This is the only true solution. Parents need to take responsibility for what their kids are doing online, what they’re viewing and who they’re talking to. This generation of parents should be prepared for that but apparently not.
As a parent, I do agree with taking responsibility on it. My older children is 8, so not much computer for her now. Just a bit of dactylography before she can play Gcompris, mostly chess lately, nothing online so far. They did have some initiation at school (for context this is public school in France).
That said, I do expect I won't be able to prevent them to reach inappropriate resources once they meet the point where they can browse online without me being there to inspect, so I'll rather invest time to explain them that can happen, make sure they are confident they can tell me if they faced something odd. Forbidding would be the best way to encourage, and any automatic system alone will have too shallow circumvention paths or too much burden of admin to follow for relevancy as a Parenthood tool.
I think this approach made a lot of sense in the 2000s and 2010s, when consumer electronics with internet access were expensive things well out of reach of a child unless given to them by a parent.
But we're in an era now where cell phones and tablets — especially used + low-spec ones — are something that even a young child can acquire en masse: from their friends at school, or from any mall kiosk or convenience store with their allowance, etc.
You can put all the parental controls you like on the nice phone you buy your child — but how do you put parental controls on the four other phones you have no idea they own?
(Before you say "search their room" — they could leave them in their desk at school, charging them with a battery bank they charged at home or got a friend to charge for them; and then use them with free public wi-fi rather than locked-down school wi-fi. This doesn't require any particular cleverness; it's the path of least resistance!)
If you ask me "well, what do we do, then?"... I have no idea, honestly.
Like with anything, you need to do a proper job educating your kids before trusting safeguards to keep them safe. That would be my bet for a scalable solution.
Some kids will still drown, it’s unavoidable. But swimming lessons are much more effective at preventing drowning deaths than fences.
I somewhat agree with your point, but I'd quibble with the analogy, and its implication about the usefulness/importance of fences.
I'd argue that the Internet is less like water, and more like a freeway. (It is the "information super-highway", after all!)
We do put (quite tall) fences up between freeways and residential areas (or between freeways and areas with wildlife!), and for good reason: unlike deep water (that both humans and animals have a vague instinct is an "unknown quantity" best to be approached cautiously), a freeway can, at a non-rush-hour time, look like a perfectly safe and quiet and predictable place — a place just like the calm, safe meadow or bike path or residential lane beside it — until, midway through crossing one, a truck sudenly whizzes over the horizon going 120mph and smashes right into you before the driver has time to react.
And that's the Internet: a seemingly safe, predictable place — with unexpected trucks whizzing through it, ready to smack into you.
Freeway is a great example in more ways: large swaths of society were destroyed in the process of making them (less purposefully in the case of the Internet/social media I think) and paradoxically reduced social connections despite seemingly making it easier to travel/connect. Now everywhere is unsafe because of car dependence/social media everywhere (i.e. Pauly Likens meeting adults on grindr https://www.newsweek.com/missing-teen-dead-pauly-likens-dash...)
Fair and I'll run with it. Where I live (Lisbon) it's very very easy to get to unprotected highways with no fences. No trouble at all, maybe a 15-minute walk from my home. No epidemic of kids being run over. We still fence them, where we want to pretend highways don't exist. Also a good analogy.
I tried to block YouTube when my kids were remote learning during the pandemic, it took several attempts and they were in grade school. They even got around Apple's considerable content controls I had to set up a DNS proxy.
At my son's school they recently started blocking ChatGPT, not because kids were using it to cheat, but because kids kept asking ChatGPT how to get around the content controls, and it would constantly find new ways to proxy or evade.
This never happens tho - parents dont sometimes even know how to use the tech. Its like giving a gun to a child and telling them its ok, just remember when you open the packaging to take the safety off.
...and oh yeh the safety software changes every few months so you will have to review it
> Because if internet/tech is the gun then the clear solution is “not giving your children guns”.
Funnily enough, no. The clear solution is to ensure that you talk to your children about [gun|online] safety. Show them how to use the [gun|internet] safely. Make sure they know that they can ask to use your [gun|device] any time they'd like -- but only under your supervision.
Take the mystery away through education and experience, and like anything else [guns|the internet] becomes just another part of adult life. Just one more thing that can be dangerous if used incorrectly.
> Make sure they know that they can ask to use your [gun|device] any time they'd like -- but only under your supervision.
You could do that, but there's no particular need for it. "No guns until you're 16" works fine. You don't need to "take the mystery away".
You need to use the internet a lot before you become an adult, you need to use a gun never before you become an adult. You need a lot of practice to build up internet safety skills, you need barely any practice to build up gun safety skills.
Go ahead and have a basic gun safety talk, that's a good idea, but that's all you need.
Apparently the average age of mothers is 30 - these parents should understand the risks of technology having be exposed to it themselves but we don’t seem to be seeing improvement in this area like we might expect.
A lot of us experienced the opposite problem. I had parents that restricted large parts of the Internet that probably would have been fine to access. The Internet has changed a lot. It wasn't until I took in a zoomer who grew up with unrestricted Internet access that I realized how damaging it could be.
The problem is that they also understand the benefits of technology. It's easy to limit "screen time" in the abstract, and not too hard to keep it going through toddlerhood if you want. It's much harder to tell your 12 year old that they're not allowed to stay connected with their friends when your own friends just sent you a meme in the group chat 5 minutes ago.
Your analogy is faulty and doesn't hold up to the basic scrutiny.
Whoever is giving the child access is responsible, not the manufacturer. If a parent gives their child a device capable of accessing the internet with no restrictions, that's on the parent.
Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
In your analogy, the bar would be equivalent to a internet cafe or public library that has PCs available to patrons. Those types of businesses should definitely use physical IDs to verify patrons are of age.
To make your analogy work for Pornhub, you'd also have to argue "why shouldn't Jack Daniels have to put age-verifying instant blood tests on their bottles in case a parent puts one in their unlocked liquor cabinet?"
Because then the same concerns arise -- why should Jack Daniels be given access to my blood just to manufacture an age-restricted product? What will they do with it? Will they secure the data appropriately? How do I know it won't be used to negatively impact my future because my health insurance company doesn't like that I drank a bottle of JD?
> Whoever is giving the child access is responsible, not the manufacturer. If a parent gives their child a device capable of accessing the internet with no restrictions, that's on the parent.
Suppose a parent lets their 16 year old borrow the family car, the kid drives to a bar, and the bar serves the kid alcoholic drinks.
By your logic would that be considered the parents fault for providing the kid with a means of transport that doesn't restrict where the kid can go rather than the bar's fault for not checking that their customer could legally use their product?
> Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
> To make your analogy work for Pornhub, you'd also have to argue "why shouldn't Jack Daniels have to put age-verifying instant blood tests on their bottles in case a parent puts one in their unlocked liquor cabinet?"
That's a poor comparison, because with Pornhub the end user of their product gets it directly from Pornhub. With Jack Daniels most users get the product through resellers. It is the resellers that handle checking that the final sale to the end user is legal.
Users can buy directly from Jack Daniels (jackdaniels.com) and for those sales Jack Daniels does check the buyer's age.
> Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels.
Pornhub is obviously the retailer in this analogy. False equivalence fallacy.
> Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
In France and almost all Western countries, Brown Forman has exactly that responsibility when they are retailing to or serving the public, as the pornography vendors are now.
> Because then the same concerns arise -- why should Jack Daniels be given access to my blood just to manufacture an age-restricted product? What will they do with it? Will they secure the data appropriately? How do I know it won't be used to negatively impact my future because my health insurance company doesn't like that I drank a bottle of JD?
Ignoring your straw man, this is exactly how alcohol is treated. A third party - the state - verifies your age and issues a physical token that you must present to prove your age when purchasing alcohol. That is exactly how pornography will now will regulated in France.
I read it as the author being passive aggressive -- they're implying the problem is parents who, instead of learning how to manage what their children can do with electronic devices, just want the government to make bad things illegal.
But, you know, we've never been able to agree as a people on what "bad things" are. So it should be, as you said, for each parent to engage in setting boundaries and being responsible.
"Because I say so" is a weak ass argument, no argument at all.
"Because I bought it" is passive aggressive, because you do not intend to allow even if you did not buy it.
It’s not an argument it’s just a statement of fact. “You can’t do this because I bought it” explains what (you can’t do X without Y) and why (I own Y and can therefore control the use of Y).
Now, it doesn’t explain why the decision was made in the first place to enforce a porn filter as a requirement for using the device, but again - it’s not an argument.
I agree that it doesn’t provide a complete explanation because as you mention, if the child bought their own device there would still be restrictions, but that wasn’t the case being discussed.
I absolutely do this, but there are times when "because I said so" is the actual answer.
As an adult, there are plenty of situations where you are subject to the authority of others. Learning to deal with disagreement with that is also part of being an adult.
Its a Swiss one, so compared to some sites its probably in French out of box. Has a good reputation, located in country that doesn't take much bullshit from EU or given government (Albeit some of it is good, this is not).
Also cares more about privacy than most other countries globally (if folks grokked what "numbered account" meant then there wouldn't be so much baseless hate about how "Swiss took all jewish and nazi money and profit from it till today and that's core of their prosperity".
Couldn't be further from truth, I live here and watch these matters closely from both inside and outside perspectives.
> "and having offshore porn sites or any other third parties collect IDs from adults and becoming a repository of potential blackmail material comes with its own risks [...] A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children" said the company's (Proton's) spokesperson
While I agree with their second point, the first argument sounds a bit overly dramatic, considering how the implementation seems to work. They couldn't blackmail, as the information they receive is limited.
As far as I understand how at least one of the methods for verification must be, is “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged. Then other methods could be offered too.
Although if we assume the average security competence with these types of companies, handling ID documents and stuff, they'll surely get hacked sooner or later. So maybe the link between porn site and identity isn't there, but your personal data that been submitted to them will yet again float out there.
Their proposed alternative is even worse IMO. Even if you can figure out some privacy-safe way of doing on-device age verification, the end result will be a web that only works if you are browsing from an "approved" client - i.e. a platform controlled by Apple, Google or Microsoft.
Not necessarily. You need some source of truth (i.e. government ID) to sign digital tokens representing attributes like "18+". Those tokens are uploaded to those websites.
The risk becomes "kids loading their parents' ID into their phones" but with decent digital ID that shouldn't be a problem.
Yivi already solves this problem. It's being used as a basis for an implementation of a European digital ID of sorts, though I'm still sceptical of the European side of things.
The app works on any device because the device doesn't do anything special. All it does is POST some signed token if the user clicks "approve".
I suppose this can be a problem in the US where people hate the idea of digital government ID for some reason, but that's a political problem, not a technical one. France already has a digital ID equivalent for use with government services, as do all other EU member states in their own way, so the source of these tokens is practically ready to go.
There could easily be a web standard to allow/disallow NSFW content and the web browsers could broadcast this flag based on settings at OS level similarly to the light/dark theme setting at OS level that can be used by websites and it works on all OS/web browsers implementing this trivial feature.
> “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged.
Isn't this an actually reasonable solution? I assumed age verification was supposed to be done by the site itself, and therefore it was considered a very bad idea. But this... what's the problem with this method?
> But this... what's the problem with this method?
You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things. The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Tangential question: if the principal is divorced from the "is not a minor" signal, what prevents a thrifty youth from just buying/stealing somebody's token?
First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws. So we are limited to unintentional breaches of privacy which can be guarded against with auditing requirements.
Second, you have to look at the potential damage such a leak would have on the affected porn watchers. Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year? Isn't it a common view that all men and most women watch porn at least occasionally anyway?
And I get the risk if you live in a country that criminalizes pornography. But are were sure there is an extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
Third, it's important to consider the baseline. If you are a citizen of France and you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub. This isn't concerning to anyone but the thickest thin-foil-hat wearing paranoid schizophrenics, and I've never heard of this leading to massive data breaches or blackmail situations either.
Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy, they might as well do the age verification thing, too. They probably already have your personal info due to KYC-legislation.
Of course there are small differences: with age verification your ISP can distinguish between you and other people in your household, which removes a bit of plausible deniability. If you don't trust your ISP you can use alternate DNS-over-HTTPS, VPNs, proxys like Tor, etc. to cover your tracks, which you wouldn't be able to do anymore. But I bet 99,99% of Pornhub visitors in France don't bother with any of that, proving that they aren't actually concerned about being blackmailed or outed as porn consumers by their ISP.
> visitors in France don't bother with any of that, proving that they aren't actually concerned about being blackmailed or outed as porn consumers by their ISP.
I don’t think that follows. Tons of people don’t have the technical means or ability to use those countermeasures. Some don’t even know they are being tracked.
I don’t think that implies they’re fine with being blackmailed.
The short version is that I think people who don't realize their ISP can see which sites they visit aren't any worse off by their ISP signing age-verification tokens. Those tokens give much less information about the content they consume than the metadata the ISP already has access too.
I would guess at least a double-digit percentage of internet users are in the clueless category that you describe, and in practice there isn't a huge problem of these dummies being outed/blackmailed by their ISPs. So I don't think it's realistic to expect that if ISPs were in the business of providing age guarantees they would be outing/blackmailing their customers, especially since their behavior of those ISPs would be scrutinized by more knowledgeable people, and any ISP not taking customer privacy seriously would be subject to both public criticism and legal action.
> First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws.
Good thing we only ever have intentional leaks, then.
> Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year?
LGBT individuals have killed themselves over being outed before they were ready to. I'd wager that any leak that could positively link a person to a site will also include at least some activity on that site. But even if not, there are other people that do have things to loose from being connected to pornhub in any capacity. The simplest example would be anybody seeking sexual health/wellness information; it isn't the core purpose of pornhub, but they are a source that somebody in a sexually repressive environment may seek info from.
> ... extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
I think we're on different pages here. Your argument seems to be "we should let the good countries have nukes" and my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period". France shows the world that it's possible and less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse.
The only winning move is to not play.
> ...you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub.
Assuming use of ISP controlled DNS servers, the ISP only knows the account holder's name. They don't know if it's a neighbor/guest that's cracked/borrowed the WiFi ... etc. VPN or even just not using ISP managed DNS circumvents this collection.
> Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy
The word "basically" is doing a lot of work there. If you could have said "ISPs are paragons of virtue that are always guaranteed trustworthy" I'm sure you would have. But you didn't so we both agree that anything that follows is predicated on a bad-faith premise.
I still have yet to see a good answer to "how do you prevent borrow/theft/buying/renting/selling of ID vouchers?"
Your willingness to wager on something proves absolutely nothing. I'd wager you woulnd't really wager anything anyway.
> my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period"
Your 100% risk-free society does not exist. You risk things every time you leave the house. Nukes already exist, and one country that gave them up saw that to be a huge mistake.
> less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse
So France should not do something because other countries might do something different that would be bad? This is not a rational discussion. This argument makes zero sense.
You should not be commenting on HN because you are encouraging people to comment on forums where bullying happens and that kills.
> Nukes already exist, and one country that gave them up saw that to be a huge mistake.
"nukes" here meaning "de-anonymizing" the internet. I don't think "but at least one country already has them so of course the DPRK should be allowed to have them!" is a good attitude to have towards nuclear proliferation.
I have no problem with a site/platform having a "you need to prove to us that you're an adult" policy. I am terrified that other government(s) will use "because of the children" to force these policies onto the internet at large.
> Good thing we only ever have intentional leaks, then.
I already addressed this: unintentional leaks from regulated companies are very rare. It's not a perfect system, but it works to some extent.
> LGBT individuals have killed themselves over being outed before they were ready to.
OK, but visiting Pornhub doesn't prove you're gay, it only proves you watch porn, which lots of people do. If someone calls you out on it, you just say you were watching some dumb big-titted bimbo slut get pounded hard in the pussy. Crisis averted.
The age verifier wouldn't know which adult-only site you are trying to access, so when they sign your over-18 token, they don't know if you're going to redeem it on hairybears.com or bigtittedsluts.com.
Again, this is different from your ISP who already knows which sites you visit today and everyone is totally fine with this! ~nobody in France is committing suicide over their ISPs outing them as gay! It's literally a nonexistent problem.
Finally, I don't want to keep doing the checks notes bit, but do you really think there is that much of a taboo on being gay in France of all countries?
> I'd wager that any leak that could positively link a person to a site will also include at least some activity on that site.
But that's not true, as I already explained. The age verifier doesn't know what you are going to use the age-token for. They know strictly less than your ISP, by a huge margin. Note that the ISP doesn't even see the age-token. That's between the site you visit and the age verifier.
> Assuming use of ISP controlled DNS servers, the ISP only knows the account holder's name. They don't know if it's a neighbor/guest that's cracked/borrowed the WiFi ... etc. VPN or even just not using ISP managed DNS circumvents this collection.
For the purpose of blackmail this doesn't really matter... where there is smoke there is fire.
If you heard <politician you don't like> was found to have child porn on his phone, and his excuse was that his nephew who borrowed his phone on the weekend must have put it there, would you think that exonerates him? Or would you assume he's lying to cover his ass?
> If you could have said "ISPs are paragons of virtue that are always guaranteed trustworthy" I'm sure you would have. But you didn't so we both agree that anything that follows is predicated on a bad-faith premise.
I don't follow your point here. I'm not saying ISPs are paragons of virtue, I'm simply saying: 99% of people who visit Pornhub don't even try to hide this fact from their ISP (note that the people this post is about were only signing up to a VPN after France blocked their access; they didn't give a fuck about their ISP knowing they watched porn before). That means some of these are true:
1. They trust their ISP not to tell anyone they visit pornhub.
2. They don't care if anyone knows they visit pornhub.
3. They don't realize their ISP can see they visit pornhub.
In which of these scenarios does having the ISP issue an age-token make things worse for the customer? I really cannot think of one, but I'm open to changing my mind.
> I already addressed this: unintentional leaks from regulated companies are very rare. It's not a perfect system, but it works to some extent.
The corpus of HIBP would indicate that leaks are not rare. Your definition of "some" may need re-calibration.
I would prefer that this data not exist to begin with; can't leak and de-anon data that was never captured.
> In which of these scenarios does having the ISP issue an age-token make things worse for the customer? I really cannot think of one, but I'm open to changing my mind.
Having to bother with any "confirm you are an adult human" _at all_ is a hassle. Any and all circumstances that require this makes things worse for the customer and generates data that may risk de-anonymizing the customer.
And why bother when I still can't figure out what stops under-age me from buying/borrowing/stealing somebody else's token?
> First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws. So we are limited to unintentional breaches of privacy which can be guarded against with auditing requirements
You already know this, I’m certain, but laws and “audits” do little more than nothing to meaningfully protect data.
Personally I worked for a FAANG company that took data protection quite seriously. I would love to say that it was because they cared so much about their customer's privacy (which was of course the official position) but I think the reality was at least partially that the people in charge knew that if data was leaked and it could be pinned on lax internal policies, the company would be liable for millions if not billions in damages.
From that I conclude that the legal framework does provide a certain degree of protection to customer data. Nothing is perfect, of course, but that's true for every law: a red traffic light doesn't force drivers to stop, and in fact people run red lights every day. But the threat of getting fined for running a red light is pretty effective at forcing most people to stop for a red light most of the time, which is not nothing.
Also consider the logical conclusion of your cynical argument. If the laws and regulations that require companies to guard their customers privacy are almost entirely ineffective, as you claim, then shouldn't we abolish them? After all, they impose a burden on companies, which makes goods and services more expensive for consumers, without providing any non-material benefits in return.
> Personally I worked for a FAANG company that took data protection quite seriously
Me too, and it’s still funny how often user data gets leaked even with world class engineers and incentives. Moving beyond FANG, look at how absurdly common it is for user data to get leaked - financial institutions, romance services, transportation services, everyone.
> laws and “audits” do little more than nothing to meaningfully protect data
I asked you for evidence for this claim and you provided none.
Please either put up or shut up. I'm not going to keep engaging with you while you spout incendiary catch phrases while doing absolutely nothing to support your claims with evidence.
Case in point:
> look at how absurdly common it is for user data to get leaked - financial institutions, romance services, transportation services, everyone.
I disagree that this is common. Personally I haven't had any of my personal data leaked by any of these types of institutions. If you want to claim it's common that banks leak their customer's data, then you need to provide the evidence that supports that claim. It's how the burden of proof works.
> I asked you for evidence for this claim and you provided none.
My evidence is experience in the field and a knowledge of the many many publicly acknowledged data leaks that have happened in recent years. I’m not sure why you’re taking such a hostile tone; these things are well established.
I’m not particularly looking to have a formal debate where I dig up sources and you refute them; I’m only saying what is quite clearly true.
> You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things.
No. For any technology you could argue I'm just hoping it won't fail. If I fly with a plane, I'm just hoping it won't crash, right?
In fact, there would be security measures making it less likey that there is a leak. I am literally not "just hoping".
Now those security measures might fail of course. But what are the probabilities? That matters.
> The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Please explain how this does not apply to opening pornhub on my computer right now, with zero age verification systems. I think it applies perfectly, and so it is not an actual argument in this discussion.
Well, we can't refuse a system or a technology on the basis of "depends". Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you? Even if you don't, most rational people do, daily.
> Well, we can't refuse a system or a technology on the basis of "depends".
Of course we can, based exactly on the dependencies. If someone has an atrocious representation, we don't need to trust the system, if they don't then it becomes more reasonable to do so.
> Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you?
> Of course we can, based exactly on the dependencies.
But you have provided zero exact dependencies or details. All you said was "depends".
> Not all risks are equal.
But you have claimed nothing about this particular risk. Is it big? Is it small? We have no idea.
This is sophistry. Fancy words attempting to sound smart with zero content.
You are not arguing either for this tech, or against it, or providing any insight into how one might decide. Of course it depends on some things. Gee, how did we not think of that before you told us.
If the only thing that verifier does is verification for accessing digital pornography, it remains blackmail-able. Not in the sense of identifying the specific content accessed but in the sense of "this user has gone through the steps to gain access" which is, frankly, good enough.
After verifying the ID, there is no reason the verifier needs to know to whom a token belongs, which would help this. It doesn't need to be repudiatable in practice because the security risk of a leak is near 0 and nobody ages backwards.
The solution to that is to make sure the age verification is used for a variety of different purposes.
For example, why not use the same age verification system to block access to sites that advertise or sell alcohol or tobacco products? Or sex toys. Or dating apps. Or loans applications. Or for any number of adult-only apps that aren't necessarily blackmailable? Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
That provides people with plausible deniability. “Oh, I wasn't looking at porn! I was just trying to find the perfect brandy to buy as a business gift.” or “Oh, I was just trying to get a quote to refurnish my apartment on credit.”
> Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
Lets not, please.
Normalization like this could absolutely invite overreach / abuse. The immediately/obvious one is now sites have a "this is/is-not a minor" data point to correlate with the user activity that they'll sell off to some advertiser/broker.
I don't recall where I heard it, but the quote was essentially "the perception of surveillance is itself restrictive."
Threatening someone to tell people “There's a high likelyhood that X watches porn” is a blackmail-worthy threat IMHO.
Unless you have access to someone's specific kinks or routine (how often does he/she watches porn, for how long), you're no going to scare many people.
Facebook has these information by the way, thanks to the “like buttton” scattered everywhere (at least for people who don't browse porn in private mode, but having done IT support in college, I can tell you there are many people who don't).
Is it though? In this day and age I would think that someone who doesn’t watch porn is in the minority, it is like saying this person has sex.
On the other hand what kind of pornography, or how frequently and so on could be social pressure , same as what kind of fetishes or kind of sex or with type of person/gender, most people aren’t that sex positive to talk openly about.
After the US, the three largest Western countries are Germany (which already banned Pornhub), the UK and France, but the UK and France are virtually tied in terms of population, so it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
Always wondered why latin america is not considered the "western" world (it surely is not on the east side of... whatever mark you put in the world. Actually if one uses the greenwich meridian, that would leave countries like Germany on the "east" side of the world).
Skimming this it sounds like pornhub is/was at least partially blocked on the ISP level. Not sure about the extent of the blockage today but I could imagine that these blocks put a dent in their user numbers.
ah they just changed their domain to dot org to get around the block, most users visit sites through their search engine so I doubt many noticed. as of now in germany the org is the first result on google
France usually has its own domestic alternatives for a lot of stuff. Even online. It's becoming less and less true (for example, instagram or tiktok are just as common there than anywhere else) though. So it could make sense to think that France would be a smaller market for PH than Germany or the UK.
I know Germany is similar to France in that regard, but I'm more familiar with France. And it also has a bigger population!
I wouldn't worry about the VPN's, the 8 year olds aren't going to get one.
On mass, it'll be successful, but I'd be more worried about social media than the usual porn sites for early exposure.
It does stop kids from being openly advertised drugs and makes it difficult for kids to get drugs. That is the whole point of legislation, not to eliminate but mitigate.
In theory yes, in practice no. It's smarter to legalise it, it cuts off income source for criminals, creates taxable income that can be actually used to fund help centers etc.
I can assure you the average teenager in a western country has absolutely zero issues getting their weed. In fact, the older you get, the harder it becomes (as your social circle tends to shrink once you have a job).
That's very easy - go to area of train station, or some nearby park, and look for immigrant-looking people just standing around, trying to keep eye contact with passers or saying quietly "bonjour".
95% of the time you will get exactly what you want, otherwise it would be some form of "desolee". This is obvious, everybody knows and sees it, en masse (as in you are choosing from tens of such people in given area).
> Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet
This is not only untrue, it's actually the only worthwhile course.
I know that bans, rules, and technical solutions are not substitutes for parenting. This is why all the kids of the parents I know who have tried that are doing all the supposedly disallowed things secretly (and circumventing the technical restrictions with ease).
It's shocking to read opinions that kids would not «have that level of self-control». Children can display self-control... And of course they can.
(Just a tiny example: in many countries, we have them study since the age of five, sometimes earlier. They already have a sufficiently working anterior cingulate gyrus at and before that age; they have understanding of tradeoffs at and before that age.)
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Ooooh, hitters that will probably reveal to be snipers. That just confirms the point: if some people think it normal to gesticulate and not formulate - well, that's them, not all... Some children will have a weaker will. Some will have a stronger one! And surely it can be educated.
Does that explain why most societies don't permit children to drive cars? Perhaps that's not based on development, but just being too short? I kid, but clearly we don't let children drive, vote, drink alcohol, have sex etc. because of general observations about their limits, including self-control.
We don't let children vote because they are not wise enough: we demand a threshold for accrued mental competence is gained. Similarly, cars give them a power similar to that of guns: hence the restriction past the threshold.
We don't let children damage themselves because it is plain indefensible. If they want to, they must have passed said formal threshold.
Technically in the US farmer's kids can drive at 12 without a license if they are on "farm business" including hauling massive loads, both with tractors and regular cars and trucks. If they wanted they could put an unsecured goat in the back seat of an unlicensed car and drive to town with it.
Somewhat relatedly, there are US states where the age of consent (for sex with an older partner) is 13 years old, and the age of consent for marriage is 16.
Define "sex with an older partner". I'm pretty sure that for sex with someone of arbitrary older age, the age of consent is 16-18 in every state. If you're counting limited age difference then you might be right but that phrasing is misleading
Right. The question is whether porn is poisonous, and many people (myself included) genuinely feel the answer is yes. Mature, responsible adults can often ration their consumption enough to avoid too many negative effects - as they do with alcohol - but even adults sometimes fail and for children it's much harder.
Well, social networks and *-toks are also poisonous for your dopaminergic system. As well as certain classes of games, I guess here's a spectrum.
But the best option I see is to educate _everyone_ including kids about mental hygiene. Rather than enforcing unenforceable restrictions.
With all due, some may want to advise you to check into that. It could be that it does strange things because of the way you are wired.
Please note (about similar corners) what I have already written in the page, "for some it brings a satisfaction and this is an outlet valve that reduces adverse social effects; for some it is a kindler and it will increase adverse social effects".
To some it will be the opposite of a poison - it will be constructive. It will depend.
Well, doesn't porn-ish entertaiment fuck up ones reward system? I'm not talking of porn specificly, but about a range of products that turn people into "dopamine rats", constantly pressing a button for more bursts of novelty?
besides porn, things like facebook, tiktok, instagram, reddit... generalising, it's everything that acts as a button "gib me more novelty" that one can press as much and as frequently as they want.
surely, not everybody is hooked by these things, and it's definitely possible to use them without harm, but sometimes it requires training and (self-)awareness.
But every source of pleasure could create addiction, so it is not valid to point to a specific one, and the requirement of self control and gratification delay remains generally fundamental.
Not every source of pleasure is equally addictive by its nature.
However, I'm not talking about _addiction_, but messing with the dopaminergic system. It's, I'd say a specific kind of "pleasure" with particular mechanisms to trigger.
The problem here is not that a person "is not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to them" (https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-wha...). The problem is that the reward system gets broken. If a person is actually addicted to instagram scrolling, like people are addicted to smoking, it just adds another layer of complexity. As I observing from myself, "checking stuff on my phone" looks like a bad habit rather than an addiction.
So, it seems you are saying that there exist products that, giving "pleasure upon command", make people akin to Damasio's rats - they would constantly go to the pleasure trigger.
But people are not rats: they are or can be made aware that crude pleasure is a negligible factor. Duties and other values count much more.
The dopaminergic system is inferior to judgement.
If there are issue in managing the dopaminergic system, the issue is cultural - and has to be treated in that framework.
It's like with the cognitive disaster in many medical doctors, that seem to equate "quality of life" with "pleasure" (in their own twisted ignorant subdevelopment): health itself has an extremely high value, crude veneers like said pleasure have not or can be plain countervalues.
Following what you are writing, you misunderstood my post, Sitzkrieg.
I was not writing about alchool... I said that some controversial imagery may be neutral or even enriching to some - while alchool remains a poison (it physically is).
The idea of porn as an outlet valve just sounds to me like the self-medication hypothesis for alcoholism. I have no doubt there's people who watch lots of porn and believe that it's helping them with some problem or another, but I'm more skeptical that it actually is helping and a lot more skeptical that it's so helpful as to make up for the negative consequences.
Which is relevant, because other resources (e.g. those relevant here) can reduce or abate sexual misconduct, for many, or maybe boost it for some - depending on the profile. Some will be satisfied (and stay at that), some other will be kindled.
>Yes, they will, but it matters that they get it less often and less frequently.
but they won't. Alcohol restrictions are at least somewhat enforceable (although as a sidenote I also find them silly) but you can open a new tab, literally type "porn" into any search engine, and you'll get fifty thousand results.
And all of those sites are hosted in the middle of nowhere and do zero content moderation compared to Pornhub, so chances are on those sites adolescents will run into some genuinely abhorrent content. You've made it no less difficult, but much less safe.
It's so utterly meaningless even compared to other internet bans, it makes more sense to assume they just banned something so that people would stop talking about it. It's as if someone was on a crusade against video games, banned literally one video game
They basically add 'verification headers' to the original website through a proxy solution, allowing visitors to browse sites with some level of age verification regardless of their location. They are more focused on the 'privacy aspect'.
It’s smart to be using a VPN for any sort of adult internet use these days anyway. Vixen Media Group is extorting people by threatening to leak their identity if they don’t pay up[0]. And not by a 3rd-party collections company either - it’s their own parent company making the demands.
Why does anybody care that their porn viewing habits become public? To me it sounds as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log of the food we eat or the music we listen to.
Empirically, there's a sizeable market of people willing to pay thousands to keep their porn viewing from becoming public. Prenda Law[0,1] was an extortion racket that blackmailed people with their porn history, and demanded in the region of $4,000 per victim. Their total revenue was at least $15 million, that the courts could find.
Perhaps it is less about what whether they watch , but what kind of pornography it is .
Most people aren’t not comfortable to be open about those topics. Many of the reasons would be worthy of months or years of therapy for even themselves to understand.
LBGTQ+ in highly oppressed environment (ie in some countries they execute gays in 2025). Even if not, some folks have quirks they would be ashamed of if it went public, ostracized, lose jobs, in some cases divorces etc.
Is it really that hard to imagine? US alone made (for us Europeans a bit weird but we don't mind at the end) very popular categories of porn like "banging stepsister/brother/mother/father", I am pretty sure those folks wouldn't like that history revealed to their close ones.
And TBH, I simply don't want to know other folk's preference even if its a very mundane one. Don't need to add that 'feature' to the mental model of them I have in my mind, what I have is already too much sometimes.
Porn is considered a highly private activity for many reasons: societal disapproval, religious prohibitions...heck in some countries, watching gay porn is potentially a death sentence.
I get wanting to keep illegal activities unknown to the authorities, so I'll concede that.
But in the context of this thread, where a company was threatening to do this in a developed democratic country, that is not an issue, is it?
Societal disapproval can be divided between people you interact with and strangers. Why would anybody what strangers think of them, particularly when those strangers would have to been rummaging into porn watching databases to begin with?
As for coworkers, friends or family, why would they be interested in learning about your porn habits again? And if they bother you about it, wouldn't you want to rethink whether you want to keep them around? Personally, I don't keep in touch with people who seriously judge my life choices -- and that has only happened once, so it's not such a big deal either.
You are making the same argument as somebody else on this thread, as if this was some sort of a gotcha.
I don't go around talking about my porn watching habits for the simple reason that I am sufficiently attuned to social customs to understand that nobody has any interest in them.
You can't be shamed for something you are not ashamed of. If a porn provider made them public for whatever reason, it would not bother me one iota. So, I am asking, genuinely, why would anybody care.
So far the replies are things like "do eet!! lOLLOL" or "it can get you killed", so I have lost interest at this point. After some thought, I guess that some people are unquestioningly ashamed of their sexual preferences, which is sad. Living your life without the burden of shame is much better, as any queer person can tell you. There's nothing wrong with what you like.
Ah, the myth of the 'developed democratic country', as if our societies are somehow enlightened enough as to not collect material to hang us with should the need arise to silence us.
As recent events have proven we cannot be sure that a bunch of religious conservatives won't come into power.
I am a member of a leftist political party in my country and I have no doubt that if the fascists get their hands on the membership database I'm shipped off to a prison camp.
> On another note, a lot of places, including those in the west will ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong foods.
Some groups will, yes. In a lot of cases it's just simple hypocrisy; lots of "anti-gay" congressmen somehow keep getting caught soliciting sex in airport bathrooms or on grinder.
I find it quaint and amusing people expect politicians to live privately same as their public personas.
As long as they votes consistently with their stated public beliefs (icky or flawed as they are ) on which they got elected does it matter they are very different private person ?
I would go so far as to say, them being different publicly than in private is a qualification for the job, if they cannot dissociate their personal beliefs from the will of their electorate then they shouldn’t do the job .
Don’t we all have one work persona and another home one ? Being a congressman should be no different.
On the other hand, the ones who sell on a public persona to get votes and switch their voting pattern after election to a different belief system is far more of hypocrite (Sinema or fetterman?)
Why would you care about remaining in good terms with somebody who would ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong food? Is that a person that deserves your friendship?
Why would anybody even want to know the porn you watch? And what would they do about it, or how would that affect you?
"Hey, Jimmy, I went searching for your porn habits and found that you are into fat redheads. Shame on you, shame on you. You are now excommunicated from... Somewhere". How is this not a much bigger social faux pas for the accuser rather than the accused?
Do you expect people to hold up the so-called faux pas or Jimmy's absolutely hilarious fat redhead fetish that his coworkers will be giving him the stink-eye for a few months before everyone forgets about it?
I can't imagine judging a coworker for liking fat redheads, or any other sexual preference. None of my business, and none of my interest. Just as if they like sports cars, or any other preference, really.
And why would want to keep in touch with a coworker that gives a damn about what other people want to fuck? I would go straight to HR for harassment, first of all.
Didn’t Armie Hammer get fired from everything for being into (but not in any way practicing or even hinting at wanting to practice) erotic cannibalism?
Post your browsing history and a list of your co-worker's and family's emails then, let's put your theory to the test. Bonus points if you post it to kiwifarms too.
If a coworker or family member sent me a log of their porn habits I would wonder what made them think I am interested in them. It is not something that people typically disclose.
That is not the same as understanding why would anybody care if their porn provider made their porn watching habits public, which is the subject of this thread.
Can you please clarify your reasoning? I fail to see the supposed "gotcha". We are not asking why doesn't everybody make their porn profile public, that's something you came up with.
Sounds like the actual dumb move is torrenting without a VPN. Even if you're torrenting to watch prestige television, you'd still want to have a VPN to avoid getting sued. On the flip side, I don't think anyone got sued from watching pirated porn from a streaming site.
I always wonder what it takes to start a VPN? It's super saturated yet there's clear winners. Also I wonder how the operator is able to side step liability for obvious illegal use cases.
The internet has become a very hostile place and its not just surveillance but peer to peer political persecution where someone doesn't follow the script or believe the same thing they do and they lash out and try to censor them by mass reporting or DDOS
I miss the old internet where we used to escape to avoid reality, now we go offline to avoid the internet.
Seems to be one of those commodities where some winners are only by virtue of advertising, if all the NordVPN sponsorship jokes are true. There's also sketchy providers that double-dip aren't there? Residential customers pay once for a VPN and commercial customers pay again for residential IPs used for scraping and proxying.
I support banning porn. You've got coordinated "teams" of men, most of them diagnosable sociopaths, who work as a group to manipulate and destroy teenagers. For every one woman you see on a porn website, there's a network of 10 men who are working as a coordinated team to manipulate her. Most of the young women are from broken homes, many of them are low IQ, and many of them were sexually abused as children by male authority figures. The male pornographer teams work together to push the teenage women into harder and harder stuff, basically stuff that causes more permanent physical and psychological damage. Once the woman has reached her capacity for pain and humiliation, she's cast out of the scene, likely with a drug addiction, likely ending up in prostitution. Saying that porn is "sexual education" or "empowering" or whatever is like saying that factory farming is the same as James Herriot-type farms. They're different in kind: in brutality, scale, and automation.
If you visit a website like Pornhub then you're complicit in this.
You should provide sources. And after that, you could be presented other sources that present much cleaner environments. It will depend.
...So, what you have said is "Shoes are made in sweatshops: ban shoes".
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Replying to the dead post below: yes, you have as if declared that "all shoe production is substantially like torturing geese for foie gras", but we note that "producing shoes does not necessarily involve torture", hence "you cannot ban shoemaking because of local abuses".
A better way would be to only allow soft content for unverified users, so youngsters wouldn't be brainwashed and hooked by the excessive ram up a train in someone's arse kinda mindless, cromagnon like content. Politicians must be replaced with something more human centric. All they do is bring forth rules to deny something, instead of trying to cure the epidemic porn brings into the life of everyday people.
> instead of trying to cure the epidemic porn brings into the life of everyday people
Eh?!
This makes no sense. Is it something like "smartphones bring addiction", i.e. the inability to deal with a tool normally as duly, because some people were left immature, is taken as an excuse to fall into bad logic?
If everyday people faint in front of begonias, it's not the begonia. Treat the roots.
France has very stupid and strict laws, that apply accross borders! For example paternity test gets you two years, even when physically done in another country!
It’s illegal for porn sites in France to operate without imposing age verification. That doesn’t mean that it’s illegal for French residents to use porn sites without age verification.
Correct. I believe it has to be court-ordered and even then it's rare. DNA testing is also generally illegal unless for medical reasons. They claim this is to "uphold family peace" because "fatherhood is social, not biological". It seems incredibly wrong to me in that they are removing the father's right to choose whether to enter that social role when it is not biologically mandated.
Because I was once shocked to learn how easily it is in some countries (like Portugal) for a woman to have the court force a man to submit to a paternity test [0].
I also heard (I guess a few decades ago) the courts would start automatically an investigation on their own when no man would recognise a child at birth.
Protecting the kids I think, because if the dad is not known then the mother will have to pay for the child alone (subsidized by the government). In France around 3% of kids are raised from dads not knowing that they are not the biological father.
Personally I think this law is completely unfair but in practice I think the judges will not believe the one opposing the test.
You just can't order a test for someone else (your child) without their consent (so both parents, and a judge because parents don't have absolute rights over their children).
Courts order paternity tests just fine though when there is a reasonable doubt.
The people concerned can always refuse to be tested though.
Maybe it just seems like a lot but it’s interesting how much shit Texas got for its age verification law when other western countries either were doing similar or pushing for similar laws. UK, Canada, France, Australia, I think I saw someone in the comments say Germany has something similar.
Pornography isn’t all that healthy but so is parents not stepping up and educating their kids on sex, even if it is awkward to talk about.
> A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children
Passive aggression level 10, and I approve.
This is the only true solution. Parents need to take responsibility for what their kids are doing online, what they’re viewing and who they’re talking to. This generation of parents should be prepared for that but apparently not.
As a parent, I do agree with taking responsibility on it. My older children is 8, so not much computer for her now. Just a bit of dactylography before she can play Gcompris, mostly chess lately, nothing online so far. They did have some initiation at school (for context this is public school in France).
That said, I do expect I won't be able to prevent them to reach inappropriate resources once they meet the point where they can browse online without me being there to inspect, so I'll rather invest time to explain them that can happen, make sure they are confident they can tell me if they faced something odd. Forbidding would be the best way to encourage, and any automatic system alone will have too shallow circumvention paths or too much burden of admin to follow for relevancy as a Parenthood tool.
I think this approach made a lot of sense in the 2000s and 2010s, when consumer electronics with internet access were expensive things well out of reach of a child unless given to them by a parent.
But we're in an era now where cell phones and tablets — especially used + low-spec ones — are something that even a young child can acquire en masse: from their friends at school, or from any mall kiosk or convenience store with their allowance, etc.
You can put all the parental controls you like on the nice phone you buy your child — but how do you put parental controls on the four other phones you have no idea they own?
(Before you say "search their room" — they could leave them in their desk at school, charging them with a battery bank they charged at home or got a friend to charge for them; and then use them with free public wi-fi rather than locked-down school wi-fi. This doesn't require any particular cleverness; it's the path of least resistance!)
If you ask me "well, what do we do, then?"... I have no idea, honestly.
Like with anything, you need to do a proper job educating your kids before trusting safeguards to keep them safe. That would be my bet for a scalable solution.
Some kids will still drown, it’s unavoidable. But swimming lessons are much more effective at preventing drowning deaths than fences.
I somewhat agree with your point, but I'd quibble with the analogy, and its implication about the usefulness/importance of fences.
I'd argue that the Internet is less like water, and more like a freeway. (It is the "information super-highway", after all!)
We do put (quite tall) fences up between freeways and residential areas (or between freeways and areas with wildlife!), and for good reason: unlike deep water (that both humans and animals have a vague instinct is an "unknown quantity" best to be approached cautiously), a freeway can, at a non-rush-hour time, look like a perfectly safe and quiet and predictable place — a place just like the calm, safe meadow or bike path or residential lane beside it — until, midway through crossing one, a truck sudenly whizzes over the horizon going 120mph and smashes right into you before the driver has time to react.
And that's the Internet: a seemingly safe, predictable place — with unexpected trucks whizzing through it, ready to smack into you.
Freeway is a great example in more ways: large swaths of society were destroyed in the process of making them (less purposefully in the case of the Internet/social media I think) and paradoxically reduced social connections despite seemingly making it easier to travel/connect. Now everywhere is unsafe because of car dependence/social media everywhere (i.e. Pauly Likens meeting adults on grindr https://www.newsweek.com/missing-teen-dead-pauly-likens-dash...)
Fair and I'll run with it. Where I live (Lisbon) it's very very easy to get to unprotected highways with no fences. No trouble at all, maybe a 15-minute walk from my home. No epidemic of kids being run over. We still fence them, where we want to pretend highways don't exist. Also a good analogy.
I tried to block YouTube when my kids were remote learning during the pandemic, it took several attempts and they were in grade school. They even got around Apple's considerable content controls I had to set up a DNS proxy.
My condolences, you are raising software engineers.
all kids in 2025 are SWEs :)
At my son's school they recently started blocking ChatGPT, not because kids were using it to cheat, but because kids kept asking ChatGPT how to get around the content controls, and it would constantly find new ways to proxy or evade.
Did you tell them "Don't do that or there will be consequences" and then apply the consequences? Carrot and stick is a time-honored method that works.
Best way is to block at the router.
They will just start to use the onion Router.
Not even states can block internet access 100%
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This never happens tho - parents dont sometimes even know how to use the tech. Its like giving a gun to a child and telling them its ok, just remember when you open the packaging to take the safety off.
...and oh yeh the safety software changes every few months so you will have to review it
I’m sorry who is who in this analogy. Because if internet/tech is the gun then the clear solution is “not giving your children guns”.
Bad modern parents just give their kids an iPad.
> Because if internet/tech is the gun then the clear solution is “not giving your children guns”.
Funnily enough, no. The clear solution is to ensure that you talk to your children about [gun|online] safety. Show them how to use the [gun|internet] safely. Make sure they know that they can ask to use your [gun|device] any time they'd like -- but only under your supervision.
Take the mystery away through education and experience, and like anything else [guns|the internet] becomes just another part of adult life. Just one more thing that can be dangerous if used incorrectly.
> Make sure they know that they can ask to use your [gun|device] any time they'd like -- but only under your supervision.
You could do that, but there's no particular need for it. "No guns until you're 16" works fine. You don't need to "take the mystery away".
You need to use the internet a lot before you become an adult, you need to use a gun never before you become an adult. You need a lot of practice to build up internet safety skills, you need barely any practice to build up gun safety skills.
Go ahead and have a basic gun safety talk, that's a good idea, but that's all you need.
Yeah I just wouldn’t give them one
I gave my kids iPads.
But I also parented them.
My parents tried to parent me, but I childed them.
Ah yes the constant adversarial relationship.
Apparently the average age of mothers is 30 - these parents should understand the risks of technology having be exposed to it themselves but we don’t seem to be seeing improvement in this area like we might expect.
A lot of us experienced the opposite problem. I had parents that restricted large parts of the Internet that probably would have been fine to access. The Internet has changed a lot. It wasn't until I took in a zoomer who grew up with unrestricted Internet access that I realized how damaging it could be.
Could you elaborate?
The problem is that they also understand the benefits of technology. It's easy to limit "screen time" in the abstract, and not too hard to keep it going through toddlerhood if you want. It's much harder to tell your 12 year old that they're not allowed to stay connected with their friends when your own friends just sent you a meme in the group chat 5 minutes ago.
A mother of 30 can't compete with shareholder interest working 24/7.
I get your point and I think you're right, but I'd suggest a different analogy or lean in a bit more saying give it to a young child with no training.
The irony is The South is where these porn laws are happening...
default to parental guidance enabled.
Okay, should bars and off licenses be able to sell alcohol to 10 year olds? Cigarettes? Should that be the responsibility of parents to control, too?
Or do we continue with the long held legislative reality that you are responsible for the goods and services that you unlawfully provide to children?
Your analogy is faulty and doesn't hold up to the basic scrutiny.
Whoever is giving the child access is responsible, not the manufacturer. If a parent gives their child a device capable of accessing the internet with no restrictions, that's on the parent.
Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
In your analogy, the bar would be equivalent to a internet cafe or public library that has PCs available to patrons. Those types of businesses should definitely use physical IDs to verify patrons are of age.
To make your analogy work for Pornhub, you'd also have to argue "why shouldn't Jack Daniels have to put age-verifying instant blood tests on their bottles in case a parent puts one in their unlocked liquor cabinet?"
Because then the same concerns arise -- why should Jack Daniels be given access to my blood just to manufacture an age-restricted product? What will they do with it? Will they secure the data appropriately? How do I know it won't be used to negatively impact my future because my health insurance company doesn't like that I drank a bottle of JD?
> Whoever is giving the child access is responsible, not the manufacturer. If a parent gives their child a device capable of accessing the internet with no restrictions, that's on the parent.
Suppose a parent lets their 16 year old borrow the family car, the kid drives to a bar, and the bar serves the kid alcoholic drinks.
By your logic would that be considered the parents fault for providing the kid with a means of transport that doesn't restrict where the kid can go rather than the bar's fault for not checking that their customer could legally use their product?
> Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
> To make your analogy work for Pornhub, you'd also have to argue "why shouldn't Jack Daniels have to put age-verifying instant blood tests on their bottles in case a parent puts one in their unlocked liquor cabinet?"
That's a poor comparison, because with Pornhub the end user of their product gets it directly from Pornhub. With Jack Daniels most users get the product through resellers. It is the resellers that handle checking that the final sale to the end user is legal.
Users can buy directly from Jack Daniels (jackdaniels.com) and for those sales Jack Daniels does check the buyer's age.
> Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels.
Pornhub is obviously the retailer in this analogy. False equivalence fallacy.
> Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
In France and almost all Western countries, Brown Forman has exactly that responsibility when they are retailing to or serving the public, as the pornography vendors are now.
> Because then the same concerns arise -- why should Jack Daniels be given access to my blood just to manufacture an age-restricted product? What will they do with it? Will they secure the data appropriately? How do I know it won't be used to negatively impact my future because my health insurance company doesn't like that I drank a bottle of JD?
Ignoring your straw man, this is exactly how alcohol is treated. A third party - the state - verifies your age and issues a physical token that you must present to prove your age when purchasing alcohol. That is exactly how pornography will now will regulated in France.
How is this passive aggression? “You’re not using porn, because I say so, and you’re not using a computer without a porn filter, because I bought it”
That’s not passive aggression, that’s responsible parenting and clear boundaries.
I read it as the author being passive aggressive -- they're implying the problem is parents who, instead of learning how to manage what their children can do with electronic devices, just want the government to make bad things illegal.
But, you know, we've never been able to agree as a people on what "bad things" are. So it should be, as you said, for each parent to engage in setting boundaries and being responsible.
"Because I say so" is a weak ass argument, no argument at all. "Because I bought it" is passive aggressive, because you do not intend to allow even if you did not buy it.
It’s not an argument it’s just a statement of fact. “You can’t do this because I bought it” explains what (you can’t do X without Y) and why (I own Y and can therefore control the use of Y).
Now, it doesn’t explain why the decision was made in the first place to enforce a porn filter as a requirement for using the device, but again - it’s not an argument.
I agree that it doesn’t provide a complete explanation because as you mention, if the child bought their own device there would still be restrictions, but that wasn’t the case being discussed.
It’s not an argument, it’s a command.
You’re not convincing your kids that you are right. You are reminding them of the consequences if they disagree.
> You’re not convincing your kids that you are right. You are reminding them of the consequences if they disagree
Very inadvisable. Raise them in view to being adults.
I absolutely do this, but there are times when "because I said so" is the actual answer.
As an adult, there are plenty of situations where you are subject to the authority of others. Learning to deal with disagreement with that is also part of being an adult.
Interesting, but your lapsus may be worth noting:
if you show your good reasons then they will find themselves under «the authority of others»,
whereas if you don't they will find themselves «subject to» the power of others.
Opportunity and effects may vary.
(The VPN service is Proton VPN, for those coming directly to the comments.)
why this VPN in particular?
Because this VPN provider tweeted about it.
I’d guess many did, and this is just the one being reported on
Likely because it's one of the few VPNs with a ~reliable free tier
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing
Its a Swiss one, so compared to some sites its probably in French out of box. Has a good reputation, located in country that doesn't take much bullshit from EU or given government (Albeit some of it is good, this is not).
Also cares more about privacy than most other countries globally (if folks grokked what "numbered account" meant then there wouldn't be so much baseless hate about how "Swiss took all jewish and nazi money and profit from it till today and that's core of their prosperity".
Couldn't be further from truth, I live here and watch these matters closely from both inside and outside perspectives.
> "and having offshore porn sites or any other third parties collect IDs from adults and becoming a repository of potential blackmail material comes with its own risks [...] A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children" said the company's (Proton's) spokesperson
While I agree with their second point, the first argument sounds a bit overly dramatic, considering how the implementation seems to work. They couldn't blackmail, as the information they receive is limited.
As far as I understand how at least one of the methods for verification must be, is “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged. Then other methods could be offered too.
Although if we assume the average security competence with these types of companies, handling ID documents and stuff, they'll surely get hacked sooner or later. So maybe the link between porn site and identity isn't there, but your personal data that been submitted to them will yet again float out there.
Their proposed alternative is even worse IMO. Even if you can figure out some privacy-safe way of doing on-device age verification, the end result will be a web that only works if you are browsing from an "approved" client - i.e. a platform controlled by Apple, Google or Microsoft.
Not necessarily. You need some source of truth (i.e. government ID) to sign digital tokens representing attributes like "18+". Those tokens are uploaded to those websites.
The risk becomes "kids loading their parents' ID into their phones" but with decent digital ID that shouldn't be a problem.
Yivi already solves this problem. It's being used as a basis for an implementation of a European digital ID of sorts, though I'm still sceptical of the European side of things.
The app works on any device because the device doesn't do anything special. All it does is POST some signed token if the user clicks "approve".
I suppose this can be a problem in the US where people hate the idea of digital government ID for some reason, but that's a political problem, not a technical one. France already has a digital ID equivalent for use with government services, as do all other EU member states in their own way, so the source of these tokens is practically ready to go.
There could easily be a web standard to allow/disallow NSFW content and the web browsers could broadcast this flag based on settings at OS level similarly to the light/dark theme setting at OS level that can be used by websites and it works on all OS/web browsers implementing this trivial feature.
> “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged.
Isn't this an actually reasonable solution? I assumed age verification was supposed to be done by the site itself, and therefore it was considered a very bad idea. But this... what's the problem with this method?
> But this... what's the problem with this method?
You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things. The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Tangential question: if the principal is divorced from the "is not a minor" signal, what prevents a thrifty youth from just buying/stealing somebody's token?
First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws. So we are limited to unintentional breaches of privacy which can be guarded against with auditing requirements.
Second, you have to look at the potential damage such a leak would have on the affected porn watchers. Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year? Isn't it a common view that all men and most women watch porn at least occasionally anyway?
And I get the risk if you live in a country that criminalizes pornography. But are were sure there is an extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
Third, it's important to consider the baseline. If you are a citizen of France and you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub. This isn't concerning to anyone but the thickest thin-foil-hat wearing paranoid schizophrenics, and I've never heard of this leading to massive data breaches or blackmail situations either.
Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy, they might as well do the age verification thing, too. They probably already have your personal info due to KYC-legislation.
Of course there are small differences: with age verification your ISP can distinguish between you and other people in your household, which removes a bit of plausible deniability. If you don't trust your ISP you can use alternate DNS-over-HTTPS, VPNs, proxys like Tor, etc. to cover your tracks, which you wouldn't be able to do anymore. But I bet 99,99% of Pornhub visitors in France don't bother with any of that, proving that they aren't actually concerned about being blackmailed or outed as porn consumers by their ISP.
> visitors in France don't bother with any of that, proving that they aren't actually concerned about being blackmailed or outed as porn consumers by their ISP.
I don’t think that follows. Tons of people don’t have the technical means or ability to use those countermeasures. Some don’t even know they are being tracked.
I don’t think that implies they’re fine with being blackmailed.
True, and I addressed that a bit in my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44212409
The short version is that I think people who don't realize their ISP can see which sites they visit aren't any worse off by their ISP signing age-verification tokens. Those tokens give much less information about the content they consume than the metadata the ISP already has access too.
I would guess at least a double-digit percentage of internet users are in the clueless category that you describe, and in practice there isn't a huge problem of these dummies being outed/blackmailed by their ISPs. So I don't think it's realistic to expect that if ISPs were in the business of providing age guarantees they would be outing/blackmailing their customers, especially since their behavior of those ISPs would be scrutinized by more knowledgeable people, and any ISP not taking customer privacy seriously would be subject to both public criticism and legal action.
> First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws.
Good thing we only ever have intentional leaks, then.
> Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year?
LGBT individuals have killed themselves over being outed before they were ready to. I'd wager that any leak that could positively link a person to a site will also include at least some activity on that site. But even if not, there are other people that do have things to loose from being connected to pornhub in any capacity. The simplest example would be anybody seeking sexual health/wellness information; it isn't the core purpose of pornhub, but they are a source that somebody in a sexually repressive environment may seek info from.
> ... extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
I think we're on different pages here. Your argument seems to be "we should let the good countries have nukes" and my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period". France shows the world that it's possible and less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse.
The only winning move is to not play.
> ...you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub.
Assuming use of ISP controlled DNS servers, the ISP only knows the account holder's name. They don't know if it's a neighbor/guest that's cracked/borrowed the WiFi ... etc. VPN or even just not using ISP managed DNS circumvents this collection.
> Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy
The word "basically" is doing a lot of work there. If you could have said "ISPs are paragons of virtue that are always guaranteed trustworthy" I'm sure you would have. But you didn't so we both agree that anything that follows is predicated on a bad-faith premise.
I still have yet to see a good answer to "how do you prevent borrow/theft/buying/renting/selling of ID vouchers?"
> I'd wager
Your willingness to wager on something proves absolutely nothing. I'd wager you woulnd't really wager anything anyway.
> my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period"
Your 100% risk-free society does not exist. You risk things every time you leave the house. Nukes already exist, and one country that gave them up saw that to be a huge mistake.
> less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse
So France should not do something because other countries might do something different that would be bad? This is not a rational discussion. This argument makes zero sense.
You should not be commenting on HN because you are encouraging people to comment on forums where bullying happens and that kills.
> Nukes already exist, and one country that gave them up saw that to be a huge mistake.
"nukes" here meaning "de-anonymizing" the internet. I don't think "but at least one country already has them so of course the DPRK should be allowed to have them!" is a good attitude to have towards nuclear proliferation.
I have no problem with a site/platform having a "you need to prove to us that you're an adult" policy. I am terrified that other government(s) will use "because of the children" to force these policies onto the internet at large.
> Good thing we only ever have intentional leaks, then.
I already addressed this: unintentional leaks from regulated companies are very rare. It's not a perfect system, but it works to some extent.
> LGBT individuals have killed themselves over being outed before they were ready to.
OK, but visiting Pornhub doesn't prove you're gay, it only proves you watch porn, which lots of people do. If someone calls you out on it, you just say you were watching some dumb big-titted bimbo slut get pounded hard in the pussy. Crisis averted.
The age verifier wouldn't know which adult-only site you are trying to access, so when they sign your over-18 token, they don't know if you're going to redeem it on hairybears.com or bigtittedsluts.com.
Again, this is different from your ISP who already knows which sites you visit today and everyone is totally fine with this! ~nobody in France is committing suicide over their ISPs outing them as gay! It's literally a nonexistent problem.
Finally, I don't want to keep doing the checks notes bit, but do you really think there is that much of a taboo on being gay in France of all countries?
> I'd wager that any leak that could positively link a person to a site will also include at least some activity on that site.
But that's not true, as I already explained. The age verifier doesn't know what you are going to use the age-token for. They know strictly less than your ISP, by a huge margin. Note that the ISP doesn't even see the age-token. That's between the site you visit and the age verifier.
> Assuming use of ISP controlled DNS servers, the ISP only knows the account holder's name. They don't know if it's a neighbor/guest that's cracked/borrowed the WiFi ... etc. VPN or even just not using ISP managed DNS circumvents this collection.
For the purpose of blackmail this doesn't really matter... where there is smoke there is fire.
If you heard <politician you don't like> was found to have child porn on his phone, and his excuse was that his nephew who borrowed his phone on the weekend must have put it there, would you think that exonerates him? Or would you assume he's lying to cover his ass?
> If you could have said "ISPs are paragons of virtue that are always guaranteed trustworthy" I'm sure you would have. But you didn't so we both agree that anything that follows is predicated on a bad-faith premise.
I don't follow your point here. I'm not saying ISPs are paragons of virtue, I'm simply saying: 99% of people who visit Pornhub don't even try to hide this fact from their ISP (note that the people this post is about were only signing up to a VPN after France blocked their access; they didn't give a fuck about their ISP knowing they watched porn before). That means some of these are true:
In which of these scenarios does having the ISP issue an age-token make things worse for the customer? I really cannot think of one, but I'm open to changing my mind.> I already addressed this: unintentional leaks from regulated companies are very rare. It's not a perfect system, but it works to some extent.
The corpus of HIBP would indicate that leaks are not rare. Your definition of "some" may need re-calibration.
I would prefer that this data not exist to begin with; can't leak and de-anon data that was never captured.
> In which of these scenarios does having the ISP issue an age-token make things worse for the customer? I really cannot think of one, but I'm open to changing my mind.
Having to bother with any "confirm you are an adult human" _at all_ is a hassle. Any and all circumstances that require this makes things worse for the customer and generates data that may risk de-anonymizing the customer.
And why bother when I still can't figure out what stops under-age me from buying/borrowing/stealing somebody else's token?
> First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws. So we are limited to unintentional breaches of privacy which can be guarded against with auditing requirements
You already know this, I’m certain, but laws and “audits” do little more than nothing to meaningfully protect data.
Where's your evidence for that claim?
Personally I worked for a FAANG company that took data protection quite seriously. I would love to say that it was because they cared so much about their customer's privacy (which was of course the official position) but I think the reality was at least partially that the people in charge knew that if data was leaked and it could be pinned on lax internal policies, the company would be liable for millions if not billions in damages.
From that I conclude that the legal framework does provide a certain degree of protection to customer data. Nothing is perfect, of course, but that's true for every law: a red traffic light doesn't force drivers to stop, and in fact people run red lights every day. But the threat of getting fined for running a red light is pretty effective at forcing most people to stop for a red light most of the time, which is not nothing.
Also consider the logical conclusion of your cynical argument. If the laws and regulations that require companies to guard their customers privacy are almost entirely ineffective, as you claim, then shouldn't we abolish them? After all, they impose a burden on companies, which makes goods and services more expensive for consumers, without providing any non-material benefits in return.
> Personally I worked for a FAANG company that took data protection quite seriously
Me too, and it’s still funny how often user data gets leaked even with world class engineers and incentives. Moving beyond FANG, look at how absurdly common it is for user data to get leaked - financial institutions, romance services, transportation services, everyone.
You claimed:
> laws and “audits” do little more than nothing to meaningfully protect data
I asked you for evidence for this claim and you provided none.
Please either put up or shut up. I'm not going to keep engaging with you while you spout incendiary catch phrases while doing absolutely nothing to support your claims with evidence.
Case in point:
> look at how absurdly common it is for user data to get leaked - financial institutions, romance services, transportation services, everyone.
I disagree that this is common. Personally I haven't had any of my personal data leaked by any of these types of institutions. If you want to claim it's common that banks leak their customer's data, then you need to provide the evidence that supports that claim. It's how the burden of proof works.
> I asked you for evidence for this claim and you provided none.
My evidence is experience in the field and a knowledge of the many many publicly acknowledged data leaks that have happened in recent years. I’m not sure why you’re taking such a hostile tone; these things are well established.
I’m not particularly looking to have a formal debate where I dig up sources and you refute them; I’m only saying what is quite clearly true.
What prevents someone from buying, stealing or photoshopping an ID card?
I'd guess the same issue would be present with selling tokens.
> You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things.
No. For any technology you could argue I'm just hoping it won't fail. If I fly with a plane, I'm just hoping it won't crash, right?
In fact, there would be security measures making it less likey that there is a leak. I am literally not "just hoping".
Now those security measures might fail of course. But what are the probabilities? That matters.
> The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Please explain how this does not apply to opening pornhub on my computer right now, with zero age verification systems. I think it applies perfectly, and so it is not an actual argument in this discussion.
It depends how solid the implementation is, and what the competency reputation of the government implementing it is.
Well, we can't refuse a system or a technology on the basis of "depends". Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you? Even if you don't, most rational people do, daily.
> Well, we can't refuse a system or a technology on the basis of "depends".
Of course we can, based exactly on the dependencies. If someone has an atrocious representation, we don't need to trust the system, if they don't then it becomes more reasonable to do so.
> Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you?
Not all risks are equal.
Is this trolling?
> Of course we can, based exactly on the dependencies.
But you have provided zero exact dependencies or details. All you said was "depends".
> Not all risks are equal.
But you have claimed nothing about this particular risk. Is it big? Is it small? We have no idea.
This is sophistry. Fancy words attempting to sound smart with zero content.
You are not arguing either for this tech, or against it, or providing any insight into how one might decide. Of course it depends on some things. Gee, how did we not think of that before you told us.
If the only thing that verifier does is verification for accessing digital pornography, it remains blackmail-able. Not in the sense of identifying the specific content accessed but in the sense of "this user has gone through the steps to gain access" which is, frankly, good enough.
After verifying the ID, there is no reason the verifier needs to know to whom a token belongs, which would help this. It doesn't need to be repudiatable in practice because the security risk of a leak is near 0 and nobody ages backwards.
The solution to that is to make sure the age verification is used for a variety of different purposes.
For example, why not use the same age verification system to block access to sites that advertise or sell alcohol or tobacco products? Or sex toys. Or dating apps. Or loans applications. Or for any number of adult-only apps that aren't necessarily blackmailable? Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
That provides people with plausible deniability. “Oh, I wasn't looking at porn! I was just trying to find the perfect brandy to buy as a business gift.” or “Oh, I was just trying to get a quote to refurnish my apartment on credit.”
> Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
Lets not, please.
Normalization like this could absolutely invite overreach / abuse. The immediately/obvious one is now sites have a "this is/is-not a minor" data point to correlate with the user activity that they'll sell off to some advertiser/broker.
I don't recall where I heard it, but the quote was essentially "the perception of surveillance is itself restrictive."
Threatening someone to tell people “There's a high likelyhood that X watches porn” is a blackmail-worthy threat IMHO.
Unless you have access to someone's specific kinks or routine (how often does he/she watches porn, for how long), you're no going to scare many people.
Facebook has these information by the way, thanks to the “like buttton” scattered everywhere (at least for people who don't browse porn in private mode, but having done IT support in college, I can tell you there are many people who don't).
Is it though? In this day and age I would think that someone who doesn’t watch porn is in the minority, it is like saying this person has sex.
On the other hand what kind of pornography, or how frequently and so on could be social pressure , same as what kind of fetishes or kind of sex or with type of person/gender, most people aren’t that sex positive to talk openly about.
Fascinating that France is PH's second-biggest market, presumably after the US.
How is that surprising?
After the US, the three largest Western countries are Germany (which already banned Pornhub), the UK and France, but the UK and France are virtually tied in terms of population, so it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
Always wondered why latin america is not considered the "western" world (it surely is not on the east side of... whatever mark you put in the world. Actually if one uses the greenwich meridian, that would leave countries like Germany on the "east" side of the world).
Economics and sadly race.
Western world = prior colonial powers and their vassal states. Non-Western world = prior colonies that became independent.
TIL the US is non-Western
what makes you think it's banned in Germany?
https://netzpolitik.org/2025/porno-streit-vor-gericht-darf-d...
Skimming this it sounds like pornhub is/was at least partially blocked on the ISP level. Not sure about the extent of the blockage today but I could imagine that these blocks put a dent in their user numbers.
ah they just changed their domain to dot org to get around the block, most users visit sites through their search engine so I doubt many noticed. as of now in germany the org is the first result on google
Probably this: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Munich-Administrative-Court-Por...
it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
UK slang and this context give this a very relevant double meaning. Well played if this was intentional!
it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
UK slang and this context give this a very relevant double meaning. Well played if this was intentional!
France usually has its own domestic alternatives for a lot of stuff. Even online. It's becoming less and less true (for example, instagram or tiktok are just as common there than anywhere else) though. So it could make sense to think that France would be a smaller market for PH than Germany or the UK.
I know Germany is similar to France in that regard, but I'm more familiar with France. And it also has a bigger population!
Savoir-vivre.
I wouldn't worry about the VPN's, the 8 year olds aren't going to get one. On mass, it'll be successful, but I'd be more worried about social media than the usual porn sites for early exposure.
Because apparently french parents can't handle the education of their children.
Clearly they cannot. They had already banned selling alcohol to kids.
Drugs too. Doesn't seem to stop ones that want to do it though by looking at some neighbourhoods.
It does stop kids from being openly advertised drugs and makes it difficult for kids to get drugs. That is the whole point of legislation, not to eliminate but mitigate.
In theory yes, in practice no. It's smarter to legalise it, it cuts off income source for criminals, creates taxable income that can be actually used to fund help centers etc.
I can assure you the average teenager in a western country has absolutely zero issues getting their weed. In fact, the older you get, the harder it becomes (as your social circle tends to shrink once you have a job).
I was a teen in the west. And I knew kids who had a hard time getting weed. Some got ripped off with stuff that was fake.
LOL. You should walk around some french cities a bit. Getting drugs for locals is certainly not a problem, despite harsh punishments like its 80s.
Ok. Now suppose for a minute you go to a city place where you know absolutely no one. Whom do you ask for drug advice now?
That's very easy - go to area of train station, or some nearby park, and look for immigrant-looking people just standing around, trying to keep eye contact with passers or saying quietly "bonjour".
95% of the time you will get exactly what you want, otherwise it would be some form of "desolee". This is obvious, everybody knows and sees it, en masse (as in you are choosing from tens of such people in given area).
Given that incompetent families will always exist,
you ban drugs because of the social consequences of the phenomenon - the damages are evaluated as high.
For other indulgences, social damages may vary.
Pornography isn’t an education tool. If anything, it hinders education by setting unrealistic expectations.
There's a big cultural gap here. To people who are concerned about porn, it's like asking why we have to stop children from buying handles of vodka.
Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet.
Isn't it unfair to the responsible bakers who just want a really tender pie crust? Yes, it is, but they're going to have to deal with it.
Won't a determined kid still be able to get their hands on alcohol? Yes, they will, but it matters that they get it less often and less frequently.
> Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet
This is not only untrue, it's actually the only worthwhile course.
I know that bans, rules, and technical solutions are not substitutes for parenting. This is why all the kids of the parents I know who have tried that are doing all the supposedly disallowed things secretly (and circumventing the technical restrictions with ease).
It's shocking to read opinions that kids would not «have that level of self-control». Children can display self-control... And of course they can.
(Just a tiny example: in many countries, we have them study since the age of five, sometimes earlier. They already have a sufficiently working anterior cingulate gyrus at and before that age; they have understanding of tradeoffs at and before that age.)
--
Ooooh, hitters that will probably reveal to be snipers. That just confirms the point: if some people think it normal to gesticulate and not formulate - well, that's them, not all... Some children will have a weaker will. Some will have a stronger one! And surely it can be educated.
Does that explain why most societies don't permit children to drive cars? Perhaps that's not based on development, but just being too short? I kid, but clearly we don't let children drive, vote, drink alcohol, have sex etc. because of general observations about their limits, including self-control.
We don't let children vote because they are not wise enough: we demand a threshold for accrued mental competence is gained. Similarly, cars give them a power similar to that of guns: hence the restriction past the threshold.
We don't let children damage themselves because it is plain indefensible. If they want to, they must have passed said formal threshold.
These are not matters of self control.
Technically in the US farmer's kids can drive at 12 without a license if they are on "farm business" including hauling massive loads, both with tractors and regular cars and trucks. If they wanted they could put an unsecured goat in the back seat of an unlicensed car and drive to town with it.
This varies by state.
Somewhat relatedly, there are US states where the age of consent (for sex with an older partner) is 13 years old, and the age of consent for marriage is 16.
Define "sex with an older partner". I'm pretty sure that for sex with someone of arbitrary older age, the age of consent is 16-18 in every state. If you're counting limited age difference then you might be right but that phrasing is misleading
Alchool is poison. If you handle it maturely, it remains an intoxicant.
Chocolate should be eaten with restraint. If you handle it maturely, it remains something not that comparable to alchool.
Right. The question is whether porn is poisonous, and many people (myself included) genuinely feel the answer is yes. Mature, responsible adults can often ration their consumption enough to avoid too many negative effects - as they do with alcohol - but even adults sometimes fail and for children it's much harder.
Well, social networks and *-toks are also poisonous for your dopaminergic system. As well as certain classes of games, I guess here's a spectrum. But the best option I see is to educate _everyone_ including kids about mental hygiene. Rather than enforcing unenforceable restrictions.
> educate _everyone_ including kids about mental hygiene
Hear, hear!
The most important skills are underrated in so many societies.
> is poisonous
With all due, some may want to advise you to check into that. It could be that it does strange things because of the way you are wired.
Please note (about similar corners) what I have already written in the page, "for some it brings a satisfaction and this is an outlet valve that reduces adverse social effects; for some it is a kindler and it will increase adverse social effects".
To some it will be the opposite of a poison - it will be constructive. It will depend.
This cannot be said of alchool and similar.
Well, doesn't porn-ish entertaiment fuck up ones reward system? I'm not talking of porn specificly, but about a range of products that turn people into "dopamine rats", constantly pressing a button for more bursts of novelty?
> fuck up ones reward system
I am personally not aware of those (products that would damage one's reward system), can you name some?
besides porn, things like facebook, tiktok, instagram, reddit... generalising, it's everything that acts as a button "gib me more novelty" that one can press as much and as frequently as they want.
surely, not everybody is hooked by these things, and it's definitely possible to use them without harm, but sometimes it requires training and (self-)awareness.
But every source of pleasure could create addiction, so it is not valid to point to a specific one, and the requirement of self control and gratification delay remains generally fundamental.
Not every source of pleasure is equally addictive by its nature.
However, I'm not talking about _addiction_, but messing with the dopaminergic system. It's, I'd say a specific kind of "pleasure" with particular mechanisms to trigger.
The problem here is not that a person "is not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to them" (https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-wha...). The problem is that the reward system gets broken. If a person is actually addicted to instagram scrolling, like people are addicted to smoking, it just adds another layer of complexity. As I observing from myself, "checking stuff on my phone" looks like a bad habit rather than an addiction.
So, it seems you are saying that there exist products that, giving "pleasure upon command", make people akin to Damasio's rats - they would constantly go to the pleasure trigger.
But people are not rats: they are or can be made aware that crude pleasure is a negligible factor. Duties and other values count much more.
The dopaminergic system is inferior to judgement.
If there are issue in managing the dopaminergic system, the issue is cultural - and has to be treated in that framework.
It's like with the cognitive disaster in many medical doctors, that seem to equate "quality of life" with "pleasure" (in their own twisted ignorant subdevelopment): health itself has an extremely high value, crude veneers like said pleasure have not or can be plain countervalues.
nah, alcohol is a poison. this is a fact
the effects are dose based which teens are not known to respect :)
Following what you are writing, you misunderstood my post, Sitzkrieg.
I was not writing about alchool... I said that some controversial imagery may be neutral or even enriching to some - while alchool remains a poison (it physically is).
The idea of porn as an outlet valve just sounds to me like the self-medication hypothesis for alcoholism. I have no doubt there's people who watch lots of porn and believe that it's helping them with some problem or another, but I'm more skeptical that it actually is helping and a lot more skeptical that it's so helpful as to make up for the negative consequences.
> outlet valve
It is very rational: some need the experiences to meet the natural instances, and virtual ones suffice.
> self-medication hypothesis for alcoholism
Do not even joke: alcoholism is (*) an addiction (*) to an intoxicant...
> watch lots
That's you assuming things.
> helping them with some problem or another
Still you with your constructs: maybe they just enjoy it like other pleasant experiences.
> negative consequences
That confirms "it's you": which "negative consequences"? We do not see any necessary damaging impact.
[dead]
> it's like asking why we have to stop children from buying handles of vodka
I would argue that part of the answer is because with vodka they can easily harm themselves. However this doesn't hold for porn.
> with vodka they can easily harm themselves
And others.
Which is relevant, because other resources (e.g. those relevant here) can reduce or abate sexual misconduct, for many, or maybe boost it for some - depending on the profile. Some will be satisfied (and stay at that), some other will be kindled.
>Yes, they will, but it matters that they get it less often and less frequently.
but they won't. Alcohol restrictions are at least somewhat enforceable (although as a sidenote I also find them silly) but you can open a new tab, literally type "porn" into any search engine, and you'll get fifty thousand results.
And all of those sites are hosted in the middle of nowhere and do zero content moderation compared to Pornhub, so chances are on those sites adolescents will run into some genuinely abhorrent content. You've made it no less difficult, but much less safe.
It's so utterly meaningless even compared to other internet bans, it makes more sense to assume they just banned something so that people would stop talking about it. It's as if someone was on a crusade against video games, banned literally one video game
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Another service which tries to fill this gap with a unique offering is https://getadultpass.com/
They basically add 'verification headers' to the original website through a proxy solution, allowing visitors to browse sites with some level of age verification regardless of their location. They are more focused on the 'privacy aspect'.
I am surprised Pornhub hasn't acquired a VPN company yet...
Then you can prove collusion to circumvent whatever legislation is there.
and im surprised pornhub is still the de facto normie smut site but here we are
It’s smart to be using a VPN for any sort of adult internet use these days anyway. Vixen Media Group is extorting people by threatening to leak their identity if they don’t pay up[0]. And not by a 3rd-party collections company either - it’s their own parent company making the demands.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vixen_Media_Group#Legal_action
https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/1d3wfiz/my_exp...
> Vixen Media Group is extorting people by threatening to leak their identity if they don’t pay up[0].
This is specifically people who pirate their IP over public bittorrent; not paying customers.
Why does anybody care that their porn viewing habits become public? To me it sounds as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log of the food we eat or the music we listen to.
Empirically, there's a sizeable market of people willing to pay thousands to keep their porn viewing from becoming public. Prenda Law[0,1] was an extortion racket that blackmailed people with their porn history, and demanded in the region of $4,000 per victim. Their total revenue was at least $15 million, that the courts could find.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=prenda
I don't doubt that it happens, but I am asking about why. What's the thinking process?
Perhaps it is less about what whether they watch , but what kind of pornography it is .
Most people aren’t not comfortable to be open about those topics. Many of the reasons would be worthy of months or years of therapy for even themselves to understand.
LBGTQ+ in highly oppressed environment (ie in some countries they execute gays in 2025). Even if not, some folks have quirks they would be ashamed of if it went public, ostracized, lose jobs, in some cases divorces etc.
Is it really that hard to imagine? US alone made (for us Europeans a bit weird but we don't mind at the end) very popular categories of porn like "banging stepsister/brother/mother/father", I am pretty sure those folks wouldn't like that history revealed to their close ones.
And TBH, I simply don't want to know other folk's preference even if its a very mundane one. Don't need to add that 'feature' to the mental model of them I have in my mind, what I have is already too much sometimes.
Porn is considered a highly private activity for many reasons: societal disapproval, religious prohibitions...heck in some countries, watching gay porn is potentially a death sentence.
I get wanting to keep illegal activities unknown to the authorities, so I'll concede that.
But in the context of this thread, where a company was threatening to do this in a developed democratic country, that is not an issue, is it?
Societal disapproval can be divided between people you interact with and strangers. Why would anybody what strangers think of them, particularly when those strangers would have to been rummaging into porn watching databases to begin with?
As for coworkers, friends or family, why would they be interested in learning about your porn habits again? And if they bother you about it, wouldn't you want to rethink whether you want to keep them around? Personally, I don't keep in touch with people who seriously judge my life choices -- and that has only happened once, so it's not such a big deal either.
Would you be willing to share your full name and your porn browsing habits? Here, to everyone reading this thread?
You are making the same argument as somebody else on this thread, as if this was some sort of a gotcha.
I don't go around talking about my porn watching habits for the simple reason that I am sufficiently attuned to social customs to understand that nobody has any interest in them.
You can't be shamed for something you are not ashamed of. If a porn provider made them public for whatever reason, it would not bother me one iota. So, I am asking, genuinely, why would anybody care.
So far the replies are things like "do eet!! lOLLOL" or "it can get you killed", so I have lost interest at this point. After some thought, I guess that some people are unquestioningly ashamed of their sexual preferences, which is sad. Living your life without the burden of shame is much better, as any queer person can tell you. There's nothing wrong with what you like.
Ah, the myth of the 'developed democratic country', as if our societies are somehow enlightened enough as to not collect material to hang us with should the need arise to silence us.
As recent events have proven we cannot be sure that a bunch of religious conservatives won't come into power.
I am a member of a leftist political party in my country and I have no doubt that if the fascists get their hands on the membership database I'm shipped off to a prison camp.
Yeah, that is something I can understand. Same sort of reason I am scared of my (otherwise boring) reading habits becoming public.
Why have privacy if you have nothing to hide?
On another note, a lot of places, including those in the west will ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong foods.
> On another note, a lot of places, including those in the west will ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong foods.
Some groups will, yes. In a lot of cases it's just simple hypocrisy; lots of "anti-gay" congressmen somehow keep getting caught soliciting sex in airport bathrooms or on grinder.
I find it quaint and amusing people expect politicians to live privately same as their public personas.
As long as they votes consistently with their stated public beliefs (icky or flawed as they are ) on which they got elected does it matter they are very different private person ?
I would go so far as to say, them being different publicly than in private is a qualification for the job, if they cannot dissociate their personal beliefs from the will of their electorate then they shouldn’t do the job .
Don’t we all have one work persona and another home one ? Being a congressman should be no different.
On the other hand, the ones who sell on a public persona to get votes and switch their voting pattern after election to a different belief system is far more of hypocrite (Sinema or fetterman?)
Why would you care about remaining in good terms with somebody who would ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong food? Is that a person that deserves your friendship?
They can sometimes kill you too.
> if you have nothing to hide
We have everything to hide to you.
The mandate is ancient.
people have things they don't want everyone to know. how is wanting a small amount of privacy ridiculous?
Why would anybody even want to know the porn you watch? And what would they do about it, or how would that affect you?
"Hey, Jimmy, I went searching for your porn habits and found that you are into fat redheads. Shame on you, shame on you. You are now excommunicated from... Somewhere". How is this not a much bigger social faux pas for the accuser rather than the accused?
Do you expect people to hold up the so-called faux pas or Jimmy's absolutely hilarious fat redhead fetish that his coworkers will be giving him the stink-eye for a few months before everyone forgets about it?
I can't imagine judging a coworker for liking fat redheads, or any other sexual preference. None of my business, and none of my interest. Just as if they like sports cars, or any other preference, really.
And why would want to keep in touch with a coworker that gives a damn about what other people want to fuck? I would go straight to HR for harassment, first of all.
Didn’t Armie Hammer get fired from everything for being into (but not in any way practicing or even hinting at wanting to practice) erotic cannibalism?
Post your browsing history and a list of your co-worker's and family's emails then, let's put your theory to the test. Bonus points if you post it to kiwifarms too.
If a coworker or family member sent me a log of their porn habits I would wonder what made them think I am interested in them. It is not something that people typically disclose.
That is not the same as understanding why would anybody care if their porn provider made their porn watching habits public, which is the subject of this thread.
Can you please clarify your reasoning? I fail to see the supposed "gotcha". We are not asking why doesn't everybody make their porn profile public, that's something you came up with.
> Why would anybody even want to know the porn you watch?
They might be interested in seducing you.
Otherwise, no reason.
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> as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log
And in fact, privacy laws saw slow codification because the violations they are relevant to are largely preposterous.
Sounds like the actual dumb move is torrenting without a VPN. Even if you're torrenting to watch prestige television, you'd still want to have a VPN to avoid getting sued. On the flip side, I don't think anyone got sued from watching pirated porn from a streaming site.
I always wonder what it takes to start a VPN? It's super saturated yet there's clear winners. Also I wonder how the operator is able to side step liability for obvious illegal use cases.
The internet has become a very hostile place and its not just surveillance but peer to peer political persecution where someone doesn't follow the script or believe the same thing they do and they lash out and try to censor them by mass reporting or DDOS
I miss the old internet where we used to escape to avoid reality, now we go offline to avoid the internet.
Seems to be one of those commodities where some winners are only by virtue of advertising, if all the NordVPN sponsorship jokes are true. There's also sketchy providers that double-dip aren't there? Residential customers pay once for a VPN and commercial customers pay again for residential IPs used for scraping and proxying.
CMV: cocomelon and TikTok are much worse for children than porn
I don't even understand why people bother, given that there a millions of porn sites out there, why would you stick to pornhub in particular?
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Oh no, a Jewish person? Reminds me of that horrible horrible Jew they called Jesus Christ.
I support banning porn. You've got coordinated "teams" of men, most of them diagnosable sociopaths, who work as a group to manipulate and destroy teenagers. For every one woman you see on a porn website, there's a network of 10 men who are working as a coordinated team to manipulate her. Most of the young women are from broken homes, many of them are low IQ, and many of them were sexually abused as children by male authority figures. The male pornographer teams work together to push the teenage women into harder and harder stuff, basically stuff that causes more permanent physical and psychological damage. Once the woman has reached her capacity for pain and humiliation, she's cast out of the scene, likely with a drug addiction, likely ending up in prostitution. Saying that porn is "sexual education" or "empowering" or whatever is like saying that factory farming is the same as James Herriot-type farms. They're different in kind: in brutality, scale, and automation.
If you visit a website like Pornhub then you're complicit in this.
Sounds like you've heard of a few cases of abuse and are extrapolating that to every single person that works in porn. It doesn't work like that.
For the most part, the actors just get paid per scene, know what they're getting into, and have clear boundary and consent terms.
Then there's all the amateur stuff too.
You should provide sources. And after that, you could be presented other sources that present much cleaner environments. It will depend.
...So, what you have said is "Shoes are made in sweatshops: ban shoes".
--
Replying to the dead post below: yes, you have as if declared that "all shoe production is substantially like torturing geese for foie gras", but we note that "producing shoes does not necessarily involve torture", hence "you cannot ban shoemaking because of local abuses".
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Im sorry but you sound completely delusional to me. Whats next, rock and roll turns kids satanic?
A better way would be to only allow soft content for unverified users, so youngsters wouldn't be brainwashed and hooked by the excessive ram up a train in someone's arse kinda mindless, cromagnon like content. Politicians must be replaced with something more human centric. All they do is bring forth rules to deny something, instead of trying to cure the epidemic porn brings into the life of everyday people.
> instead of trying to cure the epidemic porn brings into the life of everyday people
Eh?!
This makes no sense. Is it something like "smartphones bring addiction", i.e. the inability to deal with a tool normally as duly, because some people were left immature, is taken as an excuse to fall into bad logic?
If everyday people faint in front of begonias, it's not the begonia. Treat the roots.
Of course since you have zero exposure.
You're still obscure. Poster would "see the OP making no sense because poster would have zero exposure to potentially addictive sources"? Is it that?
Lovely, people would go to prison, just to see some porn!
> engaging in illegal activities while using a VPN remains prohibited under French law.
https://medium.com/@green21/is-vpn-legal-in-france-exploring...
France has very stupid and strict laws, that apply accross borders! For example paternity test gets you two years, even when physically done in another country!
It’s illegal for porn sites in France to operate without imposing age verification. That doesn’t mean that it’s illegal for French residents to use porn sites without age verification.
Wait what? You can't do a Paternity test in France?
Correct. I believe it has to be court-ordered and even then it's rare. DNA testing is also generally illegal unless for medical reasons. They claim this is to "uphold family peace" because "fatherhood is social, not biological". It seems incredibly wrong to me in that they are removing the father's right to choose whether to enter that social role when it is not biologically mandated.
So even if requested by the mother?
Because I was once shocked to learn how easily it is in some countries (like Portugal) for a woman to have the court force a man to submit to a paternity test [0].
I also heard (I guess a few decades ago) the courts would start automatically an investigation on their own when no man would recognise a child at birth.
- [0] https://www.tpalaw.pt/xms/files/BANGA_Site/Paternity_investi...
I assume the difficulty is focused on testing someone that's already listed as the father.
https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F14042?...
Wild. What is the rationale?
Apparently to "keep the peace" and to "protect the children" but I couldn't find any good source on this.
Intuitively it seems to me this is the most counterproductive law ever as living with this doubt is the best way to destroy a family.
Right but I think it's mainly about saving tax payer money from child support by shifting the burden to men.
Protecting the kids I think, because if the dad is not known then the mother will have to pay for the child alone (subsidized by the government). In France around 3% of kids are raised from dads not knowing that they are not the biological father. Personally I think this law is completely unfair but in practice I think the judges will not believe the one opposing the test.
You just can't order a test for someone else (your child) without their consent (so both parents, and a judge because parents don't have absolute rights over their children).
Courts order paternity tests just fine though when there is a reasonable doubt.
The people concerned can always refuse to be tested though.
Also in Germany and probably some other countries.
Maybe it just seems like a lot but it’s interesting how much shit Texas got for its age verification law when other western countries either were doing similar or pushing for similar laws. UK, Canada, France, Australia, I think I saw someone in the comments say Germany has something similar.
Pornography isn’t all that healthy but so is parents not stepping up and educating their kids on sex, even if it is awkward to talk about.
> UK, Canada, France, Australia
Many Western countries are past the limit of a damaged authority. People just listen to the legislative novelties and nod.