To think face scanning for age verification for porn is a great idea?

[AdamRyan]

The Government are considering how to prevent children from accessing porn and are looking into face scanning technology.

I think this is a good idea as we already use facial recognition for verification on banks etc and if people are adults they should not feel embarassed about their choice to watch porn so no problem.

Privacy campaigners are worried about potential for blackmail though. Wish they were as worried about men illegally uploading films of their OHs having sex with them....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67615719

IABU - I think porn doesn't need age verification/existing verification is good enough

IANBU - this is a good idea

It’s really alarming how freely some are willing to give away the scant few freedoms we have.

By the way, you should never access public WiFi without a VPN so the government will be opening everyone up to malware and malicious data theft if they found a way to ban them. Although that would be pretty hard anyway seeing as VPNs tend to be based in places with strong privacy laws and the best ones can be paid for with cash so there’s not even a financial link to the user.

Fantastic idea, the scammers and blackmailers will have a field day once the data is stolen. You can safely bet money this will happen! They can use the photo to do some really outrageous deep fake porn, and then email you to share them and see how much you appreciate them, and how much money you'll give them NOT to distribute them all over the Internet 😂

I trust the porn industry even less than a Tory government, and I am sure there are strong links between them and the hacking/scamming communities

Absolute garbage idea. If you give a site permission to use your camera on your device all hell will break loose. I already have those spam emails saying that I better pay up or they'll forward on the pictures of me masturbating in front of my computer. Which I've always thought quite amusing since my laptop hasn't got a camera.

Most porn is violent and misogynistic. Google big boobs or sexy girls or what ever a quite innocent 14 year old would and tell me it doesn't bring up some poor lass being fucked up the arse and spunked over and basically being a series of holes to be fucked hard.

This. Terrible idea!

Anything that makes porn harder to access for kids is a good think in my opinion. While boys watched the odd porn film or swapped the odd magazine in the days before online porn it was nothing like the access they have now from a very young age.

Porn is overall harmful and morally wrong, its is exploitative of the actors, it is rife with abuse, drugs and violence, it sets up young people with harmful ideas and expectations about sex, it harms relationships and peoples sexual health, it offers an easy form of escapism that can be highly addictive and ruin lives in the same way any addiction can.

I'd like it to be banned but I know that would be impossible even if they ever did do that I think it shouldn't be so accepted or even celebrated.

Anything that makes porn harder to access for kids is a good think in my opinion.

Maybe parents should start parenting rather than expecting the rest of us to lose freedoms.

What the freedom to partake in the exploitation of women? If your not using porn then you have nothing to worry about and if you are using porn then you should perhaps rethink your personal values and stop being part of the problem.

YABVVVVVVU.

I am not saying the porn isn't a problem. I am saying the solution is both non-workable and just bad.

It is generally good when people use VPNs, it makes the normal usage of internet safer.

I have no interest in porn but I care very much for loss of freedom and privacy.

@rdlong I'm guessing you have no imagination when it comes to just how many possibilities there are, for things which would make porn harder to access but which wouldn't be good things.

We could become a totalitarian theocracy with online and offline morality police, or get rid of all our technology in a luddite orgy of destruction, or live under a pseudocommunist dictatorship with extreme information control and gulags or death sentences for anyone caught smuggling in media, or remove everyone's eyes at age five… or try to make everyone scan their faces into a computer every time they want to access legal adult content.

Oh please, get over yourself, an age test which used facial recognition needn't be the end to all personal freedom, after all the tech already exists and is on many devices and apps why are you not up in arms about that?

People who love to partake in the exploitation of women are very triggered at the thought of being seen accessing it, if that were me I'd have to wonder if I were actually living with any integrity at all or perhaps people just don't care about that as long as they can get their jolly's at someone else's expense?

And? Make it illegal and punishable in a way that prevents this. Make porn too hot to handle rather than some silly little bit of fun and they will stop. It might encourage some of the more desperate men to try harder as well

@rdlong OK, have got over myself. Weirdly, though, I still think that there are some things that would make porn harder to access but which are bad things.

How about you get over yourself and recognise that your kneejerk instinctual "I don't care about your civil liberties, whatever it takes to protect ma kiddies, I'll sign us all up" response is an absolute gift to those looking for a way to get you to agree to whatever shit they want to bring in. You're being naive.

It needn’t be the end to all personal freedom, but it makes it all more likely to be.

You are hopelessly shortsighted if you don’t see how easily this will lead to the loss of far more privacy.

Choosing to use facial recognition instead of a phone passcode is worlds apart from being forced to use facial recognition. Starting with the ‘kids exposed to porn so we all have to lose some freedom/privacy for The Greater Good’ angle is an easy way to normalise the practice and reduce resistance when they want to introduce it elsewhere. Social credit system anyone?

Its not just about kids its about women being exploited and about boys who get addicted to it and then go on to abuse women themselves.

The tech already exists and is in use on loads of phones and apps, why weren't you up in arms about that? Its funny how you only seem to care when it threatens you anonymous use of something that inflicts violence and harm on women. Time to take a long hard look at yourself it may be convenient for you to hide behind your civil liberties argument or to cast me as some prudish mummy but I see right though your arguments.

"forced to use facial recognition"

@crispcreambun yes to access porn, if you don't want to do that then don't access porn, no problem.

I DON’T WATCH PORN ffs.

You’re ignoring how easy it is to get around anyway. VPNs, TOR, and the fact that foreign websites are under no obligation to comply.

And you’re deliberately, wilfully ignoring the rest of what I said—the government implementing this for porn is the back door tactic that will make it easier for them to use anywhere else. And they will. We’re already borderline dystopia with women being questioned for taking photos of ribbons and stickers, and non-crime hate incidents being recorded by police against people for words on the web. You might be happy to live in a China social credit situation but I’m fucking not.

@rdlong you have no idea what I've been arguing against, where, or how, or for how long. You also have no idea about my personal viewing habits. I know it's convenient for your argument to fantasise that I'm a lascivious porn-hooked perv hiding behind spurious civil liberties arguments I've latched on to five minutes ago because I need moar porn, and if you want to argue with that version of me that exists only in your own head, that's your prerogative. But you do look kind of silly.

And the thing is, it's irrelevant how many more groups of society you can come up with who may be harmed in some way by accessible hardcore pornography — the point is, the measures being suggested are not only extreme and draconian (and vulnerable to mission drift), they're also ludicrously impractical and ultimately likely to be utterly ineffective for the purported objective. It's like trying to prevent a cold by punching yourself in the face.

It already exists and is in use so they can use it anyway if they don't already. What is your solution to the serious harm and violence porn causes then?

Not in the way you seem to think it is. It’s currently used in a very specific way for convenience (so your phone and apps know it’s you accessing your account—and the apps don’t actually get the facial data, only your phone). And it’s entirely optional. The government can’t make foreign websites implement it. At best they can ISP block them, but there are already easy workarounds to that.

And it’s not my job to come up with a solution. But I’m pretty sure making it marginally more difficult at best for people on one island to find and view extreme material isn’t going to somehow destroy the entire industry.

But the problem with kids seeing this material comes down to parents not monitoring or restricting internet usage. Much like the micro-transaction charges headlines several years ago.

@crispcreambun come back to me when you have a better idea then, but your happy to let other suffer because you're paranoid, fine you do you.

Path to hell is paved by good intentions.
And no tool will remain single purpose.

What you see specifically as a way to limit access to porn from mainstream providers, the very same thing would immediately mutate into limiting women's access to abortion information in US, Poland, ...

lol. Lmao even. I already answered your question.

You’re happy to restrict everyone else’s freedoms and erode our privacy because you can’t be bothered to parent properly. It’s not paranoia when governments have a history of being rights-grabbing fuckwits. And none of this will make one iota of difference to the porn and trafficking industry OR the ability of kids to find it if their parents can’t be fucked to do their job.

It's hardly paranoia to think that a law making porn websites SCAN USERS' FACES has the potential to go a bit tits-up, from a privacy/security/pushing people towards even dodgier porn providers POV.