Any thoughts on the porn ban?

I'm with the posters who say it will just lead to complacency, people will assume the block actually blocks everything dodgy when it can't possibly hope to, leaving now children vulnerable to seeing some horrific stuff.

Better to spend time and money on educating childern and parents, except it's easier towns cheaper to just point at the ISPs and make it all their fault.

Restrictions won't work. It's all bluster. The internet reacts to censorship by going round it - it was designed that way.

As for precautions in the home, I installed software to protect my DS from porn but they were shown porn by other children whose parents weren't so careful.

Governments can't eradicate porn. We have to educate our children about it, and before they go to secondary school.

TheInebriati hits the nail on the head:

Porn and prostitution are driven by entitlement and misogyny. This govt has no will to tackle misogyny and there is no effective, well informed opposition.

It will make little positive difference, any positive difference will be overshadowed by negative difference.
For every site willing to adopt these measures, there will be 100 less secure, less legal sites that feature less legal videos that won't add the measures.

Saskia

You sound like the sort of parent who could talk to your kids about this stuff and deal with any problems.

The ones who use tech as a free babysitter are not going to be so responsible, either through fecklessness and/or the stresses of their lives.

I'd also say, it's not just porn. Parents who give their children unlimited access to the internet are also leaving them vulnerable to other nasty stuff, like grooming and bullying. They need to be educated about how to deal with that kind of stuff too before they are confronted with it.

I went to a conference about this a few years ago. It was reiterated time and time again by American IT security the only way would be if it was a global thing. But the issue then involved local laws, which would be pointless as you can change your location.

No amount of good parenting will prevent that scenario. How your DC respond to that: that is when your good parenting comes into play.

That's it - it's why you need a two-pronged approach of monitoring usage, and education.

It would be great if there was quick fix, but there really isn't. It's no different to any of the other things we have to educate children about - alcohol, road safety, healthy eating. Even if legislation works, it can only do so much, the rest is up to parents.

My guess is that one of the most likely places for a child to first see porn (or even nonconsensual nudity) is on a classmate's phone. Even if the image or video isn't forwarded to your child's phone (because you refused to give DC a phone, or you give an old-school text-only brick, or you lock down everything on their smartphone) it will be shown to them on someone else's screen - the class bully, the class clown, the class attention-seeker. No amount of good parenting will prevent that scenario. How your DC respond to that: that is when your good parenting comes into play.

If it would actually bloody work, I would be for anything that lessened the amount of kids having access to violent porn. However, children/teens today are so much more tech savvy than us (generally, of course some adults know what they are doing 100% too!) so..they will get round it easily. I mean, this is embarassing but my laptop started going dodgy as hell a few days back and I was googling to try and find out the problem and fix it for at least 2 hours, teen DSS walked in, asked whats wrong, had it sorted in a few seconds. IT frightens me sometimes, how much they know about technology compared to me. Yeah computers were around when I was growing up, we did get dial up before a lot of people because my dad worked in technology, but I did not understand any of it the way kids today seem to. I have a fast typing speed (many typos tho!) and thats it. I can just about understand torrents to download and how to go where I want. But anything else, not really.

I went through an exercise where I deliberately tried to block all porn from getting into my house. Not that I'm against porn, but I wanted to see if it was possible.

This included setting up a blocking proxy server using constantly updating blacklists, reconfiguring my DNS to use family friendly name resolution, forcing google and bing to always turn on safe search, etc. I tried to be as comprehensive as I could, and I am very IT literate.

I failed.

In order for this to work you have to whitelist every site you want to access - this is impossible to do, plus they would have to ban VPNs at the same time.

Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, duckduckgo were some of the most obvious routes to porn. I'm sure there a literally millions of others. Then there is the TOR and the dark web, and I definitely don't want my kids to go there.

This plan is stupid and impossible and should be scrapped immediately. Education and pro-active parenting is the key.

Also, if your children have smartphones then all bets are off.

Regardless, it's not the porn that I'm unduly worried about - it's the violence that I want stopped. I chose to try and block porn because that is what this government is obsessed with.

Its like trying to tackle the evils of drink driving by introducing prohibition. Drink driving was reduced because we managed to make it socially unacceptable to drink and drive, and made it socially acceptable to be the designated driver.

Porn and prostitution are driven by entitlement and misogyny. This govt has no will to tackle misogyny and there is no effective, well informed opposition.

Add to this the fact that a generation has been raised to believe they are entitled to the internet; half the population don't want to learn how to manage tech and the other half are motivated to learn so they can bypass any restrictions.

The porn ban is going to fail, and the only way the govt can deal with the result is to force the ISP's to monitor what they deliver.
So imo, their long term plan is to go the Chinese route and have a State controlled internet.

MockerstheFeManist

They could if they wanted to. I did. It wasn't popular but it wasn't my job to be popular. I worked in tech at the time, almost every parent I worked with did the same. It was mobiles for calls and texts (and then only from secondary school age), and tablets, pcs, laptops were only allowed in main rooms. And the knowledge that your parents knew how those devices worked better than you did. Plus, I would actually speak to my children about what constituted healthy relationships.

The problem is all the other parents who claim ignorance of technology then hand over hundreds of pound worth of technology without putting any restraints in place.

It's no coincidence that we have a generation of young people who mirror what they have seen in porn. That is down to lax parenting. And I realise I'll be jumped on for saying that, but meh.

Parents need to stop giving their children devices which can access the internet.

Good luck with that.

If we wanted to do something about it I think we could but I think nobody gives a fuck.

Yawn. No, what people are saying is that restrictions will not work.

And yes, we could do something about it, but that involves educating children as I suggested above, not introducing measures which will actually make things worse.

Reading through some of these replies it comes across as tho' some don't want any restrictions to be put in place.

If we wanted to do something about it I think we could but I think nobody gives a fuck. Just like the prostitution.

when age appropriate, "safe" porn sites need to be available so they don't go looking and come across extreme stuff

I don't think that is a thing for children.

Parents need to stop giving their children devices which can access the internet. They need to stop letting their children have unsupervised access to the internet - computers, tablets etc. only in main parts of the house. But most of all, they need to learn how the internet works, and how to check and or restrict what their children can see. That is doable, but too many parents almost take pride in their lack of knowledge and expect other people to do that job for them.

They also need to talk to their children about sex and what constitutes a loving relationship, and why they are unlikely to see that reflected in porn.

Concur with those who think the law is a waste of time and, most likely, counter-productive.

It's cheaper than doing what's actually needed: which is the investment of large sums of money into investigating and prosecuting the possession and distribution of illegal material.

The problem is that the politicians don't seem to know how the internet works. A ban/verification system will only affect legitimate U.K. businesses who are more likely to be compliant in the first place. The foreign sites are still very much accessible. Parents need to check up on their kids and when age appropriate, "safe" porn sites need to be available so they don't go looking and come across extreme stuff

Sri Lanka has turned off the internet - more precisely, social media sites, which for many people seems to be synonymous with communication online. I predict lots of negative consequences, some of which will be vociferously predicted now, and some of which, in a year's time, will prove to have been rather unexpected. Ditto porn block.

And don't forget Amber Rudd who wanted everyone to leave the escrow key under the mat so the govt could get in.

It shows how politicians are not fit for the age of technology. They have an embarrassing lack of knowledge about how this stuff works.

Same with the law around online electoral campaigning. Our legislators have not a clue what they're doing.

And the registration process will mean the 'respectable' sites of the Secretaries-in-Suspenders variety will take a massive hit because men will not want to have a porn registration on their files, so all you will be left with will be the abuse.

I don't believe that nothing at all can be done

No one ever does. That’s why this idea keeps being brought back by politicians and we have to keep having threads about whyit’s A pointless idea and won’t work. Attempting to regulate the internet never has been and never will be the answer.

Have any of you heard of pirate bay? The biggest, most famous, explicitly pirate site online? That is now almost decade old? They prosecuted the creator, they prosecuted the ISP, they tried to block it in the UK but the site is still accessible, rich and fecund with torrents of all descriptions, including porn?

I remember when all porn sites had age verification or demanded credit card details. It certainly stopped noone acquiring porn. But hey, if the government wants to put the money back into the hands of criminals and the porn back onto toxic, hacker ridden, info stealing pirate sites, it can go ahead and do it. It'll force young people to learn more about the technology they currently seem to take for granted.

Mockers is right. The problem is the demand for porn, not the suppliers. That is where efforts should be focused.