It was definitely to protect the kids and NOT to try to quash all depictions of human sexuality due to a fetish for appeasing the arbitrary whims of the invisible sky daddy, as told to us by the people who pinky promise they were speaking on behalf of invisible sky daddy.
How does this apply here?
The people pushing the age verification will never admit this to you, often because they're either ignorant of the bigger picture or not engaging in good faith in the first place, seeing themselves as the clear-eyed moral ones bringing wisdom to us heathens who don't know any better.
I'm not aware of any religious groups in the UK who have significant influence on legislation, perhaps unlike the US.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258565076_The_Emper...
Is there any reliable data showing this? What does "degrading" and "violent" mean? Is it really detrimental, or is it just totally normal kinks that some people don't understand are actually carried out in a healthy way?
"Lying Jews" is an anti-semitic trope and I won't stand for it
Obviously not, a lot of them just don't want to identify themselves. But having worked in IT for 25 years and knowing how free some people are to use their government e-mail to sign up at porn websites, I wonder even if 50% are underage, that's a huge number.
It's not 1999 anymore. Stop going to sketchy sites to watch porn.
2. Children aren't as well versed with tech as you think, just because they spend a lot of hours in front of a screen.
Yes. That’s exactly what we believe.
Do you believe that 77% of UK Pornhub users suddenly stopped wanking?
Seems pretty implausible to me.
One of their friends sends them a link. Now they just send them a different link, one that goes via a free VPN.
You don't need any new skills for that and it's not a "speedbump".
All this law does is make it harder for adults to use non-porn websites like Reddit, Spotify or Bluesky.
It’s not a good law.
At the next election some portion of Labour voters will remember missteps like this and will vote for someone else because of it.
Personally, I think their prosecution of peaceful protestors (Palestine supporters) whilst giving a free pass to right wing violent protestors will alienate their traditional left-wing base.
This law is not fit for the declared purpose at all.
So all minors in the UK have their own banking account and credit card? You know, to pay for the VPN.
Or just find another porn site that doesn't adhere to the law.
Whenever there's a blocker (one case from my childhood was how to use net send to broadcast profanity across the network), someone will figure it out, and by the end of the day EVERYONE knows.
Basically every youtube video for the past decade has been sponsored by a VPN service offering first-joiner discounts. My cousin uses a VPN and has no idea what it is and how it works, just that "he should protect himself while browsing". Those VPNs have invested massively in UX and ease of use so out of that 77% of users, I'd guess more than 80% of it switched to VPNs.
It's going to be interesting to see how this plays with voters at the next election. Politicians think this censorship is a vote-winner, presumably because on the doorstep voters are unlikely to talk about their love of porn. Yet in online spaces, this policy seems wildly unpopular - especially with the high profile leaks of age validation services' user data; the government's legal battles with Wikipedia; Steam's demand for credit cards (debit cards are more common in the UK); and sites leaving the UK market all together.
I suppose we'll get to see whose polling is more accurate at the next election.
Well. With the ageing population and the fact that older people are more conservative and they turn out to vote more often I would doubt that anything would change. At least not because of this.
In other countries (not least the US) there’s an expectation of privacy which doesn’t really exist in the UK. It’s not seen as a right by any major party or particularly valued by the public at large (“nothing to hide nothing to fear” etc). The government still really wants E2E encryption banned here (as nonsensical as that is).
They don’t see any of this as a vote loser, as none of the alternative parties see it any differently.
Personally I’m kind of happy about this gating even if I disagree on principle, but they’ve already indicated that they have no line. They’ve been very open about seeing everything you say and do.
I'm not saying UK is great, but surely ahead of what the US is doing by a wide margin.
If you look at the UK through the MAGA lens you see that there’s a grain of truth in some of the comments about free speech.
Likewise terminology in the US is sometimes a little turned on its head - in the US “liberalism” means something completely different from actual liberalism (which would be closer to libertarianism).
Also “woke” has been used for so many things that its meaning has been warped from “don’t trust the system” to whatever the right dislikes on a given day, even though they’re ostensibly all about smaller government that stays out of your business.
Politics has always been very subversive but it’s more entangled than ever now.
That depends on which online spaces you frequent. Ones like HN, which have a higher proportion of male users, will be statistically more likely to have commenters who engage in habitual pornography consumption and are vocally opposed to the OSA on this basis.
FWIW the male spaces I'm in are supportive of porn bans.
Certainly a win for drafters of the OSA, despite the controversy stirred up over its enactment.
Hmmm...
(Also, I'll point out there are parental control settings for Google accounts)
I'd like very much to remove moral busybodies from my system but it seems very hard for people who have a grand plan for society to top coercing and leave me alone.
Its none of your business if people voluntarily produce it and its also none of your business if people voluntarily market it between each other.
I mean it is no secret a lot of people who produce these things have mental health issues or come from very poor families. That's not even including the illegal activity that might seem legal on the surface.
I guess there are some who really want their porn and either don't know about the alternatives (VPN) or genuinely don't mind handing over identifying info to do it.
That watching porn is still an immoral act is implicit in your surprise.
I don't actually see watching porn as immoral, although I am aware that there are a large number of people who do. Hence my surprise that so many people were willing to tie their identities to it.
deaddodo•4h ago
It's also much more obvious that a taboo/illicit service asking you to, essentially, deanonymize yourself is going to be hit the hardest.
kubb•4h ago
Remember that when discussing any regulation.
The „it’s impossible” and „let’s not bother” people are a scourge and they mustn’t be taken seriously.
elyobo•4h ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45769504
niek_pas•4h ago
LtWorf•4h ago
vasco•4h ago
bengbwing•3h ago
diffeomorphism•3h ago
Instead of large, accountable providers, now three quarters of their customers use vpns or switched to sites without age verification.
DagsEoress•3h ago