I’m old enough to remember when age verification bills were pitched as a way to ‘save the kids from porn’ and shield them from other vague dangers lurking in the digital world (like…“the transgender”). We have long cautioned about the dangers of these laws, and pointed out why they are likely to...
A device should be able it indicate in its browser headers whether its primary user is an adult or a minor and the service can react accordingly.
It won’t protect all the children but children of parents who can’t be assed to setup a device properly will have problems no matter how much we increase the surveillance state.
The laws around advertising are fucked to begin with but the headers SHOULD be used in advertising 100%
The minor flag would actually remove the LARGE gray area that platforms take advantage of to push harmful ADs and content to kids (Today they just get to play dumb)
This would actually create a framework to enforce existing advertising laws as well as data collection laws with regards to minors.
Examples: Minors should not see ads for holsters, knives, ammo, ED medications, Diet drugs, muscle building drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco products, Online Gambling
These are all things I have seen advertised on YouTube to me; Granted I am not a minor but I am also just using Youtube by going to the site with no account.
Kids are babied already but if 14 year olds can vote in party elections, and 16 year olds can consent to sexual intercourse with adults, then I don’t think restricting porn is our problem. Either kids can make decisions, or all of these laws need to align with each other more logically.
We have taken parents rights away to allow children to make decisions on their gender and name changes, yet we expect parent to be responsible for their actions like accessing porn.
I could not care less about whatever the final say is on age restrictions, but if there are gonna be rules, at least make them make sense you know? I also do not love that I have to verify my identity to use the internet. Look at the UK and how that’s working out there even without IDs. Talk about authoritarian control.
This stuff is the whole reason I switched to this platform.
A header would put the setting on the device and only indicate “Minor” or “Not Minor” which would allow to restrict or allow porn without having to collect everyone’s PII just so they can crank their hog.
If you read previous things though such an indicator would put a lot more responsibility onto Social Media platforms to not show harmful content to minors. Today they get away with it because “TOS says only 18 year olds are allowed to us this service”
We have taken parents rights away to allow children to make decisions on their gender and name changes, yet we expect parent to be responsible for their actions like accessing porn.
That’s not a contradiction. Gender and name are about who the child is. Porn is about who the child wants to imagine having sex with. One of them, 99% of children are perfectly capable of making a good decision on. One of them can potentially be traumatising, and certainly isn’t absolutely necessary for a good life and healthy development.
That said, it’s not the government’s job to control it. An “I am 18” button and a lesson in health class are enough.
If porn sites must be legislated, here’s a better way: force them to display information to users on unrealistic depictions, the dangers of underage sex, and counselling resources.
What’s gonna stop a pedo from changing the headers to child so that they can access the child internet where all the children are? Like it’s not a great solution to me.
your understanding of what the proposed header solution is is way off base. “protecting the kids” isn’t about keeping adults from interacting with kids in online forums, it’s about keeping the kids from accidentally seeing porn (really it’s about making the lives of sex workers more dangerous). think of it like a tv v-chip but for the internet, not as a nightclub bouncer creating two different online communities and making sure they don’t interact with eachother
It is pointless, it was always pointless and always will be. That’s the point. Before the internet kids were stealing their dad’s or brother’s Hustlers and Playboys. For most of the internet’s time so far you just click a button that says “yes I’m over 18 I pinky promise”. In the future of the internet any effort to seriously implement age verification short of submitting a DNA sample is going to be bypassed. Trying to find porn is one of only like four things that teenage boys think about, you’re not going to stop that signal. Ask anyone born before 2000 about forest porn and they’ll probably have a story about finding a couple magazines or a VHS stashed in the woods somewhere near where they lived as a kid.
Best case, you just drive them off the mainstream sites that verify age and onto shadier websites that don’t. Or the kid that steals his dad’s ID to watch porn starts downloading and distributing them on USBs to everyone in his school, makes like $800, and then gets arrested, now this kid has an unnecessary sex crime on his record because the government really wants to know when you’re jerking off. It’s all just pointless performatism that causes more problems than it solves. And that’s not even getting into the fact that a nefarious government, which we definitely have here in America, can use that information to pinpoint especially LGBT folks via their porn viewing habits.
So at best it’s stupid and useless and at worst it’s going to get people killed.
If I were building the feature, I’d put the “adult” header behind a password.
But that’s a solution only for the one browser. You’d need to forbid the OS account in use from installing new apps so the kid can’t get a different browser. And now it’s starting to be inconvenient for the parent.
I think that’s up to device vendors giving parents decent controls and parents monitoring their kids devices. Which is admittedly not great, but still better than the honor system and more reasonable than submitting your license.
I think he means that the headers come from the device making the call, not the one receing it, so a pedo should be able to change the headers of my device which is not that easy.
Then yes, the receing end could simply ignore the header anyway, it would be way easier.
I have to agree with PornHub’s idea.
A device should be able it indicate in its browser headers whether its primary user is an adult or a minor and the service can react accordingly.
It won’t protect all the children but children of parents who can’t be assed to setup a device properly will have problems no matter how much we increase the surveillance state.
I can already see that being used for targeting children with specific ads on the internet.
The laws around advertising are fucked to begin with but the headers SHOULD be used in advertising 100%
The minor flag would actually remove the LARGE gray area that platforms take advantage of to push harmful ADs and content to kids (Today they just get to play dumb)
This would actually create a framework to enforce existing advertising laws as well as data collection laws with regards to minors.
Examples: Minors should not see ads for holsters, knives, ammo, ED medications, Diet drugs, muscle building drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco products, Online Gambling
These are all things I have seen advertised on YouTube to me; Granted I am not a minor but I am also just using Youtube by going to the site with no account.
If I was an advertiser for those products I’d be pissed that my ad dollars are going non targets anyway. So it would be a win win
Kids are the target of gambling ads because it conditions them into thinking it’s normal
I imagine other products see similar benefits
advertising some products to kids will probably make them future customers. tobacco/vape/gambling etc.
Kids are babied already but if 14 year olds can vote in party elections, and 16 year olds can consent to sexual intercourse with adults, then I don’t think restricting porn is our problem. Either kids can make decisions, or all of these laws need to align with each other more logically.
We have taken parents rights away to allow children to make decisions on their gender and name changes, yet we expect parent to be responsible for their actions like accessing porn.
I could not care less about whatever the final say is on age restrictions, but if there are gonna be rules, at least make them make sense you know? I also do not love that I have to verify my identity to use the internet. Look at the UK and how that’s working out there even without IDs. Talk about authoritarian control.
This stuff is the whole reason I switched to this platform.
I am actually in full agreement.
A header would put the setting on the device and only indicate “Minor” or “Not Minor” which would allow to restrict or allow porn without having to collect everyone’s PII just so they can crank their hog.
If you read previous things though such an indicator would put a lot more responsibility onto Social Media platforms to not show harmful content to minors. Today they get away with it because “TOS says only 18 year olds are allowed to us this service”
South Park kind of nailed the attitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_(Not_Suitable_for_Children)
That’s not a contradiction. Gender and name are about who the child is. Porn is about who the child wants to imagine having sex with. One of them, 99% of children are perfectly capable of making a good decision on. One of them can potentially be traumatising, and certainly isn’t absolutely necessary for a good life and healthy development.
That said, it’s not the government’s job to control it. An “I am 18” button and a lesson in health class are enough.
If porn sites must be legislated, here’s a better way: force them to display information to users on unrealistic depictions, the dangers of underage sex, and counselling resources.
What’s gonna stop a pedo from changing the headers to child so that they can access the child internet where all the children are? Like it’s not a great solution to me.
your understanding of what the proposed header solution is is way off base. “protecting the kids” isn’t about keeping adults from interacting with kids in online forums, it’s about keeping the kids from accidentally seeing porn (really it’s about making the lives of sex workers more dangerous). think of it like a tv v-chip but for the internet, not as a nightclub bouncer creating two different online communities and making sure they don’t interact with eachother
The same thing that’s stopping pedophiles today of course.
The idea isn’t to let sites restrict adults, just let them restrict kids. So there wouldn’t be a child internet.
Then what’s to stop a kid from spoofing the adult headers? Wouldn’t that make the whole thing needlessly complicated?
Of they’re old enough to figure that out then who cares?
watching a tiktok video on it means nothing about maturity
😂 if my son gets how to spoof headers, he can watch all the porn he wants
if he can do that it won’t tell anything about his intelligence, just that he has seen a video on tiktok about how to do it
But then what’s the point of age verification, it’s pointless.
It is pointless, it was always pointless and always will be. That’s the point. Before the internet kids were stealing their dad’s or brother’s Hustlers and Playboys. For most of the internet’s time so far you just click a button that says “yes I’m over 18 I pinky promise”. In the future of the internet any effort to seriously implement age verification short of submitting a DNA sample is going to be bypassed. Trying to find porn is one of only like four things that teenage boys think about, you’re not going to stop that signal. Ask anyone born before 2000 about forest porn and they’ll probably have a story about finding a couple magazines or a VHS stashed in the woods somewhere near where they lived as a kid.
Best case, you just drive them off the mainstream sites that verify age and onto shadier websites that don’t. Or the kid that steals his dad’s ID to watch porn starts downloading and distributing them on USBs to everyone in his school, makes like $800, and then gets arrested, now this kid has an unnecessary sex crime on his record because the government really wants to know when you’re jerking off. It’s all just pointless performatism that causes more problems than it solves. And that’s not even getting into the fact that a nefarious government, which we definitely have here in America, can use that information to pinpoint especially LGBT folks via their porn viewing habits.
So at best it’s stupid and useless and at worst it’s going to get people killed.
That’s what I’m trying to get at!
Couldn’t a kid “borrow” their parent’s ID for the age verification? Isn’t it just as pointless today?
If I were building the feature, I’d put the “adult” header behind a password.
But that’s a solution only for the one browser. You’d need to forbid the OS account in use from installing new apps so the kid can’t get a different browser. And now it’s starting to be inconvenient for the parent.
You seem really up in arms about this.
I think that’s up to device vendors giving parents decent controls and parents monitoring their kids devices. Which is admittedly not great, but still better than the honor system and more reasonable than submitting your license.
Ahh yes the children
If we cared about the children why would we permit religious institutions to exit
Pedo central every single one of them
Trust me that pisses me off. Which is why I’m just skeptical of anything to protect the children like this age verification bill.
So what if it was no different than now?
Nothing stopping adults from playing Roblox now, but we know why they are there
Lucky for the pedo, you never have to prove you are under 18, if that is what you tell the website.
I think he means that the headers come from the device making the call, not the one receing it, so a pedo should be able to change the headers of my device which is not that easy.
Then yes, the receing end could simply ignore the header anyway, it would be way easier.
Yes
Don’t worry dude at least one person sees this is a joke