What are your thoughts on restricting children’s access to pornography online?
There are a lot of GOP-controller legislatures in the USA pushing through so-called “child protection” laws, but there’s a toll in the form of impacting people’s rights and data privacy. Most of these bills involve requiring adults to upload a copy of their photo ID.
This is literally the goal. They are using porn as a trojan horse because they know nobody is going to stand up and fight them on letting children see porn
All politiicans should be listened to with scepticism, but the Republicans have gone to full on lies, alternative truths, fraud, grifting and fascism. It's not a both sides issue.
The government has way too much influence over children already. Governments could do so much for children that would actually benefit them (better education, free lunch at school, better public libraries, ensure no kids are starving because of poor parents, no wars in foreign countries, whatever) but instead they use children to increase their control over people.
I think it has nothing to do with children. It is about requiring ID registration for online services so that identities can be tracked. Every time authoritarians want to push another mechanism of control it's always "about the children".
Ultimately, I agree with you and that’s why I’m against these laws, but I really do wish there was a good way to do it anonymously. Porn is not good for kids and it’s pretty much impossible to keep them away from it without drastic measures that are more harmful than porn.
Not sure if it’s actually possible given how far outside out evolutionary context internet porn is, but the correct solution here would be to train your kids to deal with the temptation of dopaminergic reinforcement buttons.
What if the block is more harmful than just letting curious kids sneak a peek at porn sites? If all the legitimate places to get porn block anyone without ID then a lot of those prove will seek out unregulated places - they're going to see far worse things and be in communication with potentially very dangerous people.
And of course the next step would be to totally limit any access to the internet to stamp out any unregulated communication and file sharing thus giving the corporations a total monopoly on the internet... It's not about protecting kids it's about controlling all of us.
Adults' expression to one another must not be restrained to only what is suitable for children.
Sexuality is a normal thing that most people are interested in. It is not inherently illegitimate, deviant, or corrupting.
Children and adolescents who are kept in ignorance and fear of sexuality are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse by adults.
Anonymous and pseudonymous speech are necessary to the freedom of a free society.
The chief threat of sexual abuse to children does not come from anonymous or pseudonymous speakers on the Internet, but from family members and acquaintances — especially those with authority over the child. As such, if the question is "Who should be subject to greater scrutiny, to prevent child sexual abuse?" the answer will be "parents, guardians, teachers, youth pastors, etc." at a much higher priority than "anonymous and pseudonymous Internet users".
Identification requirements for speakers or audiences are a necessary step to violent and unlawful censorship, and are not necessary for legitimate purposes.
Given these principles and observations, I conclude that the expected effect of such regulations would be to increase sexual abuse of children, while also strongly harming the ability of a free society to discuss and educate about sexuality.
Very excellent points. While I agree kids shouldn't be looking at porn, forcibly trying to keep all knowledge of sex and porn from them until they hit a magic age where now they can do anything they want isn't the answer.
Children need to be educated so they can make wise decisions when the time comes. No matter how much people try to stop it, the time will often come before they reach the magic age set by laws, and unfortunately it's sometimes through sexual assault or their naivety being taking advantage of.
I would combat that by saying I think most pornography is nowhere close to what sex is like. Anecdotally, I hear more stories about men who try to fuck someone like they’re in a porn film, which can result in physical pain to their partner.
I think teaching kids about sex and giving them access to porn that often displays non-consensual acts as normal are two totally different things.
But yes, I think 4 is a very strong point, which is why most of the bills that are being proposed are not being executed well.
Sex is fun, sex is awkward, sex is weird and messy and life-changing. Sex is mundane, sex is cathartic, sex is funny and sex is cardio. Also, sex makes people, oh and it feels good. All that is pretty fucking magical if you ask me.
What is done in private between consenting adults is none of your goddamn business, including porn. Don’t use kids as an excuse to control adults’ behavior.
If I didn't want my kids looking at porn online, I already have plenty of things to prevent them from doing so.
Not giving them access to a device without supervision. Using firewall filters. Child-mode browser/OS settings.
We don't need more regulation for this. Parents just need to get off their ass and do their own parenting. But these bills aren't actually designed to protect children. They're designed to gain access to adults' personal info and will be used more for oppression than safety.
It is still very shocking to us in Europe that the United States wants to control pornography before guns. I don't know many people who have killed themselves by masturbating.
I believe that pornography is illegal in Bulgaria, while in other places, there are no strict laws. There's a warning banner that you must check if you are over 18 years old. That's it.
On the other hand, we have many gun control laws. Priorities.
Even the UK isn't this level of strict - the things that are outlawed are those involving lack of consent and those that are very likely to injure people.
I like the idea of having a cleaner internet for under 12s but I hate the idea of giving the government more control of the internet. Ultimately I side with freedom. I grew up on the wildwest internet and turned out fine. These kids will also be fine.
I'm against heavy handed regulation because it pushes people into more dangerous spaces, if you're a teenager or unID'd adult who can't access real porn sites do you decide not to look at boobs or do you seek out unregulated communities on places like discord?
Would you like your kid seeing generic regulated porn or seeing the kinds of things people can't post on regulated porn sites? Plus not only is there the fact that the content on underground sites is by their nature the stuff not allowed on regulated sites but also do you want your kid taking to the creeps that hang out in porn sharing groups on discord?
There technically is, but it's going to be a while until the government is ok with it. It's called zero knowledge cryptography, where a user could prove they have an identification that is government issued, and that they are of age, without revealing any other information.
If the government really wanted to, it could provide citizens with a portal that would do oauth (or something similar) to authorize the porn access.
They could do some crypto crap to avoid storing anything about the citizen, so, unless the system is subborned, it doesn't store anything about users.
EDIT: the point is that this kind of system can be implemented in a privacy-preserving manner. I'm ambivalent about the idea, but it has been enacted by a democratically elected government, so they should go about it in the most responsible manner possible.
I disagree. I could literally put some porn in this very comment. So the fediverse needs a porn barrier, and every file hoster, we can't allow TOR, there is porn, and illegal porn as well. So please show us your id before entering TOR, pls.
It is an authoritarian move. It is undermining privacy. It is censoring the web.
It is parents and maybe schools responsabilty to teach kids how to interact with media, that porn exists and is not an actual representation of sex, and to restrict their access to pornography or media in general.
Furthermore, on planet earth, there are no perfect democracies, and the democratic system of the USA is flawed to a degree where it is at least questionable if your leaders are elected democratically.
It's the parents job to do that, not the government's. I have kids, when they were at the age I didn't want them seeing porn I made sure it was blocked, and I educated them on safe internet browsing. I don't need the government's help with that.
The GOP is also the party of the chronically ill and the criminally insane. They just don't want to admit that they want China's great firewall style world wide web after wasting millions of dollars going after TikTok.
Once again all the anti China propoganda was projection coming from inside the house.
None of these politcians who push for all those "protect the children" laws actually gives a shit about child safety. The only thing that such laws mange to do is restrict freedom of speech and expression for everyone including children.
If you are a careless parent, then no law is going prevent your kids from watching porn.
It's almost like porn has been available, to varying degrees, to youth, for decades if not centuries. Even discounting all the good arguments like "small government" and "think of the kids is a dumb excuse to curtail privacy"... You have to ask, what's the goal?
Keeping kids away from porn? Why is that an important goal for the government? Is it one the government is even capable of doing? At what age is porn OK? 16? 18? 21? Never? Did you ever look at porn when you were in high school? Do you regret it?
Is there any real research that porn is corrosive to a 16 year old? I mean we can't even pass simple, popular gun legislation because the NRA swears up and down we don't know "for sure" if it will save more than a couple lives. We can't even have an EPA that enforces laws, while millions of people suffer from asthma and other stuff that kills them.
I'm out of the loop on this one, but it sounds like yet another attempt at SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Back in 2011, people had to fight hard because the US congress was attempting to gain control over the internet. The congress' reasoning was that they wanted to hinder piracy, but the implications of the bill was so much more.
I don't recall the full history of this, but I believe that as soon as SOPA was turned down, a new bill regarding preventing child pornography was proposed. And that bill had basically the same implications, but if you were against it this time, the congress had implied that you were supporting child pornography.
It seems like the state's attempt at gaining control of the internet is never ending, since they can propose new bills as soon as the previous bill is voted out. Basically the "throw enough shit at a wall and some of it will stick"-tactic.
Exclusively used for fascism and propaganda. If it's "for the children" it's usually not and just propaganda to push more fascism. If kids want to lie and click the "I am 18" button despite not being 18, literally who cares lol. Before the internet, kids would steal nude magazines. Also that's how they discover things about themselves instead of being completely left in the dark until 18. Should definitely still keep the requirement of clicking that button, but more so for plausible deniability on the website's side. It's only religious extremists that consider this stuff bad.
None of those blocks actually work, it’s theater. I think it’s better to prepare your child for the world and how to handle it than to try and lock them in a bunker.
as a zoomer who had access to porn at a young age, that shit was not good for me at all. i think it's pretty fair to suggest that people below the age of 13 should not be looking at porn - but i wouldn't even know how one could even go about actually regulating it
Technically pretty much every router does have built in porn blocking, the problem is is that it's across the board.
With these routers it's almost always All or nothing.
It's also slightly complicated to set up in the first place, and the grand majority of people will not spend more than 10 seconds setting up any technology unless they absolutely have to.
Most people will not go through the process of finding out what the IP address of their router is, attempting to log into it with the default passwords available on the internet, navigating through the HTML 1.0 1993 interface to find the section that allows them to enable parental controls and then enabling them.
As a person who doesn't have and chooses to not ever have children, it does my head in everytime a government tries to pass laws to stop children getting access to things, instead of making the parents, the people whose job it is to raise the children, take responsibility. I agree tho that router manufacturers should be forced to give easy access to parents to block unwanted sites.
They're trying to ban vapes in Australia, not because of "health" reasons, but because kids are getting access to them, so instead of making adults accountable, they're just trying to blanket ban, I'm sick of being punished because shitty parents can't do their fucking job.
Raise your God damn kids yourself, stop relying on the government to do it for you.
Even before we had ubiquitous internet everywhere there was forest porn.
At some point between the ages of 11 and 14 every male child would be inexplicably drawn to a local wooded area where they would find hustlers and playboys and penthouse magazines wrapped in trash bags.
Maybe it was different in the city but if you lived in the suburbs that happened.
On a moral level, I do agree with keeping children from accessing certain content online, especially porn. I think I'd be happier if I porn was less accessible to me until I had the mental faculties to understand it.
On a practical / policy level, I disagree since there is no way to stop children from accessing this content without drastically hampering the freedoms of all people. I see no good solutions. I really feel bad for parents who have to raise kids in the internet age.
That’s basically my thinking too. So is the solution just increasing transparency in sex ed? I think someone has to say to kids “pornography is nothing like real sex and a lot of it is degrading to women”
Yes. It should be a multifaceted approach, and increasing sexual education is absolutely a part of that. Good luck getting more funding for education ESPECIALLY if it could be used for sexual education in these red states though.
They preach abstinence and then feign surprise when that’s not what happens.
Basically that. I don't want to say 'bad parenting', because my own parents basically never spoke to me about this stuff at all and I don't think it negatively affected me at all. I think they just observed that I didn't really need them to have that talk, and so didn't bother. In my case, it worked out. But for many kids it might not.
Unpopular opinion, but I’d rather not allow kids on the regular internet.
I’m surprised these issues haven’t been fixed and that the only method I hear about fixing them are ones that break the internet as we know it. Why not think of like some type of sub internet designed for kids that separates them from the chaos of the regular internet…. If I’ve learned on thing living in America it’s that money is wore more than kids or kids futures so it’s hopeless anyway.
Like traffic from a device could be locked down until the users proper age is reached.
Or just try to build better communities where parents take care of their kids.
That just moves the exact same question to a slightly different place. How do you verify someone accessing the real internet is an adult without destroying anonymity and therefore privacy?
This was always the obvious solution to me. It feels like every other year YouTube is jumping through hoops to correct some situation involving children on the platform. Simply make YouTube 18 plus, require an ID upon sign up. Instantly fix everything, except they'd make less money.
I don't need the government's help. Plus it's probably a front for keeping kids uninformed. I'm more concerned about Florida teaching that there was some benefit to slavery.
I've started looking at porn on the internet at 8 or 9 years old, and nothing bad happened to me.
I understand why the law says that porn is for 18+ only, but that's it. The access shouldn't be restricted. It's the parents' role to stop kids from going on those websites, if any.
Agreed. Parents can install tools on devices (or use the ones that are built-in). Kids will find ways around that and that's fine. Kids have to put in some effort and learn how to outsmart vendors and their parents. This will add to their problem-solving skills. When they finally get to the sex, they'll be fine.
It's really about teaching kids to have a healthy attitude about sex and sexuality. Republican kids will be taught that it's bad and they're bad for thinking about it. They'll be fucked up in various ways. Proper parenting will teach kids that not everything they see on the internet is healthy to pursue and help them approach the topic in a mature fashion. Those kids will turn out like the rest of us who grew up with porn online. Fine.
In the UK, The Online Safety Bill is almost about to become law. Without going into the full details, the government basically wants to monitor everyone's messages to stop child pornography and protect people (and other stuff too).
The problem is, they want companies to scan messages and photos as they are uploaded and to give themselves backdoor access to E2E encryption services.
It's very likely the UK will lose access to iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp etc as they would rather withdraw their services from the UK than break their promise to their users.
Children get their own internet. If they get in adult internet, then they get juvenile detention and a criminal file, their parents are arrested for child endangerment and child services take over.
And anyone complaining about what is on the internet gets an helicopter ride to the deep sea from 10'000 feet.
Some extremely restrictive AI and all children provided inputs would not be visible without heavy filtering and anonymization. In fact children's general ability to express themselves in this children internet would be massively curtailed.
I had an interesting experience as a teen looking at porn online and blocking is not the way. Education is the best, basically teaching teens is better than letting them make mistakes when they turn 18 and get their ass fucked
Even if the system works as designed, it relies on parents to teach their kids about porn. That means when they turn 18 (or 30 or whatever) they get unfettered porn access and we're no further ahead.
it's my belief that if you try to shield your children from the evils of the world, you will invariable fail and they'll be unprepared for the world itself once they leave the nest. not saying that you shouldnt try to enact parental controls on their devices, just that you'll fail.
also, not sure how the government is going to control access to the porn. it's one thing to gate pornhub/xhamster behind a ID required page, it's another thing entirely to ban all porn everywhere. like, good luck mr government but you're going to fail.
My upbringing in the US shamed all forms of sexuality; I was entirely forbidden from watching porn until I moved out on my own for college. I feel like that upbringing was very very harmful to me as an adult though because I spent my entire 20s breaking away from that shame and guilt. I had a good sex-Ed teacher in 6th-7th grades but they just simply didn’t spend enough time on the topic to educate me at all about anything but very basic anatomy though. The amount of shame I got at home just didn’t let my sex-Ed class information get absorbed in a way that was conducive to a normal sex life; we were never told that sex was normal and healthy either.
Me personally, my interest in animal science/anatomy led me to reading books about sexuality and the missing sex info I needed. I really don’t think it was healthy to have to learn that information alone; I’m lucky and I was reading official textbook material; I couldn’t imagine kids today learning accurate information from uncertified sources.
Like, sex-Ed at the senior HS level should be basically a how-to pleasure yourself and others in a healthy way and pitfalls to avoid. They should go into the anatomy and physiology ad nauseum so every student feels comfortable in their body as an adult.
It should be the sole responsibility of parents or guardians to control any restrictions like this. I'm not a parent myself, but if I were, I wouldn't just let my child have a device with unrestricted access to everything on the internet. To me, it makes more sense to just have content restrictions on children's devices than force all adults to go through extra verification steps to access porn.
I'm entirely of this opinion. Why put the pornographers in charge of who can see porn? Parents, do you job. Am I supposed to upload my driver's license for them to store somewhere? that's what some of these states are proposing. That sounds like a privacy and security disaster. And I agree also that this is not about protecting kids, but more about a grab for authoritarian power.
This makes absolute sense until they get to secondary school (ages 11-16). All the kids at school have mobiles. You might have put the best parental controls on your sprogs phone but someone else hasn't and his son - he's the one showing pictures and videos at playtime. The problem is that kids don't live in a bubble.
I'm in the UK, don't have a clue about what laws are coming in but am against this type of state intervention into private life of adults. Adults uploading id online is not something I am for.
But I am pretty much in favour of banning smartphones in schools with kids that age these days - I'm a very liberal guy but I've heard so many horror stories from friends that are teachers.
I actually think the main problem is the nature of the pornography itself. The stuff that comes up with choking and hair pulling and all that... There's porn which is just people getting it on but it seems to be this violent stuff that gets to kids first and that's the bit I don't understand. I'm old. When I was their age it was magazines of naked people. A more innocent time.
Personally I am opposed to any government overreach like requiring ID to use the internet. That’s none of their fucking business.
It is the responsibility of the parents to control what their children do online, and there are plenty of voluntary tools available to limit and monitor internet usage.
Personally, I don't like the idea. Government policies aren't good substitutes for parenting. even if they implemented these changes, kids and adults alike would likely move to other websites that don't have the government ID scanning feature in, or kids would use things such as a fake ID or their parent's IDs.
If someone wants porn online, they will find it. It's up to the parents to ensure that their children don't become porn addicts in the first place.
Parents should have the tools to be able to give their children specific information. And part of that toolbox is keeping them off the internet. Or only supervise internet use for an hour or two a day. Giving any child complete and total access to a tool is kind of dangerous. You have to educate them about the dangers of the tool and how to properly respect it. So if your child is 3 years old they may not be ready for the raw internet.
If an organization such as the government wants to spend money to create a child friendly network space, KinterNet,
Great more power to them. Then concerned parents could VPN to the Kinternet on devices for their children. It would be opt-in.
De facto if you give your child a device with unfettered internet access, you're saying they're ready and responsible enough to handle the kind of information there. That you've trained them in the proper use of the tools.
Most kids used to be farm kids, they knew about sex, because on the farm sex happens. Happens a lot. They see the entire life cycle of a various animals. But now we have many children who don't have exposure to the whole life cycle, and if you cut the internet off for them then they're going to grow up very stunted as well. Everything's a balance, and that's up to the parents.
But I think all of these words are wasted. The reason surveillance bills are pushed on us "for the children" is because it's a convenient excuse, it sets precedent, it's about control, it's not about the children. It's an excuse only... And if everyone really is trying to protect the children, where does it end? Can't talk about Santa Claus online? We must reaffirm the tooth fairy industrial complex?
These bills are intended to make it harder for anyone to look at porn online. There are plenty of tools parents can employ to make it harder for their own kids to see porn -- that's where the responsibility belongs.
I'm against it. Parents should be helping their children go online go submit homework or whatever they need to do. You cannot babyproof the internet the same way you cannot babyproof society. Parents in the 90s understood this well. Parents in the 20s do not understand this.
Build safer websites for kids. Don't degrade adult spaces, because the 4chans and fox newses will always exist, but will take down the good sites as collateral.
My first problem is that the GOP wants to have people's private vital information freely given to them and that people would be required to comply. Tying that information to activities of consenting adults will be misused. Blue noses can't keep their noses in their own business, and the possibility for graft and blackmail is immense.
When did the GOP start to care about children, anyway?
My state actually blocked all porn sites. In theory this is a good thing... however it's pretty easy to bypass with a VPN. If someone wants to get access to porn there are about a million different ways of doing so.
I thought all research has shown blocking porn increases rapes and sexual assaults. If that is true a vote to block porn is a vote to increase sexual assaults and rapes without introducing some alternative into the picture
it should be their parent's paroblem ! give them the tools to do it properly without making other people's lives hell. instead of govs trying to strip encryption and what not
I'm definitely in favor of some rules for porn, and that basic rule is being of age. Administrators of pornographic servers should also sort harmful content and select videos. He also had some problems in the past https://www.pornhub.com/ and had to delete some videos, so you have to choose sites with a gentler obasaho for adults https://www.pornann.com/nl. However, I am strongly against the state banning tasteful pornography. Recently, there are only commands, prohibitions and dictating to people how they should live and what they should do. No way!!