61–70 of 1001 posts
I guess we should get used to a future where porn is freely available to everyone, at every age, because it doesn't appear to be slowing down.
The US is also planning a law that would make it illegal to use VPNs to skirt laws like this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody knows that prohibition does not work. People will get their fix any other way.
It's astonishing that we must repeat again and again that when alcohol was prohibited, it was sold anyway under the counter, and among those profiting from that black market were Al Capone and other similarly nice people.
Pornographic content also has an analog: If companies need to be illegitimate to provide it, then they won't be quite as picky about if the content itself was produced legally or illegally (e.g. CP and other abuse/sex trafficked originating content).
Banning pornography won't make it go away, it will just make it unregulated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine this is something that has been studied extensively, what good/bad o outcomes are known from societies that do/don't allow porn?
I imagine it's hard to study since you need to find two countries with similar socio-economic status, rights of women, attitudes towards marriage, rape etc but that have opposite opinions on pornography.
Such things have been done. I remember a study discussed on HN where they used the same neighbourhoods before/after a change of law. That wasn't porn though, I think it was strip clubs, and the result was something like "when a strip club opens in an area that had none before, the number of sexual assaults in the vicinity decreases by a few per cent".
This all seems a little disingenuous. First, from their summary, it doesn’t sound like the law actually requires checking a photo ID. They’re treating it like some maximalist regulation that it isn’t—it requires them to do more than nothing though. And also > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by their device. Pornhub effectively does absolutely nothing to verify users’ ages right now. Maybe it…
> 72 (9) "Reasonable age verification methods" means verifying that the person seeking to
> 73 access the material is 18 years old or older by using any of the following methods:
> 74 (a) use of a digitized information card as defined in this section;
> 75 (b) verification through an independent, third-party age verification service that
> 76 compares the personal information entered by the individual who is seeking access to the
> 77 material that is available from a commercially available database, or aggregate of databases,
> 78 that is regularly used by government agencies and businesses for the purpose of age and
> 79 identity verification; or
> 80 (c) any commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional
> 81 data to verify the age of the person attempting to access the material.
Edit: For clarity adding the definition of "transactional data" - there's no clever loophole there either. Basically, data mine/data broker shit. Perhaps less maximalist than "just check the ID", but hardly what anyone would consider a meaningfully "minimal" solution either.
> 84 (11) (a) "Transactional data" means a sequence of information that documents an
> 85 exchange, agreement, or transfer between an individual, commercial entity, or third party used
> 86 for the purpose of satisfying a request or event.
> 87 (b) "Transactional data" includes records from mortgage, education, and employment
> 88 entities.
The US is also planning a law that would make it illegal to use VPNs to skirt laws like this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban...
There are countless programmers, from self taught amateurs to professional SWEs, white hats, grey hats and black hats, who would immediately jump at the opportunity to create stronger VPNs, mirror sites, Tor nodes, and other tools to allow the public to bypass these restrictions. Trying to control the Internet in America is a losing proposition, for better or worse.
It’s probably only a matter of time. The internet became the only place where age verification wasn’t really a thing. I’m honestly more surprised this didn’t happen 20 years ago.
Where "good enough" wrt. correctness doesn't mean crypto-graphically pro-oven but only "you need to do some hacky things to circumvent it". Because IMHO for anything which doesn't also require to know the _exact_ identity of the user that is good enough.
Where "good enough" wrt. privacy doesn't mean perfect, but means for the "age verification provider" not worse then what fingerprinting can do even if you have a ad-blocker and for the "age verification checking" website means yes or no and that's all they get (preferable, in worst case also the identity of the "age verification provider" (e.g. some organization) id but under no circumstances anything more than that).
Where "good enough" wrt. usability means you have to use an verification provider of your country (because what adult means differs).
This solution isn't perfect, it doesn't distinguish between different countries having different ages for being adult and intentionally doesn't handle other age steps like 12+, 16+ (mainly matters for games).
Honestly the only real problem I see is that in the US it can't be used to buy alcohol because for some reasons they don't allow adult to buy alcohol until 21 (but do allow them to do decisions way more dangerous then that). Except it's not really a problem as the US can define "internet adult" to be 21+, given that this is mainly needed for porn, buying alcohol etc. the US would love doing that anyway AFIK.
I mean sometimes the perfect solutions is just to bothersome bother with it (the perfect solutions probably needs something like 0 knowledge proofs to preserve privacy).
Presumably they are using some form of IP address geolocation. If that's as inaccurate in the USA as it is in Australia, they're going to have problems - a lot of the time it puts me in the wrong State.
Mobile phones cannot be reliably geo-located by IP as that depends on the datacenter serving them, which can easily be out of state. Usually the only half reliable part is the country which doesn't work in Europe when it comes to roaming (it uses the host country regardless the location).
The US is also planning a law that would make it illegal to use VPNs to skirt laws like this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban...
There are countless programmers, from self taught amateurs to professional SWEs, white hats, grey hats and black hats, who would immediately jump at the opportunity to create stronger VPNs, mirror sites, Tor nodes, and other tools to allow the public to bypass these restrictions. Trying to control the Internet in America is a losing proposition, for better or worse.