Porn age checks - Surely a good thing?

[Vimtolady]

Just read a ‘debate’ on the BBC News website about the pros and cons of age verification of porn websites. Weirdly I was verified for the first time myself last night (I am a porn user but not all the time) so was interested to read it.

j get that it was a debate but I honestly don’t see how anyone could object. Last night I wasn’t expecting to be verified but the process was simple, took about a minute and I don’t think I’d have easily been able to circumvent it. Obviously there are security concerns but no more so than with any other website.

I think these checks are great! My eldest DC is 13 so probably getting to (or at) the age when porn might become interesting to her, and this would make it much more difficult to access which would doubtless be a good thing, no?

Does anyone disagree?! I’d be interested to hear arguments against because I can’t really think of any and that makes me suspicious I’m being narrow minded.

The report I saw about this law said that 19% of teenage boys and 11% of teenage girls had viewed porn online

You're making the blocking at isp level sound more effective than it is. It isn't 100%

Even with the intro of age verification we're seeing, this will be a long road as we deal with the issue of vpns, and as we find sites that aren't classified as porn, contain porn.

I'm referring to services like steam, xbox etc which are shockingly aimed mostly at children and regularly contain porn..of varying weirdness.

And no amount of 'family safety' settings will block, because filters seem only to hide images if the publisher of the photo marked it as 'adult'..which they don't always.
And removal of the photo takes someone to report the image.. So it's often visible for a good few weeks.
Then the uploader/publisher account is deactivated, and they create a new account to start again.

I've complained multiple times to Microsoft, but the long and short of it is that the parent should be watching their child at all times when on xbox.
OK, that's fine.. But don't lull parents into a false sense of security with parental controls that don't live up to their promises.
Sometimes I spend time reporting images, but it's futile.

Ebay is another culprit.

I'm not sure how it can be dealt with, other than introducing a system where website users can report porn images on sites that aren't age verified, and it fines the website host heavily enough for them to be more proactive about checking the content they host.

On the other side:
I admit that the definition of harmful content is always changing and there's definitely a censorship risk
E.g would discussion around the trans debate have needed you to verify your id via bank details?. And would that have meant a lot of people wouldn't have entered the discussion for fear of repercussions?
Perhaps the Tavistock stuff would never have reached the conclusion it did (that it harmed children) if it hadnt had the level of discussion it had because people felt safer to air their views in anonymity.

Data leaks seem commonplace too

Overall I do feel like kids accessing porn is harmful enough that anyone who's content is wrongly blocked behind a age verification wall should be ok with the ability to appeal the decision and get the restriction removed.
Perhaps receiving compensation for any losses.

Ultimately, if all methods of circumventing the new rules were cut off.. Then the removal of porn from society (perhaps dying out, because no one wants to verify) would be a good thing for both porn consumers and porn products.

It's interesting that you talk of censorship by bringing in Tavistock when Banning Adult Content often harms and blocks spaces designed to HELP LGBTQ+ people rather than attack them

@skymagentatwo You've literally googled an answer.

What does the paper actually say? Rather than the abstract? They say they used only 1392 people in this survey, that was gathered from a third party. It includes written stuff too? Hardly conclusive...

So are you questioning the sample size and claiming the actual sample size used is not statistically reliable?

Also care to post which cited source of information the papers author used is not correct or you dispute? FYI all scientific papers use cited sources 🙄.

Also what are your opinions on the actual subject of the thread and do you think that the use of VPNs does not negate the implementation of these measures, if not why not?

Fairly recently there were various images of children being sexually abused on mumsnet, they were visible for a significant amount of time. Even more worrying is that MN encouraged users to share the content ffs.

Due to the way the net is set it accessing innapropropriate material isn’t actually that difficult, it wouldn’t be that unusual for a child with poor parents to search something fairly innocent that could bring up porn sites, cute pussy for example.

Well put. I could not agree more.

Yes good point but this is why i and plenty of others against children accessing porn, think blocking at the ISP level is the way forward.

I just googled cute pussy pictures, pictures readily on display, no age verification on several pages.

@jasflowers I just googled cute pussy pictures, pictures readily on display, no age verification on several pages.

If those images were banned, how would it be possible for young people to know what genitalia looks like apart from trying to imagine it from medical textbooks?

I think parents actively parenting their own children is the way forward.

Internet access should be supervised. I never accessed anything inappropriate because our computer was in the lounge and I could have been caught. Restrict and supervise childrens usage. This is your job.

Any child over about 10 is going to be perfectly capable of circumventing the block in minutes. ISP blocks are not going to happen because it would mean blocking legal traffic too.

The web is worldwide. Its just the UK that has this restriction. The Internet cannot and will not revolve around the whims of incompetent UK parents.

Age verification is already failing. It took me about 2 minutes to become irritated with it and bypass it.

All that will happen is it will drive porn and other adult material underground or into the deep web and minors will turn to the likes of Tor to access it. Believe me, that is by no means, safer.

Not entirely accurate re UK being only country with this restriction , Australia has much tougher rules, as for driving porn underground, will it? If you want to watch porn and for an adult that’s a personal choice and not illegal( mostly), then the age verification isn’t difficult, doesn’t cost and won’t really stop them, hopefully what it will stop is those who shouldn’t be accessing it doing so, but be honest, kids accessed porn long before the internet, it’s just become easier and the content far more graphic

No one with any sense is going to plug their details into a porn site. Age verification means that databases containing or processing this information will be targeted and frankly those sites weren't trustworthy to start with.

Sidestepping it is easy, is the point I'm trying to make. It takes seconds but does require you to use software that hides your point of origin. Pretty much any child old enough to be remotely curious will be able to do it but doing that will put them in close proximity to other unsavoury and unsafe materials.

I'd rather just supervise my kids than have them twatting about trying to access the deep Web. Luckily I've only got one old enough to be interested and I keep a close watch on his activities.

Kids will do peer to peer and share over WhatsApp. This happened to my then 11yo (over the pandemic) she got banned from having a phone for years. So no, I don’t think they’ll work anyway.

My ds is ashamed to sufferer from a horrible porn addiction in his teens. He wishes he never started. He's overcome it now

I like porn and I don't mind the checks at all OP I support them. However I will give it 10 mins and someone will find a way round it! They always do.

These checks are already failing

Either telling people they aren't old enough because they "look too young" via the face scan

Or being tricked by screen caps

Or already asking for ID for content that doesn't need ID

I was round it by 10 minutes past midnight on the 24th! 😆 Fuck all that for a lark. Its literally pointless. The people it was designed to protect are for the most part, some of the most tech savvy. If I can circumvent it so quickly, so can they.

I sawnon Reddit that it accepted a painted portrait of Dostoevsky on the cover of a book as proof of age. He would be about 203 if alive today so fair enough.

I have used porn a couple of times since the checks came in. Maybe it’s because when you’re using porn you have a one track mind and are less risk-aware than normal but I did put my details in and don’t regret it.

It’s obviously far from foolproof, but I’m not au fair with VPNs etc so if I couldn’t validate myself I think I’d just do it without the porn. I’m sure many people are the same.

i haven’t had anything that I’ve tried to access blocked apart from porn. So it seems less restrictive than the ‘adult content’ filter I used to have on my phone that Apple give as an option.

The issue isn’t porn.

it’s the rest of the internet. We’re going to lose access to Wikipedia. You have to put your ID in for Spotify!

I use the internet all day every day, for everything from music to socials to news sites to general interest to sports, including Wikipedia. Have been asked for my details twice, both for porn. Nothing else.

Plenty of people have been asked to submit ID for Spotify. It's disgusting.

History shows us that you don't usually lose all your rights immediately. It goes creep, creep, creep along with plenty of reassurances that this is all for your benefit

Not if Spotify is allowing kids access to
music that glorified violence, which I presume is what it’s about.