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People constantly cite this poll as it is proof that British people want this. You cannot trust the YouGov polling. It is flawed. > Despite the sophisticated

People constantly cite this poll as it is proof that British people want this. You cannot trust the YouGov polling. It is flawed. > Despite the sophisticated methodology, the main drawback faced by YouGov, Ashcroft, and other UK pollsters is their recruitment strategy: pollsters generally recruit potential respondents via self-selected internet panels. The American Association of Public Opinion Research cautions that pollsters should avoid gathering panels like this because they can be unrepresentative of the electorate as a whole. The British Polling Council’s inquiry into the industry’s 2015 failings raised similar concerns. Trying to deal with these sample biases is one of the motivations behind YouGov and Ashcroft’s adoption of the modelling strategies discussed above. https://theconversation.com/its-sophisticated-but-can-you-believe-yougovs-startling-election-prediction-78701 https://theconversation.com/its-sophisticated-but-can-you-be... Even if the aforementioned problems didn't exist with the polling. It has been known for quite a while that how you ask a question changes the results. The question you linked was the following. > From everything you have seen and heard, do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring age verification to access websites that may contain pornographic material? Most people would think "age verification to view pornography". They won't think about all the other things that maybe caught in that net.

cm2012 1y ago
All polling has problems like this, but YouGov has the same methodology for everything and usually gets within a margin of error of +-8. Even if they have an especially bad sample, the UK probably really does support the law. Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40.
- extraisland 1y ago
  > All polling has problems like this, but YouGov has the same methodology for everything and usually gets within a margin of error of +-8. The way the very question was asked is a problem in itself. It is flawed and will lead to particular result. > if they have an especially bad sample, the UK probably really does support the law The issue is that the public often doesn't understand the scope of the law. Those that do are almost always opposed to it. > Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40. It isn't about the pornography. This is why conversations about this are frustrating. I am worried about the surveillance aspect of it. I go online because I am pseudo-anonymous and I can speak more frankly to people about things that I care about to people who share similar concerns. I don't like how the law came into place, the scope of the law, the privacy concerns and what the law does in practice. Even if you don't buy any of that. There is a whole slew of other issues with it. Especially identity theft.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Of course - control the question, and you guarantee the answers.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  >Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40 Are you suggesting that techies do not have any sexual appetite? That runs counter to many stereotypes I've encountered
  - cm2012 1y ago
    No i awkwardly phrased it. Im saying that demographic (also the majority here on HN) loves porn more than any other demographic.
    - abustamam 1y ago
      Out of curiosity, what makes you say that the majority of HN loves porn? I've seen a few random references to it but nothing that would indicate that HN loves porn any more than any other community loves porn.
      - cm2012 1y ago
        It's just a statistical correlation. Who loves porn demographically? 1) Men. 2) Men age 18-40 in particular. 3) No evidence for this but in my experience tech people tend to like porn more than others for whatever reason. So a survey of HN users would show more pro-porn respondents than a survey of the UK or the US or EU as a whole.
        msgodel 1y ago
        In a number of recent polls in English speaking countries young men have been one of the strongest anti-porn demographics actually. I think HN being tech adjacent with the history and practical reality of how the internet works along with being more libertarian (or at least liberal) is going to bias that more than the gender distribution.
        autoexec 1y ago
        I don't put much faith in polls generally, but I put even less faith in polls where people are asked how they feel about porn. I don't think you can come to any reasonable conclusion from data of such low quality as is typical of polling these days. Even in the absolute best circumstances where enough people are polled to be representative, and those people aren't asked any leading/misleading questions, and the identity of all those people are known, pre-selected without bias, and verified (preventing the same person/group of people voting 50 times or brigading some anonymous internet survey), and all of those people are 100% confident that their answers are private and won't be able to be used against them, you're still left with the fact that people lie. All the time. Especially about anything to do with sex. They also have terrible memories and their beliefs about themselves and their views often don't hold up when their actual behavior is observed. Self-reported data is pretty weak even when sex/shame/morality/fear of punishment don't come into play. Without really digging into the specifics to try to work out how seriously you can take a given survey's results at all, it's best to just not to treat them seriously.
- TylerE 1y ago
  Most questions you could guess a number somewhere vaguely near 50% and be right a substantial amount of the time given such massive error bars.
  - cm2012 1y ago
    Thats a common fallacy because we tend to care about issues that are 50/50 or divisive. Most opinions are not divisive but thus dont get attention.
    - TylerE 1y ago
      That seems like an implied constraint? You don't run polls asking if the sky is blue.
      - account42 1y ago
        Quite often the sky is in fact not blue.
Metricon 1y ago
It seems like some things always remain the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
- quotemstr 1y ago
  There is a Yes, {Prime Minister,Minister} for every occasion in tech.

cm2012 1y ago

All polling has problems like this, but YouGov has the same methodology for everything and usually gets within a margin of error of +-8. Even if they have an especially bad sample, the UK probably really does support the law. Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40.

extraisland 1y ago
> All polling has problems like this, but YouGov has the same methodology for everything and usually gets within a margin of error of +-8. The way the very question was asked is a problem in itself. It is flawed and will lead to particular result. > if they have an especially bad sample, the UK probably really does support the law The issue is that the public often doesn't understand the scope of the law. Those that do are almost always opposed to it. > Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40. It isn't about the pornography. This is why conversations about this are frustrating. I am worried about the surveillance aspect of it. I go online because I am pseudo-anonymous and I can speak more frankly to people about things that I care about to people who share similar concerns. I don't like how the law came into place, the scope of the law, the privacy concerns and what the law does in practice. Even if you don't buy any of that. There is a whole slew of other issues with it. Especially identity theft.
- lazide 1y ago
  Of course - control the question, and you guarantee the answers.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
>Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40 Are you suggesting that techies do not have any sexual appetite? That runs counter to many stereotypes I've encountered
- cm2012 1y ago
  No i awkwardly phrased it. Im saying that demographic (also the majority here on HN) loves porn more than any other demographic.
  - abustamam 1y ago
    Out of curiosity, what makes you say that the majority of HN loves porn? I've seen a few random references to it but nothing that would indicate that HN loves porn any more than any other community loves porn.
    - cm2012 1y ago
      It's just a statistical correlation. Who loves porn demographically? 1) Men. 2) Men age 18-40 in particular. 3) No evidence for this but in my experience tech people tend to like porn more than others for whatever reason. So a survey of HN users would show more pro-porn respondents than a survey of the UK or the US or EU as a whole.
      - msgodel 1y ago
        In a number of recent polls in English speaking countries young men have been one of the strongest anti-porn demographics actually. I think HN being tech adjacent with the history and practical reality of how the internet works along with being more libertarian (or at least liberal) is going to bias that more than the gender distribution.
        autoexec 1y ago
        I don't put much faith in polls generally, but I put even less faith in polls where people are asked how they feel about porn. I don't think you can come to any reasonable conclusion from data of such low quality as is typical of polling these days. Even in the absolute best circumstances where enough people are polled to be representative, and those people aren't asked any leading/misleading questions, and the identity of all those people are known, pre-selected without bias, and verified (preventing the same person/group of people voting 50 times or brigading some anonymous internet survey), and all of those people are 100% confident that their answers are private and won't be able to be used against them, you're still left with the fact that people lie. All the time. Especially about anything to do with sex. They also have terrible memories and their beliefs about themselves and their views often don't hold up when their actual behavior is observed. Self-reported data is pretty weak even when sex/shame/morality/fear of punishment don't come into play. Without really digging into the specifics to try to work out how seriously you can take a given survey's results at all, it's best to just not to treat them seriously.
TylerE 1y ago
Most questions you could guess a number somewhere vaguely near 50% and be right a substantial amount of the time given such massive error bars.
- cm2012 1y ago
  Thats a common fallacy because we tend to care about issues that are 50/50 or divisive. Most opinions are not divisive but thus dont get attention.
  - TylerE 1y ago
    That seems like an implied constraint? You don't run polls asking if the sky is blue.
    - account42 1y ago
      Quite often the sky is in fact not blue.

Metricon 1y ago

It seems like some things always remain the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

quotemstr 1y ago
There is a Yes, {Prime Minister,Minister} for every occasion in tech.