Starting today, UK adults will have to prove their age to access porn online. Experts warn that a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech and ultimately harm children and adults alike.
  • herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.mlEnglish
    38·
    6 days ago

    Age-checking is just a backdoor to force everyone on the internet to identify themselves. Nobody cares about the kids, they care about purging the internet of political dissent and opposition.

    • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Governments like everything and everyone in their own little stack and in the government’s self established status quo. When Paula Protester comes along with her LGBTQ++ agenda, governments don’t like that. Paula Protester represents instability to the status quo established by the ruling class. Governments don’t like instability. Governments like everyone sorted, coallated, and stapled, all in their respective stacks, so dissidents and social change advocates are viewed as adversaries and are not welcome.

      If it’s genuuinely ‘for the chirren’ then it would seem to me that making parents be parents and take responsibility for their child’s actions would go a very long way. However, we make laws with the lowest common denominator in mind. I don’t want your children involved in adult activities online. However, just like any education program, the success is determined by parental involvement in their child’s daily lives, and it starts at home.

      It’s a lot easier to make government responsible for the child’s developement, than actually requiring parents to be parents. I hear parents say ‘I’m not technologically inclined.’ Well, get there. The safety and well being of your child hangs in the balance. Take a class, read some of the millions of step by step tutorials that exist all over the internet. Ask some questions in forums. The possibilities are endless. Protecting your child is work, just like rasing them is work, and therein lies the issue.

  • HexesofVexes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    581·
    7 days ago

    See, there are a few ways this could go.

    1. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, and it’s left at that. I like to call this “the miracle”, and we all know those don’t happen.

    2. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a government asks for “access to data to prevent crime” - things degenerate from there. This is the “systemic failure” scenario.

    3. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but new scams evolve around it to make it dangerous. This would be the “criminal element” scenario.

    4. Age verification is not as secure and private as promised, and a leak occurs destroying lives and careers. This is the “system failure” scenario.

    5. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a few companies start scraping and selling data, leading to widespread harms. This is the “unethical merchant” scenario, and the most likely outcome.

    All in all, there is only one “ok” scenario, and a lot of horrific ones. The math says we’re entirely boned ^_^

    • FosterMolasses@leminal.spaceEnglish
      121·
      6 days ago

      I feel like people are downplaying how dangerous even the possibility of #2 is. A lot of nations are already targeting the LGBTQ community on a regular basis and this would massively assist to streamline persecution of “certain” citizens as well as the rapid spread of religious dogma. Both the U.S. and Australia are current testing grounds for these outcomes.

    • D_Air1@lemmy.mlEnglish
      14·
      7 days ago

      Or all of the above while still not being “as secure and private as promised”.

    • Tony Bark@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      21·
      7 days ago

      Five seems to be the most plausible. Although knowing how shit corporate security is, I foresee a mix of three and four being common.

    • Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish
      14·
      6 days ago

      In theory, it isn’t hard to make it work, give everybody born on the same day a specific UUID and use that to authenticate with a database if it is true or false. Store the ID somewhere where the person has access to (ID/Passport/Digital passport etc) and it should be enough. Get IT persons and accountants to regularly audit it for security and if they keep logs/don’t have UUID’s per person etc.

      But that’s not how it seems to work for the UK at this time

  • queueBenSis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    66·
    7 days ago

    these laws are all about control and tracking what you do online. they make the internet MORE dangerous, because (as with everything the government restricts or bans) there will be a black market, which is always more dangerous and exposes people to more things than they were looking for in the first place. you think dark web providers are gonna make you upload your id to stay compliant? no, they’re gonna continue anonymously operating through TOR and serve up some very questionably sourced content to those teens that are searching “boobs” and can no longer access pornhub

    • G4Z@feddit.ukEnglish
      13·
      7 days ago

      Fuck it, let’s get back to something like the way it was.

      Anonymous, amateur, just slightly hard to access to keep the mouth breathers out.

      • xiwi@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        9·
        7 days ago

        There’s like a gazillion porn sites on the clearnet though, I can’t imagine them being able to track then all

        • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.onlineEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          I am aware of many, I am just saying looking at the dark web is not a good idea because… well… OK we’re all adults here. That’s where all the CP is and I have no interest in seeing that shit.

          • RepleteLocum@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            3·
            6 days ago

            That’s a kinda not true tho. There is a fuck ton of cp on the clear web. The only thing I can say, is that Twitter used to have a lot of spam posts with links to cp.

            • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.onlineEnglish
              1·
              6 days ago

              I actively avoid those. I used to go on the chan forums but after seeing people just posting random attachments and someone saying ‘get that kiddie shit out of here’ before it stayed up for a while I turned tail and ran from those and never looked back.

        • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          There is so much of it on the internet in general that you can’t really do much about it. On top of the fact it is still all over torrent websites as well.

        • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          7 days ago

          If a government agency cant find them, they will be very difficult for average users to find as well

      • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        7 days ago

        That’s what this is going to become. And that’s another point to this. They can just go after people using the dark net claim it was for kiddie porn even if it wasn’t. the masses will just believe them.

  • npcknapsack@lemmy.caEnglish
    17·
    7 days ago

    Sucks, because it’s going global and we can’t seem to stop it. I’m fine with laws to age gate in terms of a button you click. If some kid is willing to say they’re 15… well, let’s make sure people are treating them as a 15 year old. But… making everyone deal with real verification is at best going to further entrench big business, and at worst, destroy the internet we love. And it raises the question: are trans teenagers talking to each other now creating adult content because the UK hates trans people?

    • Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      For porn and games etc. that should be enough yes, but for online gambling, opening stock market accounts etc we do need actual verification, but there are tons of methods of doing it so that the site only gets a true or false (18 or above) and the government gets obfuscated URL’s so that the government doesn’t know what you visited.

      • npcknapsack@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        If I’m opening a stock market account, I’m trusting them with generating my tax receipts! If I don’t feel comfortable trusting them to hold my personal data directly, I probably should choose a different brokerage…

        Edit: Anyways, I’m annoyed enough that everyone has gone to phone based 2 factor that requires me to buy a phone and keep it on a cell network, so you can imagine how much I despise even an easier version of this.

        • Vinstaal0@feddit.nlEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          After making the comment, I realised that stockbrokers need full KYC anyway.

          You can use OTP codes without a phone, since you can buy OTP keychains. Which don’t require any form of internet connection, same with the physical Passkey’s.

      • npcknapsack@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        Canada currently has a bill looking to do the same thing. AFAIK, Australia’s already passed one, many US states are looking at them individually. The EU is looking at frameworks for it. I suppose there will be some places that won’t, but this is increasingly looking like what governments have decided to do, and rather than geofencing, once a large number of money-making territories want this, I think most corporations will do it globally, and smaller sites simply won’t be able to run.

  • SkyHeart@lemmy.zipEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    Man… When I was younger I used to fake my age, I know that some kid’s still going to find a way to bypass the system like giving their parent’s verification IDs or something…

  • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zoneEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    What is it with Neo-Liberal governments and implementing over-reaching state controls that will eventually grant a tyrant unprecedented levels of control over public life?

    • Flocklesscrow@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Because they want to privatize all aspects of living so that a handful of exorbitantly wealthy people can build larger hoards. There’s no end to it; it’s a mental disease, enabled by Capitalism and the death of real Labor laws and rights.

      Every industry should have unions that actively work to dismantle owner authoritarianism, but for 40 years Boomers have been paving the way for every awful piece of shit “business owner” to have some idolized place at the top of our society. And of course, the knock-on effect of that over time is that the pieces of shit have carved into the legislative and political arenas that provided even a modicum of worker/commoner protections. The digital divide is just a coefficient on the slippery slope.

  • jpablo68@infosec.pubEnglish
    11·
    7 days ago

    Well time to sell thumbdrives to teenagers filled with “tutorials.mp4” and “online class.mp4” lol.

  • SuperCub@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    I mean, schools (k-12) pretty easily blacklist websites you can access, not sure why parents can’t just do that if they want as well.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      Because it was meant as a “soft ban”. First you make it troublesome to access porn, but also blame the providers if kids are circumventing it in any shape or form (no section 230-esque protections). This, alongside with payment processors, act as a chokehold on the industry, and also on the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole if you can read between the lines. The long game is to make it unpopular enough in a few years, that it can be easily outlawed.

    • Tony Bark@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      The amount of parental controls available now really give parents little to no room for excuses.

  • masterofn001@lemmy.caEnglish
    2871·
    7 days ago

    It is not age verification.

    It is privacy invading, morality policing, de-anonymizing, state surveillance.

    Nothing less.

    PS. If you want to download a video from a site that doesn’t have a download button, use the Inspect feature (right click on the page, not the video, and click inspect)

    *On the Network tab - Sort by size. Reload page. Find the video. Open the video in new tab. It will be just the video. Right click and save as, or click the download button, or click the 3 dot menu button and select download.

    On Firefox you can often bypass this entirely by shift + right click. And should see a save video as option. If not, the inspect feature works the same.

    For hls/TS videos (m3u8 streams), if you reallllly want, you can copy the link for the stream and use VLC to convert the stream to a file.

    This also often lets you download at higher resolution than they offer to download.

    Yes, I porn.

    *forgot Network tab

    And thanks for all the suggestions. I’d rather not install browser plugins if I can do it without. CLI tools are cool though. The less I need to install the better.