To think we should block porn as they do in France...

[jobhunter7]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10349501/Major-porn-sites-BLOCKED-France-unless-ensure-users-18.html

The law is mostly complied with because there is a social consensus that it's mostly fair and that not obeying it is wrong.

This rather depends on the law.

Murder, yes. But millions of people break the law by speeding. And taking drugs. And pirating music / films / illegally streaming sports matches.

If society looks at a law and decides it's not fair and that there's no harm in breaking it, guess what people will do?

Sure, you may have a minority who would change their behaviour, but the majority would not. And sexual desire and sheer curiosity are powerful forces, if you hadn't already noticed!

The law is mostly complied with because there is a social consensus that it's mostly fair and that not obeying it is wrong.

It's already illegal for minors to watch porn. It doesn't stop them doing it though, does it? What will stop them is proper enforcement!

Drugs are illegal, but that doesn't stop people. Likewise teenagers who smoke, drink and have underage sex.

The reality is that people will break laws if they think they can get away with it, whether it's parking on double yellow lines, speeding, shoplifting, common assault, etc.

The "moral compass" is very different for different people. Yes, some people will comply with every law, but I'd say the majority will have their own idea as to which laws to comply with and which to ignore.

That's why proper enforcement is an absolute necessity. If a law isn't going to be enforced then it needs to be scrapped.

Hell no, it’s up to parents to ensure their children are viewing content suitable for their age. As a grown adult I will watch what I want, when I want. We don’t need to be babied.

@HereticFanjo

Porn is destroying healthy relationships between men and women. Teenage boys are learning to see girls and women as holes to be filled and bodies to be choked, not as actual humans they can have loving relationships with. I'm so sad at all of it. It is time for real action to be taken.

Based on what exactly? Any citation? Or just more MN hsyteria from Daily Mail click bait headlines.

I have no real side to this argument, if people get off on it crack on I say, not for me personally but lot of my female friends enjoy it as part of their healthy sex life.

At the end of the day, the genie is out of the bottle and there's no way to put it back.

Even if porn sites were somehow blocked to under 18s, there's nothing to stop teenagers sharing pictures/videos between them via email, social media, text, etc (or the old fashioned way of passing dirty mags around). Kids will get hold of the material if they want to. Just like they get hold of booze, cigarettes and drugs!

The real answer, instead of ineffective and unenforceable bans, is to concentrate on education and support, to give the teenagers the "tools" to say no, whether it's porn, drugs, booze, underage sex, alcohol or any of the other vices that can ruin a teenagers' life!

You can block it at home via your router but of course that doesn't stop access via 4G if your kids have a mobile phone.

I think there was meant to be age verification rules under the Digital Economy Act. The Online Safety Bill covers a lot of this stuff but not sure how enforceable any of it is. It's worth trying though.

@SweetPetrichor

Hell no, it’s up to parents to ensure their children are viewing content suitable for their age. As a grown adult I will watch what I want, when I want. We don’t need to be babied.

You would still be able to - just have to prove age. I can't really see the issue.

We don't let teens just buy alcohol etc because they can circumvent it.

This sort of attempt to block things is pointless. As countless others have said it takes seconds to fire up a VPN. Unless all countries introduce the same legislation - or even more unlikely, all porn providers agree to introduce age verification for all users - rules like this are doomed to fail.

Plus they could actually make things worse. Right now, if Mr X goes onto a porn site without using a VPN his activities are logged and stored by his ISP. If he's venturing onto sites where illegal porn (animals, kids, extreme violence etc.) is shared, that information is logged and can be used by the police. If he gets into the habit of using a VPN (which, to be fair, only the uneducated and idiotic aren't using already) it becomes that much harder to trace his activities.

Of course most people accessing illegal stuff will be using a VPN already - but better to catch a few of them than none.

*I have no real side to this argument, if people get off on it crack on I say, not for me personally but lot of my female friends enjoy it as part of their healthy sex life.

There is plenty of evidence unfortunately that porn is harmful. Why do you think there has been such an upsurge in prosecutions for murder where the defendant claims it happened during sex? Is it just coincidence that more and more porn presents choking as part of normal sex?

*You would still be able to - just have to prove age. I can't really see the issue.

We don't let teens just buy alcohol etc because they can circumvent it.*

That argument doesn't work because it's decades since I was ID'd for alcohol. If all alcohol purchases required ID then that might be more relevant, but they don't.

Plus ID checks for alcohol aren't logged. The checkout person in Tesco has no idea of who I am or what I'm into, they don't take a copy of my ID and put it into a database to create a detailed history of my tastes (that's what Clubcard's for).

That argument doesn't work because it's decades since I was ID'd for alcohol. If all alcohol purchases required ID then that might be more relevant, but they don't.

Eh? That's because they can see you are not a minor! Online is different.

Absolutely yes!! It's doing untold damage to children

I’m not sure the ‘people wouldn’t do it because you’ve made it illegal’ argument really stands up if you look at countries where the internet is censored.

I’d be surprised if the sites involved didn’t know this was coming since I think they’ve been required to have stronger age restrictions for a while. Which means they’ve already made a decision that being blocked will lose them less revenue than putting in strict age controls and ID processes.

The only way to block porn would be for people who literally go through every webpage and white list it if it was porn-free

There are products that claim to block unsuitable content but they only work as long as kids don't swap tips or Google how to get around X filter. It's like when parents track their kid's location. It's really easy to fake a location yet many believe their kids are safe because they put too much trust in the technology.

I'm not saying kids should watch porn because it's such a big beast that it's unavoidable but parents should be aware that the protections that are in place are not nearly as good as they think.

I don't think anyone is saying that porn is not harmful

What they are saying is that measures such as this don't work - I mean, what difference is getting just 5 sites to put on (unspecified, probably unworkable) age restrictions really going to do? Other that provide false assurance, which has a pretty important unintended consequence of taking the focus off education, supervision and making best use of device based filter (which would block readily identifiable sites such as thus anyway me if parents bothered to install them and check periodically for circumventions)

And yes, a law that cannot be enforced is a bad law. No detection, no consequences, no change in behaviour, except perhaps some people wrongly thinking that there is a worthwhile protection in place when it is really no such thing

Based on a career working with young men and women through to their adulthood. Based on significant online interactions in gaming and other communities. Based on therapeutic work. The language many young men use to talk about their relationships and desires when safely anonymous would horrify most people. I used to think like you too. I don't anymore. I think we are creating a generation of young men whose first sexual interactions with women are not in their own imaginations but on screen. In a significant percentage of these, women are degraded or at best treated like receptacles. They are dehumanised. There has been significant research and therapists have been ringing alarm bells for the last decade or more at the number of young men coming to them in distress because they are unable to have a sexual relationship with any physical woman in front of them because they don't look like the pornstars they are used to viewing.

And what is the impact on women? You're only attractive if your body is hairless, fake tanned and your lips are stuffed with fillers. You're vanilla unless you're willing to do anal, be choked, be slapped. Young women are growing up being told this is what a normal sex life looks like. This is their baseline. And then we wonder at the massive rise in the number of young women wanting to identify as men. To no longer face the pressure of being walking sex dolls or prey animals.

Your female friends may, like me, be old enough to have grown up in a time when porn existed in magazines up on high shelves. It is a very different world for our 12 to 20s now. I know because I've worked with them for twenty plus years. Believe it's all harmless fun if you choose. I did once upon a time. I don't anymore. I don't know how we put the genie back in the bottle though.

100% agree. Porn is toxic misogyny. Well done France.

I find myself wondering if this particular type of porn is an output or an outcome of something else going on societally, rather than the catalyst of the problem.

Gay porn, for example, does not seem to carry the same overwhelming amount of violence and degradations as straight porn. I'm not saying that all gay porn is sweetness and light, and that you can't find porn of men being choked, degraded and so on. Of course you can. And yes, some young men are coerced into performing in gay porn, as young women are with straight porn. (It's hardly a shining light industry for good working conditions, whoever's doing the shagging.) But choking etc is not the first thing you see when you land on a gay pornsite homepage. Flip between straight and gay homepages on Pornhub, you'll be amazed at the difference.

So I wonder if the question is more this: what is happening that straight men are searching overwhelmingly for increasingly violent pornography, or why is it that increasingly violent pornography is being targeted at straight men? Why is this? Who benefits? Who is making money off this? How could it be de-escalated?

I think it's a more complex and nuanced situation than anything that would be solved by banning anything, to be honest. But I must admit I don't know what that answer is.

Stupid idea have people never heard of vpns? Also pushes towards the home made porn which isn't available on the big sites of which there is no regulation.

I guess what I'm saying is; does the porn beget the culture, or does the culture beget the porn?

@HereticFanjo

Based on a career working with young men and women through to their adulthood. Based on significant online interactions in gaming and other communities. Based on therapeutic work. The language many young men use to talk about their relationships and desires when safely anonymous would horrify most people. I used to think like you too. I don't anymore. I think we are creating a generation of young men whose first sexual interactions with women are not in their own imaginations but on screen. In a significant percentage of these, women are degraded or at best treated like receptacles. They are dehumanised. There has been significant research and therapists have been ringing alarm bells for the last decade or more at the number of young men coming to them in distress because they are unable to have a sexual relationship with any physical woman in front of them because they don't look like the pornstars they are used to viewing.

And what is the impact on women? You're only attractive if your body is hairless, fake tanned and your lips are stuffed with fillers. You're vanilla unless you're willing to do anal, be choked, be slapped. Young women are growing up being told this is what a normal sex life looks like. This is their baseline. And then we wonder at the massive rise in the number of young women wanting to identify as men. To no longer face the pressure of being walking sex dolls or prey animals.

Your female friends may, like me, be old enough to have grown up in a time when porn existed in magazines up on high shelves. It is a very different world for our 12 to 20s now. I know because I've worked with them for twenty plus years. Believe it's all harmless fun if you choose. I did once upon a time. I don't anymore. I don't know how we put the genie back in the bottle though.

This post was a response to @fromdownwest for some reason it didn't quote.

Could it be set up so that you need a credit card to access sites, even when they are free? I think you need to be 18 in most countries to have a credit card. I am not techy, so don't know if this is practical.

@rifling

*I have no real side to this argument, if people get off on it crack on I say, not for me personally but lot of my female friends enjoy it as part of their healthy sex life.

There is plenty of evidence unfortunately that porn is harmful. Why do you think there has been such an upsurge in prosecutions for murder where the defendant claims it happened during sex? Is it just coincidence that more and more porn presents choking as part of normal sex?

Lots of things are harmful for some people but harmless for others, such as alcohol, smoking, drugs, etc. That's why we have rules/laws and enforcement, to CONTROL rather than eliminate.

@Deadringer

Could it be set up so that you need a credit card to access sites, even when they are free? I think you need to be 18 in most countries to have a credit card. I am not techy, so don't know if this is practical.

Children can "borrow" their parent's credit cards, more so if there's no charge, so the parent would never know their card had been used.

@Deadringer

Could it be set up so that you need a credit card to access sites, even when they are free? I think you need to be 18 in most countries to have a credit card. I am not techy, so don't know if this is practical.

As long as that isn’t the law globally, there will always be countries where porn is freely accessible. And given that a VPN takes less than a minute to set up, it’s like trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol.