you ban drugs because of the social consequences of the phenomenon - the damages are evaluated as high.
For other indulgences, social damages may vary.
Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet.
Isn't it unfair to the responsible bakers who just want a really tender pie crust? Yes, it is, but they're going to have to deal with it.
Won't a determined kid still be able to get their hands on alcohol? Yes, they will, but it matters that they get it less often and less frequently.
Chocolate should be eaten with restraint. If you handle it maturely, it remains something not that comparable to alchool.
With all due, some may want to advise you to check into that. It could be that it does strange things because of the way you are wired.
Please note (about similar corners) what I have already written in the page, "for some it brings a satisfaction and this is an outlet valve that reduces adverse social effects; for some it is a kindler and it will increase adverse social effects".
To some it will be the opposite of a poison - it will be constructive. It will depend.
This cannot be said of alchool and similar.
I am personally not aware of those (products that would damage one's reward system), can you name some?
It is very rational: some need the experiences to meet the natural instances, and virtual ones suffice.
> self-medication hypothesis for alcoholism
Do not even joke: alcoholism is (*) an addiction (*) to an intoxicant...
> watch lots
That's you assuming things.
> helping them with some problem or another
Still you with your constructs: maybe they just enjoy it like other pleasant experiences.
> negative consequences
That confirms "it's you": which "negative consequences"? We do not see any necessary damaging impact.
Hear, hear!
The most important skills are underrated in so many societies.
This is not only untrue, it's actually the only worthwhile course.
I know that bans, rules, and technical solutions are not substitutes for parenting. This is why all the kids of the parents I know who have tried that are doing all the supposedly disallowed things secretly (and circumventing the technical restrictions with ease).
(Just a tiny example: in many countries, we have them study since the age of five, sometimes earlier. They already have a sufficiently working anterior cingulate gyrus at and before that age; they have understanding of tradeoffs at and before that age.)
--
Ooooh, hitters that will probably reveal to be snipers. That just confirms the point: if some people think it normal to gesticulate and not formulate - well, that's them, not all... Some children will have a weaker will. Some will have a stronger one! And surely it can be educated.
We don't let children damage themselves because it is plain indefensible. If they want to, they must have passed said formal threshold.
These are not matters of self control.
I would argue that part of the answer is because with vodka they can easily harm themselves. However this doesn't hold for porn.
And others.
Which is relevant, because other resources (e.g. those relevant here) can reduce or abate sexual misconduct, for many, or maybe boost it for some - depending on the profile. Some will be satisfied (and stay at that), some other will be kindled.
but they won't. Alcohol restrictions are at least somewhat enforceable (although as a sidenote I also find them silly) but you can open a new tab, literally type "porn" into any search engine, and you'll get fifty thousand results.
And all of those sites are hosted in the middle of nowhere and do zero content moderation compared to Pornhub, so chances are on those sites adolescents will run into some genuinely abhorrent content. You've made it no less difficult, but much less safe.
It's so utterly meaningless even compared to other internet bans, it makes more sense to assume they just banned something so that people would stop talking about it. It's as if someone was on a crusade against video games, banned literally one video game
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vixen_Media_Group#Legal_action
https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/1d3wfiz/my_exp...
But in the context of this thread, where a company was threatening to do this in a developed democratic country, that is not an issue, is it?
Societal disapproval can be divided between people you interact with and strangers. Why would anybody what strangers think of them, particularly when those strangers would have to been rummaging into porn watching databases to begin with?
As for coworkers, friends or family, why would they be interested in learning about your porn habits again? And if they bother you about it, wouldn't you want to rethink whether you want to keep them around? Personally, I don't keep in touch with people who seriously judge my life choices -- and that has only happened once, so it's not such a big deal either.
I don't go around talking about my porn watching habits for the simple reason that I am sufficiently attuned to social customs to understand that nobody has any interest in them.
You can't be shamed for something you are not ashamed of. If a porn provider made them public for whatever reason, it would not bother me one iota. So, I am asking, genuinely, why would anybody care.
So far the replies are things like "do eet!! lOLLOL" or "it can get you killed", so I have lost interest at this point. After some thought, I guess that some people are unquestioningly ashamed of their sexual preferences, which is sad. Living your life without the burden of shame is much better, as any queer person can tell you. There's nothing wrong with what you like.
I am a member of a leftist political party in my country and I have no doubt that if the fascists get their hands on the membership database I'm shipped off to a prison camp.
"Hey, Jimmy, I went searching for your porn habits and found that you are into fat redheads. Shame on you, shame on you. You are now excommunicated from... Somewhere". How is this not a much bigger social faux pas for the accuser rather than the accused?
And why would want to keep in touch with a coworker that gives a damn about what other people want to fuck? I would go straight to HR for harassment, first of all.
That is not the same as understanding why would anybody care if their porn provider made their porn watching habits public, which is the subject of this thread.
Can you please clarify your reasoning? I fail to see the supposed "gotcha". We are not asking why doesn't everybody make their porn profile public, that's something you came up with.
They might be interested in seducing you.
Otherwise, no reason.
On another note, a lot of places, including those in the west will ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong foods.
Some groups will, yes. In a lot of cases it's just simple hypocrisy; lots of "anti-gay" congressmen somehow keep getting caught soliciting sex in airport bathrooms or on grinder.
As long as they votes consistently with their stated public beliefs (icky or flawed as they are ) on which they got elected does it matter they are very different private person ?
I would go so far as to say, them being different publicly than in private is a qualification for the job, if they cannot dissociate their personal beliefs from the will of their electorate then they shouldn’t do the job .
Don’t we all have one work persona and another home one ? Being a congressman should be no different.
On the other hand, the ones who sell on a public persona to get votes and switch their voting pattern after election to a different belief system is far more of hypocrite (Sinema or fetterman?)
We have everything to hide to you.
The mandate is ancient.
Most people aren’t not comfortable to be open about those topics. Many of the reasons would be worthy of months or years of therapy for even themselves to understand.
Is it really that hard to imagine? US alone made (for us Europeans a bit weird but we don't mind at the end) very popular categories of porn like "banging stepsister/brother/mother/father", I am pretty sure those folks wouldn't like that history revealed to their close ones.
And TBH, I simply don't want to know other folk's preference even if its a very mundane one. Don't need to add that 'feature' to the mental model of them I have in my mind, what I have is already too much sometimes.
And in fact, privacy laws saw slow codification because the violations they are relevant to are largely preposterous.
This is specifically people who pirate their IP over public bittorrent; not paying customers.
> engaging in illegal activities while using a VPN remains prohibited under French law.
https://medium.com/@green21/is-vpn-legal-in-france-exploring...
France has very stupid and strict laws, that apply accross borders! For example paternity test gets you two years, even when physically done in another country!
Because I was once shocked to learn how easily it is in some countries (like Portugal) for a woman to have the court force a man to submit to a paternity test [0].
I also heard (I guess a few decades ago) the courts would start automatically an investigation on their own when no man would recognise a child at birth.
- [0] https://www.tpalaw.pt/xms/files/BANGA_Site/Paternity_investi...
Courts order paternity tests just fine though when there is a reasonable doubt.
The people concerned can always refuse to be tested though.
Intuitively it seems to me this is the most counterproductive law ever as living with this doubt is the best way to destroy a family.
Also cares more about privacy than most other countries globally (if folks grokked what "numbered account" meant then there wouldn't be so much baseless hate about how "Swiss took all jewish and nazi money and profit from it till today and that's core of their prosperity".
Couldn't be further from truth, I live here and watch these matters closely from both inside and outside perspectives.
Passive aggression level 10, and I approve.
...and oh yeh the safety software changes every few months so you will have to review it
> A 30yo mother can't compete
(fify)
> Its like giving a gun to a child and telling them its ok
I get your point and I think you're right, but I'd suggest a different analogy or lean in a bit more saying give it to a young child with no training.
The irony is The South is where these porn laws are happening...
Bad modern parents just give their kids an iPad.
But I also parented them.
Or do we continue with the long held legislative reality that you are responsible for the goods and services that you unlawfully provide to children?
Whoever is giving the child access is responsible, not the manufacturer. If a parent gives their child a device capable of accessing the internet with no restrictions, that's on the parent.
Pornhub is manufacturing a product and making it available to the open market, just like Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels has no responsibility to ensure a bar is only providing access to legal patrons.
In your analogy, the bar would be equivalent to a internet cafe or public library that has PCs available to patrons. Those types of businesses should definitely use physical IDs to verify patrons are of age.
To make your analogy work for Pornhub, you'd also have to argue "why shouldn't Jack Daniels have to put age-verifying instant blood tests on their bottles in case a parent puts one in their unlocked liquor cabinet?"
Because then the same concerns arise -- why should Jack Daniels be given access to my blood just to manufacture an age-restricted product? What will they do with it? Will they secure the data appropriately? How do I know it won't be used to negatively impact my future because my health insurance company doesn't like that I drank a bottle of JD?
But we're in an era now where cell phones and tablets — especially used + low-spec ones — are something that even a young child can acquire en masse: from their friends at school, or from any mall kiosk or convenience store with their allowance, etc.
You can put all the parental controls you like on the nice phone you buy your child — but how do you put parental controls on the four other phones you have no idea they own?
(Before you say "search their room" — they could leave them in their desk at school, charging them with a battery bank they charged at home or got a friend to charge for them; and then use them with free public wi-fi rather than locked-down school wi-fi. This doesn't require any particular cleverness; it's the path of least resistance!)
If you ask me "well, what do we do, then?"... I have no idea, honestly.
Some kids will still drown, it’s unavoidable. But swimming lessons are much more effective at preventing drowning deaths than fences.
I'd argue that the Internet is less like water, and more like a freeway. (It is the "information super-highway", after all!)
We do put (quite tall) fences up between freeways and residential areas (or between freeways and areas with wildlife!), and for good reason: unlike deep water (that both humans and animals have a vague instinct is an "unknown quantity" best to be approached cautiously), a freeway can, at a non-rush-hour time, look like a perfectly safe and quiet and predictable place — a place just like the calm, safe meadow or bike path or residential lane beside it — until, midway through crossing one, a truck sudenly whizzes over the horizon going 120mph and smashes right into you before the driver has time to react.
And that's the Internet: a seemingly safe, predictable place — with unexpected trucks whizzing through it, ready to smack into you.
That’s not passive aggression, that’s responsible parenting and clear boundaries.
Now, it doesn’t explain why the decision was made in the first place to enforce a porn filter as a requirement for using the device, but again - it’s not an argument.
I agree that it doesn’t provide a complete explanation because as you mention, if the child bought their own device there would still be restrictions, but that wasn’t the case being discussed.
You’re not convincing your kids that you are right. You are reminding them of the consequences if they disagree.
Very inadvisable. Raise them in view to being adults.
But, you know, we've never been able to agree as a people on what "bad things" are. So it should be, as you said, for each parent to engage in setting boundaries and being responsible.
While I agree with their second point, the first argument sounds a bit overly dramatic, considering how the implementation seems to work. They couldn't blackmail, as the information they receive is limited.
As far as I understand how at least one of the methods for verification must be, is “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged. Then other methods could be offered too.
Although if we assume the average security competence with these types of companies, handling ID documents and stuff, they'll surely get hacked sooner or later. So maybe the link between porn site and identity isn't there, but your personal data that been submitted to them will yet again float out there.
Isn't this an actually reasonable solution? I assumed age verification was supposed to be done by the site itself, and therefore it was considered a very bad idea. But this... what's the problem with this method?
You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things. The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Tangential question: if the principal is divorced from the "is not a minor" signal, what prevents a thrifty youth from just buying/stealing somebody's token?
I'd guess the same issue would be present with selling tokens.
Second, you have to look at the potential damage such a leak would have on the affected porn watchers. Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year? Isn't it a common view that all men and most women watch porn at least occasionally anyway?
And I get the risk if you live in a country that criminalizes pornography. But are were sure there is an extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
Third, it's important to consider the baseline. If you are a citizen of France and you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub. This isn't concerning to anyone but the thickest thin-foil-hat wearing paranoid schizophrenics, and I've never heard of this leading to massive data breaches or blackmail situations either.
Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy, they might as well do the age verification thing, too. They probably already have your personal info due to KYC-legislation.
Of course there are small differences: with age verification your ISP can distinguish between you and other people in your household, which removes a bit of plausible deniability. If you don't trust your ISP you can use alternate DNS-over-HTTPS, VPNs, proxys like Tor, etc. to cover your tracks, which you wouldn't be able to do anymore. But I bet 99,99% of Pornhub visitors in France don't bother with any of that, proving that they aren't actually concerned about being blackmailed or outed as porn consumers by their ISP.
You already know this, I’m certain, but laws and “audits” do little more than nothing to meaningfully protect data.
Good thing we only ever have intentional leaks, then.
> Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year?
LGBT individuals have killed themselves over being outed before they were ready to. I'd wager that any leak that could positively link a person to a site will also include at least some activity on that site. But even if not, there are other people that do have things to loose from being connected to pornhub in any capacity. The simplest example would be anybody seeking sexual health/wellness information; it isn't the core purpose of pornhub, but they are a source that somebody in a sexually repressive environment may seek info from.
> ... extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?
I think we're on different pages here. Your argument seems to be "we should let the good countries have nukes" and my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period". France shows the world that it's possible and less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse.
The only winning move is to not play.
> ...you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub.
Assuming use of ISP controlled DNS servers, the ISP only knows the account holder's name. They don't know if it's a neighbor/guest that's cracked/borrowed the WiFi ... etc. VPN or even just not using ISP managed DNS circumvents this collection.
> Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy
The word "basically" is doing a lot of work there. If you could have said "ISPs are paragons of virtue that are always guaranteed trustworthy" I'm sure you would have. But you didn't so we both agree that anything that follows is predicated on a bad-faith premise.
I still have yet to see a good answer to "how do you prevent borrow/theft/buying/renting/selling of ID vouchers?"
Your willingness to wager on something proves absolutely nothing. I'd wager you woulnd't really wager anything anyway.
> my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period"
Your 100% risk-free society does not exist. You risk things every time you leave the house. Nukes already exist, and one country that gave them up saw that to be a huge mistake.
> less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse
So France should not do something because other countries might do something different that would be bad? This is not a rational discussion. This argument makes zero sense.
You should not be commenting on HN because you are encouraging people to comment on forums where bullying happens and that kills.
No. For any technology you could argue I'm just hoping it won't fail. If I fly with a plane, I'm just hoping it won't crash, right?
In fact, there would be security measures making it less likey that there is a leak. I am literally not "just hoping".
Now those security measures might fail of course. But what are the probabilities? That matters.
> The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it.
Please explain how this does not apply to opening pornhub on my computer right now, with zero age verification systems. I think it applies perfectly, and so it is not an actual argument in this discussion.
Of course we can, based exactly on the dependencies. If someone has an atrocious representation, we don't need to trust the system, if they don't then it becomes more reasonable to do so.
> Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you?
Not all risks are equal.
After verifying the ID, there is no reason the verifier needs to know to whom a token belongs, which would help this. It doesn't need to be repudiatable in practice because the security risk of a leak is near 0 and nobody ages backwards.
Unless you have access to someone's specific kinks or routine (how often does he/she watches porn, for how long), you're no going to scare many people.
Facebook has these information by the way, thanks to the “like buttton” scattered everywhere (at least for people who don't browse porn in private mode, but having done IT support in college, I can tell you there are many people who don't).
On the other hand what kind of pornography, or how frequently and so on could be social pressure , same as what kind of fetishes or kind of sex or with type of person/gender, most people aren’t that sex positive to talk openly about.
For example, why not use the same age verification system to block access to sites that advertise or sell alcohol or tobacco products? Or sex toys. Or dating apps. Or loans applications. Or for any number of adult-only apps that aren't necessarily blackmailable? Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
That provides people with plausible deniability. “Oh, I wasn't looking at porn! I was just trying to find the perfect brandy to buy as a business gift.” or “Oh, I was just trying to get a quote to refurnish my apartment on credit.”
The risk becomes "kids loading their parents' ID into their phones" but with decent digital ID that shouldn't be a problem.
Yivi already solves this problem. It's being used as a basis for an implementation of a European digital ID of sorts, though I'm still sceptical of the European side of things.
The app works on any device because the device doesn't do anything special. All it does is POST some signed token if the user clicks "approve".
I suppose this can be a problem in the US where people hate the idea of digital government ID for some reason, but that's a political problem, not a technical one. France already has a digital ID equivalent for use with government services, as do all other EU member states in their own way, so the source of these tokens is practically ready to go.
The internet has become a very hostile place and its not just surveillance but peer to peer political persecution where someone doesn't follow the script or believe the same thing they do and they lash out and try to censor them by mass reporting or DDOS
I miss the old internet where we used to escape to avoid reality, now we go offline to avoid the internet.
Eh?!
This makes no sense. Is it something like "smartphones bring addiction", i.e. the inability to deal with a tool normally as duly, because some people were left immature, is taken as an excuse to fall into bad logic?
If everyday people faint in front of begonias, it's not the begonia. Treat the roots.
If you visit a website like Pornhub then you're complicit in this.
...So, what you have said is "Shoes are made in sweatshops: ban shoes".
--
Replying to the dead post below: yes, you have as if declared that "all shoe production is substantially like torturing geese for foie gras", but we note that "producing shoes does not necessarily involve torture", hence "you cannot ban shoemaking because of local abuses".
They basically add 'verification headers' to the original website through a proxy solution, allowing visitors to browse sites with some level of age verification regardless of their location. They are more focused on the 'privacy aspect'.
Pornography isn’t all that healthy but so is parents not stepping up and educating their kids on sex, even if it is awkward to talk about.
Many Western countries are past the limit of a damaged authority. People just listen to the legislative novelties and nod.
Pr0nhub is owned by a Jew. https://thejewishindependent.com.au/a-rabbi-is-overseeing-po...
walthamstow•3h ago
sltkr•2h ago
After the US, the three largest Western countries are Germany (which already banned Pornhub), the UK and France, but the UK and France are virtually tied in terms of population, so it was always going to be a tossup between the two.
phit_•2h ago
layer8•1h ago
sltkr•1h ago
Skimming this it sounds like pornhub is/was at least partially blocked on the ISP level. Not sure about the extent of the blockage today but I could imagine that these blocks put a dent in their user numbers.
phit_•42m ago
dakiol•1h ago
pishpash•1h ago
saagarjha•15m ago
vips7L•1h ago
toomanylogins•47m ago
UK slang and this context give this a very relevant double meaning. Well played if this was intentional!
toomanylogins•47m ago
UK slang and this context give this a very relevant double meaning. Well played if this was intentional!
thm•2h ago