Starting today, UK adults will have to prove their age to access porn online. Experts warn that a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech and ultimately harm children and adults alike.
Who supports it? Fascists. It’s about controlling access to information and robbing the populace of privacy at the same time. An oppressive, authoritarian police state needs tools to maintain control. These are the tools.
It’s not “support”, it’s already been done in practice.
What they are finishing right now is the convenient way. To surveil 97% instead of 94%. And to make it official to reduce expenses.
And sorry, but “moderate leftists” are those who made it happen, first dreaming how on big centrally moderated platforms the “bad” speech and people will be censored (how irritating it was that in the free Web those people could write whatever they wanted) and theirs won’t be, and propaganda won’t flourish, and after that dreaming how they can demand loudly enough that the platforms would work for them and not for themselves.
I perfectly remember how people loving Steinbeck and expressing anarchist views would look at me like at an enemy for saying that Facebook, Twitter etc are bad and a trap, and such hierarchical systems can’t be good. That arrogant obnoxious “see, in the real society we collectively press for our rights and the rules are made and obeyed”, yes, I’ve met fools who told me things like that. Where’s your society now, bitch.
Age verification has it’s place online, but not for porn. That is just gonna push peopel to worse sites.
For gambling and stock market sites and the like I can understand it, but I would prefer if we wouldn’t need to send our ID to those sites. Heck if Valve would implement it I could actually gamble on steam again cause currently I cannot open a Tf2 crate …
That’s not age verification, that’s KYC (know your customer) which includes age verification. I agree, KYC has its place on the net, but this is definitely not it.
We’re at or reaching a tipping point where I’m not sure that’s true anymore.
Most people with kids now are (roughly) in their 20s-40s. At the older end of that range, you have some gen-xers who might have missed the boat on computer literacy, but by and large we’re talking about millennials and older gen-z at this point. Kids who grew up with the internet, probably very clearly remember their family getting their first computer if they didn’t already have one when they were born, had computer classes in school, etc.
And we’re running into an issue where younger Gen z and alpha in many cases are less computer literate in many ways. A lot of them aren’t really learning to use a computer so much as they are smartphones and tablets, and I’m not knocking how useful those devices can be, I do damn-near everything I need to do on my phone, but they are limited compared to a PC and don’t really offer as much of an opportunity to learn how computers work.
There’s a ton of exceptions to that of course, some of my millennial friends are still clueless about how to do basic things on a computer, and some children today are of course learning how to do anything and everything on a computer or even on a phone.
But overall, I don’t think there’s as much disparity in technological literacy between the children and parents of today as there was in previous generations, and in some ways that trend may have even reversed.
It’s the parents that wont face the fact that it’s them paying for their kids internet access.
Parents intentionally and deliberately pay for their kids to access this shit. But none of them want to accept that when it can all be someone elses fault.
There are SO MANY parents that are not willing to teach and monitor their kids online safety. I would even say most parents don’t take that responsibility themselves.
Totally in agreement. I think a bigger part of the issue is most people are completely tech illiterate. People can’t tell a computer from a monitor anymore and then we expect them to outsmart a kid with nothing better to do than stare at a screen for hours on end who will no doubt figure out ways around things. There has to be some feeling on the parents part of defeat. If only the politicians knew what the fuck they were doing we might get actual regulations for engineers to implement proper controls. The percentage of parents attempting to monitor their children appropriately while also having enough tech knowledge has to be low.
One of the biggest problems with human societies is that parents, by necessity, have their brains broken and, due to modern values/life, are under constant strain. Being a parent means (generally) the kid is priority 1, then there’s everything else. This is a necessary irrationality, but if this means you have to do the occasional genocide or violate someone else’s civil rights to ‘keep our kids safe’ then, by god, those people are just going to have to suck it up and die. Sometimes, if you have the time, you can talk some people around and remind them, one day their kids are going to have to live in society as one of those 'someone else’s and won’t always be their precious little baby, but almost no one has the time and energy for a more nuanced thought than ‘save the babies!’ much less if they also have to work 48 hours, commute 10 hours, and parent their kid(s) for 167 hours each week.
Parental controls for internet use have been around since the 90s. There are even some vintage porn sites that have been running since then that have ads for them. I know this. I saw them back in 1999 and 2000… when I was an underage guy looking at porn online.
It’s more like who supports this in theory vs. who supports this how it’s written and implemented.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for “boobs” and just get a million images of boobs. I’m not a parent, but I know my parents when I was a teenager would have loved something like this. Kids are sneaky and smart, and this is a blanket thing parents think will once again put porn behind a barrier.
In a perfect world, a system could very easily exist that would 1) allow for a super-secure government owned digital ID system that isn’t a surveillance nightmare, 2) that system use a hash to verify over 18 age anonymously in real time. That’s how it’s supposed to work with digital IDs - only the data you need to verify is displayed to a vendor. Over 18 is a binary yes/no - a full DOB or name isn’t even needed.
The government ID wallet or site would use a no-log system to generate a hash value for you when you ask for one. You ask your ID app or site for an age verification hash. You get one that’s valid for about 2 minutes. Copy, paste as needed. The site uses the hash to only know “is this person over 18 or not?” and nothing else. The ID system shouldn’t keep the logs of which site asked back to confirm “is this hash valid?” This is exactly as secure as going to a liquor store with your passport or ID card and having tape over the name, address, and doc number. It’s even better because your face is not displayed, and your actual DOB should not be displayed either.
However, in our present shitty reality, companies who are trying to get contracts for these systems can’t help but feed their existing, and lucrative, addiction to selling our data and using poor security to store that data. So they want your Google/Apple/Samsung wallets connected to a government system that is actually ran by a 3rd party vendor with questionable security practices, and to provide far more information because no one has set an international standard for neither digital ID checks, nor IDs in general, enough to make it anything less than the surveillance state nightmare that is holding a government ID with all your info, while you move your face around and give them a 3D face scan that the platform doesn’t keep, but the verification company does.
a lot of people. The other day I saw a post on mastodon by some politician or someone in the UK stating that if people find any site that is geoblocking the UK because of the age verification to report it to some link he provided. it was boosted A LOT with a lot of replies in support.
I legitimately dont understand who supports this. Who are these parents that can’t parent their kids properly? It’s so incredibly easy these days.
So instead of handling shitty parenting we restrict adults and with surveillance. Make it make sense.
Who supports it? Fascists. It’s about controlling access to information and robbing the populace of privacy at the same time. An oppressive, authoritarian police state needs tools to maintain control. These are the tools.
It’s not “support”, it’s already been done in practice.
What they are finishing right now is the convenient way. To surveil 97% instead of 94%. And to make it official to reduce expenses.
And sorry, but “moderate leftists” are those who made it happen, first dreaming how on big centrally moderated platforms the “bad” speech and people will be censored (how irritating it was that in the free Web those people could write whatever they wanted) and theirs won’t be, and propaganda won’t flourish, and after that dreaming how they can demand loudly enough that the platforms would work for them and not for themselves.
I perfectly remember how people loving Steinbeck and expressing anarchist views would look at me like at an enemy for saying that Facebook, Twitter etc are bad and a trap, and such hierarchical systems can’t be good. That arrogant obnoxious “see, in the real society we collectively press for our rights and the rules are made and obeyed”, yes, I’ve met fools who told me things like that. Where’s your society now, bitch.
Age verification has it’s place online, but not for porn. That is just gonna push peopel to worse sites.
For gambling and stock market sites and the like I can understand it, but I would prefer if we wouldn’t need to send our ID to those sites. Heck if Valve would implement it I could actually gamble on steam again cause currently I cannot open a Tf2 crate …
That’s not age verification, that’s KYC (know your customer) which includes age verification. I agree, KYC has its place on the net, but this is definitely not it.
Well yeah fair, we are mostly interested in other stuff than the birthdate, but payment providers and gambling sites do it as well to verify your age.
Most parents are way less literate than their kids. Most censorship/site restriction, can be circumvented easily.
We’re at or reaching a tipping point where I’m not sure that’s true anymore.
Most people with kids now are (roughly) in their 20s-40s. At the older end of that range, you have some gen-xers who might have missed the boat on computer literacy, but by and large we’re talking about millennials and older gen-z at this point. Kids who grew up with the internet, probably very clearly remember their family getting their first computer if they didn’t already have one when they were born, had computer classes in school, etc.
And we’re running into an issue where younger Gen z and alpha in many cases are less computer literate in many ways. A lot of them aren’t really learning to use a computer so much as they are smartphones and tablets, and I’m not knocking how useful those devices can be, I do damn-near everything I need to do on my phone, but they are limited compared to a PC and don’t really offer as much of an opportunity to learn how computers work.
There’s a ton of exceptions to that of course, some of my millennial friends are still clueless about how to do basic things on a computer, and some children today are of course learning how to do anything and everything on a computer or even on a phone.
But overall, I don’t think there’s as much disparity in technological literacy between the children and parents of today as there was in previous generations, and in some ways that trend may have even reversed.
Unfortunately there is truth in what you are saying.
It’s the parents that wont face the fact that it’s them paying for their kids internet access.
Parents intentionally and deliberately pay for their kids to access this shit. But none of them want to accept that when it can all be someone elses fault.
There are SO MANY parents that are not willing to teach and monitor their kids online safety. I would even say most parents don’t take that responsibility themselves.
Totally in agreement. I think a bigger part of the issue is most people are completely tech illiterate. People can’t tell a computer from a monitor anymore and then we expect them to outsmart a kid with nothing better to do than stare at a screen for hours on end who will no doubt figure out ways around things. There has to be some feeling on the parents part of defeat. If only the politicians knew what the fuck they were doing we might get actual regulations for engineers to implement proper controls. The percentage of parents attempting to monitor their children appropriately while also having enough tech knowledge has to be low.
One of the biggest problems with human societies is that parents, by necessity, have their brains broken and, due to modern values/life, are under constant strain. Being a parent means (generally) the kid is priority 1, then there’s everything else. This is a necessary irrationality, but if this means you have to do the occasional genocide or violate someone else’s civil rights to ‘keep our kids safe’ then, by god, those people are just going to have to suck it up and die. Sometimes, if you have the time, you can talk some people around and remind them, one day their kids are going to have to live in society as one of those 'someone else’s and won’t always be their precious little baby, but almost no one has the time and energy for a more nuanced thought than ‘save the babies!’ much less if they also have to work 48 hours, commute 10 hours, and parent their kid(s) for 167 hours each week.
Faacists do
Parental controls for internet use have been around since the 90s. There are even some vintage porn sites that have been running since then that have ads for them. I know this. I saw them back in 1999 and 2000… when I was an underage guy looking at porn online.
It’s more like who supports this in theory vs. who supports this how it’s written and implemented.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for “boobs” and just get a million images of boobs. I’m not a parent, but I know my parents when I was a teenager would have loved something like this. Kids are sneaky and smart, and this is a blanket thing parents think will once again put porn behind a barrier.
In a perfect world, a system could very easily exist that would 1) allow for a super-secure government owned digital ID system that isn’t a surveillance nightmare, 2) that system use a hash to verify over 18 age anonymously in real time. That’s how it’s supposed to work with digital IDs - only the data you need to verify is displayed to a vendor. Over 18 is a binary yes/no - a full DOB or name isn’t even needed.
The government ID wallet or site would use a no-log system to generate a hash value for you when you ask for one. You ask your ID app or site for an age verification hash. You get one that’s valid for about 2 minutes. Copy, paste as needed. The site uses the hash to only know “is this person over 18 or not?” and nothing else. The ID system shouldn’t keep the logs of which site asked back to confirm “is this hash valid?” This is exactly as secure as going to a liquor store with your passport or ID card and having tape over the name, address, and doc number. It’s even better because your face is not displayed, and your actual DOB should not be displayed either.
However, in our present shitty reality, companies who are trying to get contracts for these systems can’t help but feed their existing, and lucrative, addiction to selling our data and using poor security to store that data. So they want your Google/Apple/Samsung wallets connected to a government system that is actually ran by a 3rd party vendor with questionable security practices, and to provide far more information because no one has set an international standard for neither digital ID checks, nor IDs in general, enough to make it anything less than the surveillance state nightmare that is holding a government ID with all your info, while you move your face around and give them a 3D face scan that the platform doesn’t keep, but the verification company does.
a lot of people. The other day I saw a post on mastodon by some politician or someone in the UK stating that if people find any site that is geoblocking the UK because of the age verification to report it to some link he provided. it was boosted A LOT with a lot of replies in support.
bootlickers.
report, lol. what does that douchebag want to do? fine a foreign website for not serving content to his oh so precious country?
i am sorry, our Nigerian kebab food truck does not deliver to united of kingdom