Spain introduces porn passport to stop kids from watching smut
Spain introduces porn passport to stop kids from watching smut
Madrid unveils a digital wallet to help porn platforms verify users’ ages.
The Spanish government has a plan to prevent kids from watching porn online: Meet the porn passport.
Officially (and drily) called the Digital Wallet Beta (Cartera Digital Beta), the app Madrid unveiled on Monday would allow internet platforms to check whether a prospective smut-watcher is over 18. Porn-viewers will be asked to use the app to verify their age. Once verified, they'll receive 30 generated “porn credits” with a one-month validity granting them access to adult content. Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits.
You have to request more porn credits from the government if you need more? Don't want the government to be tracking this data of you. This is a privacy issue
Politicians keep trying to helicopter parent the entire populations of countries.
Making sure your kids don't go places online before they should, and have conversations with them about it once they reach an age where it happening is inevitable, is something every, single, parent, should do.
Not the fucking state.
And this has to be one the weirdest implementations of porn surveillance I've ever seen.
Exactly! Government granted 'porn credits' sounds absolutly insane as a serious idea...
Porn "Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits" is one wild sentence.
A porn "enthusiast", requesting the government for porn credits, to watch porn? What?
In my experience most parents are to lazy to keep up with setting appropriate restrictions for kids and like some parents, they expect someone else to raise and take care of their children.
Folks, this is not about the porn.
So what? I've had the exact same experience.
It's not a reason for the state to overstep into ALL our lives. In fact, the state stepping in is giving such parents yet more excuses to put even less effort into shaping the adults that their children will become.
Wow good job Spain.
I guess this works because email doesn't exist.
I guess this works because file sharing applications and websites don't exist.
I guess this works because VPN's free and paid don't exist.
I guess this works because Tor, i2p, Freenet, and Yggdrasil don't exist.
I guess this works because torrenting doesn't exist.
I guess this works because black markets don't exist.
I guess this works because chat applications don't exist.
To be a fly on the wall of these government meetings where they talk about this shit would surely be the funniest fucking thing in the world.
I want to be at the meeting a year from now where they realize only two people have ever signed up 'Yay we fixed porn!'
Buy who am I kidding they brought VPN shares before this was introduced
and probably have some of the most depraved porn habits imaginable
Bought VPN shares and water shipping company shares because they know wasting money on this shit instead of on public infrastructure to provide more reliable clean water is only good for commercial interests.
You are right, it's really stupid.
But it's also stupid not to consider, that it's not the real reason they made this in the first place.
They want to track you, and porn is the first excuse. If this is a success you might need this passport for alot of other things.
Thank you for contributing!
You've used the last of your political observation credits for the month. If you'd like to request more, please visit yourcountry.gov citizen portal and fill out the application. Your wait time will be 3-5 business days. We apologize for the wait but we are currently receiving a high volume of applications.
-govbot
On the plus side Spains teenagers are about to become extremely computer literate.
So teens learn about Tor & VPNs. This stuff doesn't work. The higher you put the skills to get access, the more they will learn. Nothing motivates teens more than access to adult stuff. Maybe this is really a tech literacy policy.
Learning to circumvent my parent's fumbling attempts to keep me off of early nineties bulletin board porn made me the man I am today.
Yup, all you're doing is teaching them to cover their tracks
A generation of privacy savvy citizens doesn't sound bad.
Much easier just to go to sketchy websites than learn how to hide your traffic
Or, just as likely, go to the sketchy VPNs from the first Play Store results.
This government intrusion is brought to you by Surfshark.
They made this to send people from legal sites to illegal sites.
"Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits."
Well that's a relief. For a minute there, I was worried.
Back in my day, extra credit had to be earned.
I'm already chafed.
Government giving you porn credits sounds hilarious.
This ensures traceability through the public key as content providers will consistently receive the same public key when the credential is presented
What a ridiculous system. For some reason I expected that their efforts to offer an illusion of privacy would be better than the obfuscatory bullshit they've leaned on here in order to enable "traceability."
I hope it goes down so badly in Spain that the rest of Europe is once and for all convinced that such schemes to restrict and monitor the web browsing habits of every citizen are ineffective for their stated purpose, needlessly invasive of privacy and freedom, destructive of democracy, and can serve only as a prelude to totalitarianism.
Having read the actual description of the protocol, such as it is, I should add in the interest of fairness that those "30 generated porn credits” do get you 30 new key pairs each month. They are issued directly by the central authority which knows exactly who they're issuing them to, and the public key is presented directly to web sites you visit. But they promise not to track how you use them.
That it's so absurd and poorly designed is reassuring in a way. It's difficult to imagine anyone using this.
Hmm. Driving porn viewers who value their privacy underground couldn't possibly have any negative consequences I can think of.
Instead of educating kids, it's much easier to... not, and invade their privacy instead.
...invade everyone's privacy instead.
Keep people safe … by encasing them in packing foam and feeding them through IV tubes!
Everyone knows freedom is anti safety. And safety’s number 1!
Kids can torrent my dude. Been doing it since I was like 13, and that's only because before that I was using limewire, then frostwire, then bearshare, then I found torrents because TPB took over. I've been pirating since I was like 9.
That is to say: This dumb ass bullshit isn't even going to work.
I come from a state that has officially mandated that porn websites must verify your age to use them for years. There were many websites that just didn’t give a fuck. X videos in particular. They do now require you to hit a button saying “I’m 18” to process, but I think my point stands.
These laws do nothing, really.
The "I'm 18/21" button on websites has been around since I was a kid in the 90s, used to have to input the "actual" date too so I was born 01/01/1970 according to a lot of now defunct porn sites lol. Also still in use on tobacco, vape, alcohol, and gun websites as well.
But yeah as I am am example of, lying is always possible lol. I guess this passport or the ID thing in some states is supposed to hinder that, but torrent sites throw a wrench into any censorship efforts and they're already illegal, they won't play ball with the ID bullshit, ever.
former average dc++ enjoyer here, there’s like 6 of us
There's half a dozens of us!
Yo what the fuck guys can you not
How many here want to bet that VPN companies lobbied the Spanish Government for this?
At least it will raise tech literacy among youth. If it isn’t as easy and would require some thinking that’s already better than 99% of homework.
Those kids will install a VPN faster than this bill goes through the Spanish parliament.
Even something as straightforward nowadays as VPN install can educate a person about cybersecurity as a side effect.
Thing is most stuff is simply too easy too acquire nowadays. No effort. No thought. Just endless stream of dopamine that is too addicting to even bother inquiring about how the very thing you are using works.
The victory of convenience will defeat us. There has to be some effort needed to acquire things otherwise they lose any value.
Only applies to sites who are based in Spain, at least the porn bans in the US went somewhat scorched earth, this limp dicked attempt doesn't even do that.
On behalf of teen me and adult me, fuck off
Aren't teens adults?
This is the one. Right here, officer.
Drake uses an owl for his logo. Are you Drake?
To libertarians, yes.
Aren’t hotdogs hamburgers?
When you are out of porn credits before the end of the month, you can go to the good ol' simulator:
It will be fun for one unashamed porn addicted user to keep making so many requests to this service that they break it.
"Javier, it's been 30 minutes since your last credit application."
"MORE CREDITS. CAN'T TALK."
This is a privacy issue but it's a much much much less of a privacy issue than what the EU wants to do with that mandatory internet ID thing. This Spanish concept shows that you don't need complete mass surveillance like other governments try to convince everyone in.
Spain is officially hoping that their system will serve as a model for the rest of Europe, and then the rest of the world, so that everyone can work together to enforce the rules. Otherwise their citizens might just evade it by, for example, going to web sites that are not in Spain.
That is why they give it such a grand name as "digital wallet." It's meant to become the basis for that European digital id you refer to, and used for much more than is happening with this initial trial balloon.
so that everyone can work together to enforce the rules.
Sus
I don't think porn is a good thing, but the fact that even if you're an adult with a pass you are limited is pretty bizarre. this is on top of the fact that you are already giving up your privacy to view it.
Surely this will work.
It's easier to just use a VPN and pretend to be from anywhere else...
What gets me about this is that, while it would still be bad, they could have mostly avoided the privacy nightmare here with some kind of Zero Knowledge Proof scheme, but the tracking is obviously part of the point.
You think govt officials can ingest, articulate, or even fathom what ZKrollups are?
We have the wrong people in govt unfortunately. Its mostly lawyers.
But yea, some sort of ZK schema would be interesting. Still dislike the porn credits tho.
Idiots. I'm certain that absolutely no one wants this. What a shit show.
Shit show you say? That's one token down
Porn is everywhere. It's an endless battle.
The internet should simply be 18+ only at this point.
I strongly disagree. The porn is a huge issue, but there are a lot of actually useful websites where kids and teens can learn about their interests. Gatekeeping all that knowledge would make young people significantly less knowledgeable
Unironically: child safe websites should be under a separate DNS provider from your ISP, provided via a separate ISP router or modem. Setup a separate national level routing.
Seriously. Kids get curated internet only, adults get the firehose.
The idea of porn credits and voluntarily giving the government a list of everything you look at is utter insanity.
So school shut be 18+ as well then? The best teacher is the Internet for just about anything. If it is info about how to garden or how to setup networking gear. The internet has it.
Wait....I want to be "Secretario de Pornabilidad Social" or "Secretary or Social Probability"
I imagine my self going through all the SSN... Sexual Super Numbers to manage access and report usage.
1335346755 watched 6 hours per day of mostly vanilla doggy.
2356544677 more doggie
More doggie.... doggie again. But every now and then.... 1257678965534 watched 72 consecutive hours of BDSM where the sub faces downward into a hole in the floor where a camera.....then the last does the same and the video cuts to another similar one. We must report this immediately to the right authority!
And then when it doesn't work because of the laws of nature, they can block filesharing sites on account of porning kids up without requiring porn credits.
The harder a law is to enforce, the more that law is a boon for an expanding surveillance state.
How long before it gets "breached"
Not long at all.
Luckily I already wear t-shirts that advertise the weird kinks that I'm into. Otherwise this would make me really uncomfortable.
Wait, what are the credits for? You spend them to watch porn or what? So when you're out of credits you're locked out? Sorry but... wtf?
Iirc Spain is one of those countries that makes you install a cert to use some of their government services, which they can then use to MITM all your https connections
Yeah this is not true. First the cert is only used on some government sites, no mitm anywhere. Also if you don't like the cert there are other ways to authenticate yourself, for example using your Id on a electronic reader or normal auth with user name pass and 2fa.
remind me never to go to Spain
Workshop this with me, passporn or pornport? Porn pass?
Passporn sounds great, pornport just sounds like where someone goes to acquire porn (that series of tubes thing, w/e that is), but pornpass sounds the most likely to be adopted by the marketing department.
Porn pass! Porncard. SSN..Super Sneaky Number. Super Shady Number. Sexual Super Number. Send Some Nudes Number...SSNN.
Ok tinfoil hat time.
Perhaps this government anti-porn law stuff is backed by people who actually want to dismantle government altogether. And not in a fun Communist way but in a privatize everything, corporate serfdom way.
By pushing for the government to do stupid and unpopular things, they can get people mad at the very concept of government. They can then use that to dismantle things like nationalized health care, fire departments, whatever.
So how does this work with torrents again lol
There's always DVDs of this stuff.... Doesn't have to be online.
I imagine a kid who's smart enough to use a vpn, downloading a bunch of videos, and then selling usb drives to their friends at school, or sharing them via gdrive
Just image asking someone for a corn passport
It's always porn, isn't it? We don't need to protect children from misinformation, fascism, violence, racism, discrimination or exploitation on the internet, it's always just porn for some reason...
Yes, porn and not giving away all of their data to keep them safe
I see Spain wants ALL of my money. Sucks for them I don't live there and even if I did, I'm better at Internet than their legislators.
Enthusiasm is funny ha
I am against porn, but this don't solve anything.
How can you be against porn? It's neither good or bad, it exists and I basically don't watch it, but I recognize that others do, why is that a problem that needs solving? To be clear, I'm reading your response as against porn in all forms and for all audiences based on your wording, is that what you mean?
They’re probably against the exploitation associated with it. I’d compare it to being against diamonds due to the bloody conflicts associated with them.
To be clear, I'm reading your response as against porn in all forms and for all audiences based on your wording, is that what you mean?
Yes.
How can you be against porn?
I am against porn because I am against prostitution, and porn is a type of prostitution, with the same problems of prostitution plus some more. The central problem is sexism.
It's neither good or bad, it exists and I basically don't watch it, but I recognize that others do, why is that a problem that needs solving?
Good and bad are Manichaean categories, as a materialist, I avoid using them. My problem with pornography is the reality of it as well as the reality of prostitution in general. The porn industry is the home of abuse, in every sense. First in the rawest sense, the physical and mental abuse that actresses go through; second in the reproduction and propagation of the culture of abuse, considering that it is the most recurrent theme in porn films; third in the economic sense, pornography, like prostitution in general, is the sale of consent: the actress or prostitute receives money to have sex with someone she would not have sex with under other circumstances, in short: paid rape.
I do not, however, advocate banning either prostitution or pornography, mainly because it would not solve the problem and could even worsen the vulnerability of women in these professions. I however think that pimping should be criminally punished, just like porn networks, which are just a socially accepted form of pimping. Several social problems produce prostitution and pornography, mainly economic inequality, but also the misogyny embedded in the culture of our society, and only a different form of sociability could put an end to these practices. As long as we are not living in this new system, governments can take palliative measures to alleviate the various problems of these practices, but this is not the case at all with this measure by the Spanish government.
EDIT: I have corrected the third link to the article where the information comes from.
Sounds like someone in the Spanish govt is familiar with adult bookstore glory holes.
porn credits. gtfh
Lets see how this pans out and how well it works ( or does not work )
What we perhaps need to do is start building respect for each other,
Wouldn’t it be more effective to just grant each user a way to pass verification with age with a token tied to some system and simply use a Ring signature so that user privacy is preserved and no need for limits?
Is "effective" really the word you want to use?
Of course engineers are going to design the simplest system that meets the requirements. It seems like "privacy" wasn't on the list of requirements here.
For those in Spain I suggest protonVpn
I feel like a browser API that just gives info to the site when request of either "is under age, is of age to create an account, is adult" might be an easy way to establish something like this too
This way the site can voluntarily check if they're illegally collecting data on minors, if they're showing adult content to adults, and automatically display age appropriate content of applicable
Maybe an NSFW flag as well that sites can check to automatically show/hide NSFW content, for example on work machines or shared computers, but that's probably getting a little too finegrained
The real question is how is the age flag determined? Is it determined by the browser? The OS? Browser seems the safest bet, since Google can base it off of the Google Account, Microsoft can base it off the Microsoft account and Mozilla can shove it in the settings and potentially base it on the Mozilla account
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Officially (and drily) called the Digital Wallet Beta (Cartera Digital Beta), the app Madrid unveiled on Monday would allow internet platforms to check whether a prospective smut-watcher is over 18.
Once verified, they'll receive 30 generated “porn credits” with a one-month validity granting them access to adult content.
While the tool has been criticized for its complexity, the government says the credit-based model is more privacy-friendly, ensuring that users' online activities are not easily traceable.
It will be voluntary, as online platforms can rely on other age-verification methods to screen out inappropriate viewers.
It heralds an EU law going into force in October 2027, which will require websites to stop minors from accessing porn.Eventually, Madrid's porn passport is likely to be replaced by the EU’s very own digital identity system (eIDAS2) — a so-called wallet app allowing people to access a smorgasbord of public and private services across the whole bloc.
“We are acting in advance and we are asking platforms to do so too, as what is at stake requires it,” José Luis Escrivá, Spain’s digital secretary, told Spanish newspaper El País.
The original article contains 231 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 21%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I wish they would just push all the big mainstream porn sites to remove the most abusive misogynistic content rather than slapping these checks on everything.
Also this will never be okay until there is a zero knowledge version that means neither the government, nor the sites, nor any other party can establish a given person's habits which is probably not something they'll ever do because tracking is probably part of the point.
I'm not a fan of the easy access to porn that kids have or the proliferation of the industry in general but I am worried that as part of this harmless things like erotic roleplaying websites will be swept up as part of it and well I use those. And their point is not porn though some people host and share porn as part of it (which is why it'd get swept up with it eventually probably), it's about writing, smutty, erotic writing. And I'd rather not have to tie my identity to my desires to roleplay out an elf who ends up making “friends” with the wolf-men tribe to my real life identity (I'm not claiming that's something I do there but it's an example of something that would be kind of embarrassing for others to know and it's far from the weirdest stuff that goes on in places like that).
Government having credits for how often I could say log in and continue a long-term erotic writing campaign with someone is just weird but that's the end point of this kind of thing. Having credits seems not helpful anyways, the true porn addicts are just going to download stuff then share it in private forums, discords, p2p, etc. If the point is to stop kids from accessing this the credits thing seems odd.
Tinfoil hat time! Also written thinking more about the US, where this sort of thing is also a growing topic.
Perhaps this government anti-porn law stuff is backed by people who actually want to dismantle government altogether. And not in a fun Communist way but in a privatize everything, corporate serfdom way.
By pushing for the government to do stupid and unpopular things, they can get people mad at the very concept of government. They can then use that to dismantle things like nationalized health care, fire departments, whatever.
I've got to get me a Spanish porn passport. I likes me some big bootie Spanish girls.
I haven't read enough to know if this is a good thing or not.
But goddamn, I would hate having a 12 year old right now knowing how much terrible, awful shit is out there these days.
I mean there's a ton of accounts like Andrew Tate that are aimed at getting these kids on a terrible thought path while they're still kids.
I would hate to have my theoretical child reading all of the terrible bullshit that's out there with no filter.
I'm so much more worried about my future kids' access to toxic alpha male shit and fascist propaganda than I am about porn.
I don't think this is that bad compared to the alternatives I've seen (it doesn't tie your identity to the content you're viewing, only the use of your credits) but I would be curious to know if the government is also reexamining its sex education curriculum and delivery at the same time. Banning porn won't magically improve the attitudes of young people (particularly men) towards their sexual partners.
(it doesn’t tie your identity to the content you’re viewing, only the use of your credits)
The website can't know this, but the government can easily (and I bet will) link an identity to a token, and know where and when it is used. It can also request metadata on usage of a token, which websites will no doubt want to store.
That the government can track this sort of thing is bad enough, but I'm especially concerned that it or both parties will leak/share/sell their databases, allowing anyone to do the same.
Why do you assume they will? From the design document it sounds like that's not how it will work. You mentioned data leaks but it sounds like there is no history log to leak.
I think this is bad because it doesn't solve any problems (efficacy of age verification systems is questionable at best) and introduces new problems (token system violates privacy). Censorship under governments creates black markets and reduces privacy at taxpayer expense. If they are concerned about child safety maybe they should start with what studies show are the most effective ways to accomplish that goal as opposed to ineffective, expensive wastes of time.
People live in Spain?
Also I'm just imagining the look on on the store clerks face when that one person comes in to buy porn credits for the 5th time that day.