To think age verification on porn sites coming in this month is a good thing?

[blackframegame]

I am not against porn out of prudishness. I do take issue against it on the grounds that it harms the women (and at times the men) who work in that industry. The way it portrays women and the kind of violent sexual content that is normalised in porn. The way it can impact on the people who watch it is also problematic in that it can harm their relationships and skew expectations of sex and women in harmful ways.

The way things stand at the moment it is easy for any child with an internet connection to access porn at a few clicks and children as young as seven have viewed hard core porn. We are also seeing increasing rates of porn addiction in adolescents and young men reporting E.D. and sexual dysfunction with girlfriends and wives.

The new laws propose to make porn harder to access by demanding porn sites use age verification for users in the UK (France also has these laws). So that you will need to prove you are 18 or above to access pornography online. There has been a huge outcry about these laws due to come into force at the end of this month that it puts users at risk or that it will be easy for children to get round the age verification.

Personally I think that it is a good move, it shouldn't be so easy to access this material, we wouldn't sell a adult film or magazine to a child so why let them freely access this content online? Adults if they wish to access this material will be able to either by use of a VPN or by using ID. Some children may also find their way around these rules but if it cuts the ease of access and the amount of porn available to children and young teenagers then it still has a great deal of merit.

Is it so unreasonable to think this is a good law?

Dont disagree with you In principle but this won’t work people will just use a VPN

Yes many people will but is a 7 or 8 year old going to be able to install or pay for a VPN on their device? It will help I think.

Who would disagree that this is a good thing???

Let me introduce you to reddit!

It is a good thing. Yes people can get a VPN, but I see this more around stopping young children accidentally viewing content when sharing devices at school or deciding to type 'boobs' into Google out of curiosity.

@Optimustime Exactly that. Children and young teens shouldn't have unfettered access to that content.

Actually, I wonder how it will work in practice with Reddit, which hosts sexually explicit material. Will all existing and new users have to re-sign to their full Reddit accounts using ID? Even if they have no intention of viewing sexual content? If not, will it be up to individual subs, with volunteer mods, hosting sexual content to check ID before allowing a user to join their sub? Who will be policing all the hundreds of thousands of subs to decide whether what they contain is porn or not, or whether they’re checking ID?

I presume it’s this sort of thing which means a lot of people are skeptical about efficacy.

@ComtesseDeSpair I agree and I will be interested in how this will work. Currently I think you do at least need an account with an email to access reddit NSFW content which many children will not have so there is hopefully some barrier to that. It maybe that reddit will have to remove some of that content as they did a few years ago.

It all asks a big question of the internet giants, will they do the right thing or porn on reddit for example to large a share of their traffic and they can't lose that?

Either way the age verification is still a good thing.

While I agree with you about the negative effects of porn, it will be easy to get around thanks to free VPNs and people sending porn to each directly. I bet that it will be easy to use things like Google images, social media or similar to get around age verification because those sites aren’t porn sites- porn is amongst the content hosted.

I’ve also read many stories on here where parents have synced their kids devices to their email and the child ends up seeing their dad’s porn.

I think that considering how often hacking a happen, it would be highly risky to offer your data if it’s stored somewhere else. It’s bad enough with porn extortion already and a hacker knowing that a VIP looked at a certain site is payday for them.

I’m not saying that we should do nothing but I’m not convinced that it will make much difference apart from politicians being able to say that they tried.

I’m all for trying to restrict access so I’m glad it’s coming in. I’m skeptical that it will be that effective but I think it’s just one step in the journey.

Age verification is broadly a good thing in terms of an aim of preventing minors easily accessing porn, I agree; but it does raise wider privacy issues if all Reddit users are going to be required to provide ID to have an account. Do I want to give my ID to Reddit to keep my account because some of their content is sexual, when all I want to do on Reddit is yatter about backyard ducks, read true crime cases, and snark about fundies?

Expand Reddit to a plethora of other forums and user-moderated content hosters, and that’s a lot of platforms who are going to have access to our ID.

Well, I am against internet pornography. It's not driven by prudishness but the cascade of harms at the level of production and consumption. So, I'm good with anything that makes it more expensive to platform and anything that places additional barriers to watching.

What is a backyard duck?

Ducks which live in my back yard/garden.

It's a step in the right direction.

Oh lovely! Well at least it wasn't some niche porn sub Reddit.

you would be surprised

@hellesbells Just because some young kids will be able to do this doesn't mean it's a pointless effort. It will prevent a good amount of access especially for young kids.

You know what I'm surprised about, the number of adults who think that because some children might be able to negotiate this hurdle then the whole project is useless? Unless they mean to say that barriers to porn need to be more far cumbersome and effective, I'm all for that. Let's do that.

It seems like a good thing to me! Only about 25 years too late, mind you.

Years ago we had multiple discussions on Mumsnet about this. MNHQ decided to start a campaign along the same lines and, I kid you not, were persuaded to drop it by their own members. As I recall the "no" vote was led by some techy poster who insisted that it wouldn't work, would be counter-productive, and it would be pointless. All that was needed was for parents to know what their kids were up to on their phones doubtless they had a vested interest. And HQ backed down! Almost unbelievable.

I've found the old thread I'm talking about

here

and the third post in has links to other threads where it was widely discussed.

I just can't believe it's taken this long ...

Bellesa have now withdrawn access to UK residents. What about X, porn is absolutely rife on that site!

Honesty I am not arguing with you I think it’s a good thing, I also think that unfortunately it will make little or no difference

@hellesbells I suppose I am just hoping it will make some difference!

The porn industry and the addicts they pedal to