Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 37 posts

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#11

Post by saurik »

mysterium wrote: post #9

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

My concern is that the existence of such technology doesn't mean that it will be required -- and as more private technology often has a cost or a downside, it kind of has to be required for uptake -- and even further doesn't at all imply that it is even on the radar. If you want to be for this, you shouldn't be for this because it COULD be done well: you should insist that you will only be for this IF AND ONLY IF it WILL be done well, and if the draft laws don't say this then we should then not be for it.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#12

Post by mysterium »

saurik wrote: post #11
mysterium wrote: post #9

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

My concern is that the existence of such technology doesn't mean that it will be required -- and as more private technology often has a cost or a downside, it kind of has to be required for uptake -- and even further doesn't at all imply that it is even on the radar. If you want to be for this, you shouldn't be for this because it COULD be done well: you should insist that you will only be for this IF AND ONLY IF it…

Very reasonable, and indeed the July deadline will make it very likely that they _don't_ use a privacy-preserving method like Privacy Pass (and it's very reasonable for people to raise concerns).

My main issue is whenever the topic of age verification is raised, the consensus from the tech community is "the only way to achieve age verification is mass surveillance and I won't stand for it!", and as someone who works in an adjacent field to this, I feel the need to dispel that notion. We should be directing our collective energy into ensuring age verification is secure and private, not fighting against the notion entirely.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#13

Post by Fischgericht »

Kids are shown weapons everywhere. They are afraid to watch news and therefore only consume "news" from socical media, which we made an AI shithole and threat to a civilized society. They see how we have in large parts poisoned or destroyed large parts of their planet. They have to get drilled to learn how to get not shot in school shootings or elsewhere.

And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet?

Wow. Humanity really needs to see a Psychiatrist.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#14

Post by rolothrow »

mysterium wrote: post #9

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting?

It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devices for example. But this is not the intention of course. No one is blamed for handing a toddler a phone with TikTok on.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#16

Post by RandomBacon »

markx2 wrote: post #3

Those that do not wish to verify and cannot afford a VPN could start using 'free' VPN sites / extensions and in doing so open up their computer / network to more malicious content. Those that do not use a VPN will be justifiably concerned that a breach at some later date will expose them. Expected: articles from the likes of TorrentFreak which detail 'no logging' vpn sites. The children will all be safe though, so th…

That assumes children don't use "free" VPN sites/extensions.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#17

Post by mysterium »

rolothrow wrote: post #14
mysterium wrote: post #9

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting? It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devi…

This feels like a perfectionist fallacy. One has to start somewhere, pornography is something we can pretty much all agree children shouldn’t be watching. It’s theoretically a mostly-achievable goal.

Solving one problem doesn’t mean we can’t also work on solving the others.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#18

Post by rolothrow »

mysterium wrote: post #17
rolothrow wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting? It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devi…

This feels like a perfectionist fallacy. One has to start somewhere, pornography is something we can pretty much all agree children shouldn’t be watching. It’s theoretically a mostly-achievable goal. Solving one problem doesn’t mean we can’t also work on solving the others.

My point is not "if we don't solve everything it's not good". My point is "if you focus on this very specific part of the supposed problem while never mentioning the rest, I very much doubt the sincerity of your goal" (you being the government in this case). This is just "think of the children".

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#19

Post by dangus »

rolothrow wrote: post #14
mysterium wrote: post #9

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting? It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devi…

The thing is that it's already illegal for minors to see pornography.

It's not illegal for minors to access their technology devices or watch disturbing news footage.

This is merely an enforcement vehicle for rules that already exist. It is an acknowledgment that the law that has been in place for years doesn't work anymore.

Back in the pre-Internet days the adult video store or cinema would make sure you were of proper age to patronize those businesses. Sure, you could sift through your Dad's Playboys but essentially, an adult could reasonably be able to figure out how to limit exposure of content to their children.

In the current environment it's basically impossible.

An analogy to the status quo would be if drinking for under 21/18 was illegal but no bars or stores were required to check ID. That makes it effectively legal.

Now, as to your point on whether these rules make sense in the first place? I think we can reasonably assume that most of the voting public isn't in favor of legalizing pornography for minors. It doesn't really have to make sense when compared to other things we allow exposure to.

In other words, the existing laws already roughly reflect our cultural values. Most people in the Western world are literally more okay with showing their child something violent versus something pornographic.

If we all collectively as a culture decide to change that in the future, great, but I doubt a referendum to that effect would have majority agreement.

Essentially, the only concern with this law should be the anonymity of the age verification. All other concerns are addressed by the fact that a minor viewing pornography is already breaking the law.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#20

Post by rstuart4133 »

rolothrow wrote: post #14
mysterium wrote: post #9

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting? It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devi…

> The obvious question to me is why pornography?

Because there is some kink in the Anglo Saxon psyche that means it's appealing to voters? I don't know, but I can't think of another explanation. The European countries focus their ire on violence and anti social behaviour, which makes far more sense to me.

It pretty clearly isn't because porn is particular harmful. If it was the explosion of porn the internet has made available would have some obvious effects. Yet all we get is the occasional report of some porn addicted individual. Not good, but it's more than offset by the reduction in sex crimes in the same period. And as addictions go porn addiction does seem that bad. Wasting time on porn is still wasted time I guess, but isn't actively harmful like, sugar addiction, nicotine addiction, alcohol addiction or gambling addiction - all of which are tolerated.

Post reply on HN