in my network would be inbound to my wire guard server/router. Everything else can be banned by default.
- Retric 1y ago
  Blocking every country outside the US is simply admitting failure here.
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    How so? Why would I not default filter e.g. Iran or Chad or El Salvador or most of the world on my home network? I can always unblock a specific IP if needed, but chances are that will never happen. My kids aren't old enough for computers yet, but I'm mostly of the mindset that a whitelist or curated offline cache (at least for anything on the web) is the sanest approach for younger kids. Outside of .gov, .edu, a handful of discussion forums, and stuff not relevant to them like shopping/banking, there's honestly not a lot of utility to the web. If they end up interested in programming, reference material can be kept offline, libraries downloaded through a proxy repository, etc.
    - Retric 1y ago
      You need to add Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, etc to that list to actually achieve what you set out to accomplish. Which then does more harm than what you’re trying to prevent. He’ll realistically the US doesn’t make the cut either.
      - ndriscoll 1y ago
        Why? Concretely, what would I be trying to allow in Japan? Don't they mostly communicate in Japanese anyway? The US has things like local government, schools, businesses, clubs, organizations, etc. Because the US is where we live. That makes it inconvenient to default block the US. Australia has what that is relevant to us? I don't see any .au in my browser history. Or .jp. Or .ca. There is some ac.uk, granted, but that could probably be kept to a small whitelist. I highly doubt anyone would notice for years if ever if I blocked Japan or Australia. It's a near certainty that no one would notice if I blocked all non-English parts of the web. Are US organizations hosting in Canada for some reason? They probably wouldn't go further than that for latency reasons. There's the separate problem of foreign companies having US points of presence, but assuming these laws expand, I'd imagine that would eventually lead to liability for services like cloudflare providing the endpoint/hosting on US soil.
hattmall 1y ago
It's not about blocking it all. It's about blocking some, removing the monetary incentives to entice children from major players. It's about stopping some of the addiction and damaging effects. Just like we limit alcohol but kids still drink, or vape etc. They still do it, but it requires more effort and that barrier can be a very real barrier to addiction formation.
- esperent 1y ago
  > It's about stopping some of the addiction and damaging effects I used to think this was a valid point, but I read something that changed my opinion completely. Pornhub, plus other large sites, have a lot of attention on them. They're a long way from perfect but they do self police, probably far more than anyone here knows, because they don't want to get banned. If you get rid of them, you're boosting smaller and far nastier sites that don't self regulate anywhere near the same amount. To state it simply, if you block Pornhub, curious children will still find porn, but it'll be far worse. It's not the same as banning sale of physical items like cigarettes. It's more like if you banned cigarettes but then all the children went and got black market cigarettes that are 50% asbestos.
  - hattmall 1y ago
    I don't really believe it. It's the big sites that have the monetary backing to employ the dark algorithmic patterns and monetization schemes. I don't really see much of an issue with the content of the porn if that's what you mean by nastier sites. To me it's more like if you ban cigarettes and now kids are all buying black market cigarettes without nicotine.
    - smorrebrod 1y ago
      Pornhub has banned many videos already. It forbids and deletes any amateur video not posted by the original author (to prevent revenge porn, non-consensual porn, repost of videos since deleted by the author, etc.) and also forbids certain keywords related to non-consensual porn like rape, sleep. Mindgeek (company owning Pornhub and many other porn websites) are by no mean a company respecting sex workers as good as they should but they are putting an effort to stop nasty shit from their websites if only not to be banned. So I would agree that Mindgeek websites are better than others. Not good enough but better.
xg15 1y ago
> The other is to accept that your kids will sometimes see things that you don't want them to see. That's how the world has always worked, and will continue to always work. Be there for them to provide context and support when they run across these things by accident and are confused or upset, and punish when they seek it out against the rules and boundaries you've set for them. You know... be a parent, and parent them. Would you say the same about drugs?
- techjamie 1y ago
  Well, yes. It's exactly like that for drugs too. You can take great time and care to vet every person your kid interacts with outside of school, or keep them monitored 24/7 all you want. But that doesn't stop someone from passing them a blunt in the restroom at school.

by kelnos 1y ago

ndriscoll 1y ago

Are they actually just as hard to block though? e.g. I don't see much reason to allow traffic to any Russian or Chinese IPs for any reason from my network. To be honest a default blacklist to any non-American IP seems like it'd not cause much trouble for my family, and then if there were some educational or FOSS or whatever sites in Europe, those could be whitelisted on a case by case basis. Similarly the only expected VPN traffic in my network would be inbound to my wire guard server/router. Everything else can be banned by default.

Retric 1y ago
Blocking every country outside the US is simply admitting failure here.
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  How so? Why would I not default filter e.g. Iran or Chad or El Salvador or most of the world on my home network? I can always unblock a specific IP if needed, but chances are that will never happen. My kids aren't old enough for computers yet, but I'm mostly of the mindset that a whitelist or curated offline cache (at least for anything on the web) is the sanest approach for younger kids. Outside of .gov, .edu, a handful of discussion forums, and stuff not relevant to them like shopping/banking, there's honestly not a lot of utility to the web. If they end up interested in programming, reference material can be kept offline, libraries downloaded through a proxy repository, etc.
  - Retric 1y ago
    You need to add Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, etc to that list to actually achieve what you set out to accomplish. Which then does more harm than what you’re trying to prevent. He’ll realistically the US doesn’t make the cut either.
    - ndriscoll 1y ago
      Why? Concretely, what would I be trying to allow in Japan? Don't they mostly communicate in Japanese anyway? The US has things like local government, schools, businesses, clubs, organizations, etc. Because the US is where we live. That makes it inconvenient to default block the US. Australia has what that is relevant to us? I don't see any .au in my browser history. Or .jp. Or .ca. There is some ac.uk, granted, but that could probably be kept to a small whitelist. I highly doubt anyone would notice for years if ever if I blocked Japan or Australia. It's a near certainty that no one would notice if I blocked all non-English parts of the web. Are US organizations hosting in Canada for some reason? They probably wouldn't go further than that for latency reasons. There's the separate problem of foreign companies having US points of presence, but assuming these laws expand, I'd imagine that would eventually lead to liability for services like cloudflare providing the endpoint/hosting on US soil.

hattmall 1y ago

It's not about blocking it all. It's about blocking some, removing the monetary incentives to entice children from major players. It's about stopping some of the addiction and damaging effects. Just like we limit alcohol but kids still drink, or vape etc. They still do it, but it requires more effort and that barrier can be a very real barrier to addiction formation.

esperent 1y ago
> It's about stopping some of the addiction and damaging effects I used to think this was a valid point, but I read something that changed my opinion completely. Pornhub, plus other large sites, have a lot of attention on them. They're a long way from perfect but they do self police, probably far more than anyone here knows, because they don't want to get banned. If you get rid of them, you're boosting smaller and far nastier sites that don't self regulate anywhere near the same amount. To state it simply, if you block Pornhub, curious children will still find porn, but it'll be far worse. It's not the same as banning sale of physical items like cigarettes. It's more like if you banned cigarettes but then all the children went and got black market cigarettes that are 50% asbestos.
- hattmall 1y ago
  I don't really believe it. It's the big sites that have the monetary backing to employ the dark algorithmic patterns and monetization schemes. I don't really see much of an issue with the content of the porn if that's what you mean by nastier sites. To me it's more like if you ban cigarettes and now kids are all buying black market cigarettes without nicotine.
  - smorrebrod 1y ago
    Pornhub has banned many videos already. It forbids and deletes any amateur video not posted by the original author (to prevent revenge porn, non-consensual porn, repost of videos since deleted by the author, etc.) and also forbids certain keywords related to non-consensual porn like rape, sleep. Mindgeek (company owning Pornhub and many other porn websites) are by no mean a company respecting sex workers as good as they should but they are putting an effort to stop nasty shit from their websites if only not to be banned. So I would agree that Mindgeek websites are better than others. Not good enough but better.

xg15 1y ago

> The other is to accept that your kids will sometimes see things that you don't want them to see. That's how the world has always worked, and will continue to always work. Be there for them to provide context and support when they run across these things by accident and are confused or upset, and punish when they seek it out against the rules and boundaries you've set for them. You know... be a parent, and parent them. Would you say the same about drugs?

techjamie 1y ago
Well, yes. It's exactly like that for drugs too. You can take great time and care to vet every person your kid interacts with outside of school, or keep them monitored 24/7 all you want. But that doesn't stop someone from passing them a blunt in the restroom at school.