Age limits on buying cigarettes are easily thwarted by finding a corner shop that needs the sale and will sell to kids. Height restrictions on fairground rides are easily thwarted by putting bits of wood in your shoes. None of this matters. The point is that this kind of control will drastically reduce under 18s consuming content that they shouldn't. We don't need the all of society's controls to be flawless.
Exactly. For example, adult smoking prevalence in the EU has dropped by about 9% per decade among men which means it's fallen nearly in half since the 1970s. The US is always against regulations when they don't benefit their companies, whether it's social media, AI, porn, tobacco, or weapons.
The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
151–160 of 191 posts
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. For example, adult smoking prevalence in the EU has dropped by about 9% per decade among men which means it's fallen nearly in half since the 1970s. The US is always against regulations when they don't benefit their companies, whether it's social media, AI, porn, tobacco, or weapons.
That was after the ban on smoking indoors and public spaces.
The EU and Asia are doing a great job protecting their people from harmful US goods and services. On the other hand, South America and Africa are poor continents with little power to negotiate.
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#153Except paying the vpn requires a credit card that does the same verification check so it’s not thwarting the rule at all.
No don't worry, there are plenty of extremely shady free "VPN" services that this law will provide with a nice stream of victims
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. What I mean by porn addiction: In 2025, the average person watches around 6 hours per week of pornography. That's from recent industry and survey data. In 2005, the average was roughly 1.7 hours. So porn is…
> Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. You're right - I haven't, because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them. Also, sex work and pornography can't lazily be compared like that. No "…
> People become sex workers because they enjoy it
Ignorant.
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
High school kids cannot buy weapons in the UK? They can't even watch porn? Jesus Christ, stay away from that country!!
Actually some idiot politician tried to blame Amazon for knife crime in the UK. Never mind that most kids can find kitchen knives (the type used in a recent crime when the politician made the statement) in the kitchen where they live.
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. You're right - I haven't, because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them. Also, sex work and pornography can't lazily be compared like that. No "…
First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking. > People become sex workers because they enjoy it Ignorant.
No, I don't actually. Why not? Two major reasons:
1. You cannot naively equate things for free. You cannot claim porn is like narcotics without proving that first. I simply do not need to prove narcotics are good to show porn is fine.
2. When it comes to rights, we never, ever, take an approach of "it's bad until it's proven good". Ever. For example, I need not prove every single potential piece of speech is okay to advocate free speech. We take the inverse approach - all speech is fine, until it's not and we can prove it's not. I don't need to ask permission first. For example, yelling "fire!" in a theater isn't okay, but we reach that conclusion by proving it's bad - NOT by proving everything around it is good. Does that make sense? It's a sort of innocent until proven guilty approach.
We do not restrict rights without first proving doing so will be good. You are, implicitly, granted a right to do whatever - EXCEPT the stuff we've taken the time to blacklist.
So, if something is bad, that's something you need to prove if we want to restrict that right. I don't need to prove it's good, I implicitly have the right. For example, in practice, there's a lot of bad stuff I can do that I have the right to do. I have the right to watch a scary movie that will keep me up at night. I don't need to prove anything is good, and we don't need to write a law like "scary movies are good". YOU would need to prove they're bad, and then write a law like "scary movies are bad, no more scary movies".
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws Agreed, and I like to point out the same when talking of Apple and Co. not liking EU laws. This however, is very different. It's more akin to me publishing a book in my own country, then another country's book importers importing that book and me getting in trouble for putting into print ideas that are not allowed there. Reme…
Whilst I appreciate your point, I'm not sure the analogy works. Your 'book' (website) is being deployed from your warehouse (web server) and you could chose to not deliver to the customer (the client web browser) based on their location, because of local (to the customer) laws that ban the book. I think it'd be difficult to argue against that unless someone else was a proxy middleman during the delivery of the book (…
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking. > People become sex workers because they enjoy it Ignorant.
> First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking. No, I don't actually. Why not? Two major reasons: 1. You cannot naively equate things for free. You cannot claim porn is like narcotics without proving that first. I simply do not need to prove narcotics are good to show porn is fine. 2. When it comes to rights, we neve…
Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking. > People become sex workers because they enjoy it Ignorant.
> First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking. No, I don't actually. Why not? Two major reasons: 1. You cannot naively equate things for free. You cannot claim porn is like narcotics without proving that first. I simply do not need to prove narcotics are good to show porn is fine. 2. When it comes to rights, we neve…
> because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them