Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#2In my country, there are time limited age verification wallet code.
Namely, you don't need to use your credit card online (yeay!).
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#3Those 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 there's that.
Pornhub's stats, which they publish, will make for interesting reading.
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#4The UK government was warned almost 10 years ago this is bad idea, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. They've decided to push it through anyway.
Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on, but the solution is not the government nannying everyone.
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#5A horny teenager won't be stopped by age verification. They will find other ways to access the content.
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#6The UK government was warned almost 10 years ago this is bad idea, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. They've decided to push it through anyway. Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on, but the solution is not the government nannying everyone.
I’m in favor of the ban, but the 1990s privacy nerds had a good point when they said it would lead to other kinds of censorship: https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-...
The slippery slope happened a lot faster than most people thought.
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#7VPN = Virtual Porn Network
some kind of ad blaster, and non-bank currency
is going to become so much more common, than if there was a simple,"its my phone,buzz off mind your OWN business" check box that is legaly required, and protected and
minors could get a "juvi sim" till they reach the age of majority, which of course, would only deter
the lazy ones.
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#8What's stopping the U.K from banning VPN's for private use? Creating a carve out for workplace usage, or requiring a license and acceptable reason like firearms?
I doubt there would be much public pushback.
I mention this because people always mention these workarounds as being impregnable. If the U.K is okay with telling ISP's to block websites they certainly will have no problem banning VPN's
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#9Hot 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 verification service (e.g. a government run service, or a bank), but crucially not the reason _why_ you're proving your age (i.e. the bank doesn't know if you're visiting a porn site or a casino). That service gives you a bunch of signed tokens proving you're over the age of 18/21/whatever, and you can redeem a token on the porn/gambling/alcohol-purchasing website for access. It uses various fun bits of cryptography (e.g. blind signatures) to ensure anonymity for the user.
With such technologies, anonymous age verification becomes achievable. Now, whether age verification is inherently "bad" is up for debate, but that's a matter of opinion. Obviously this technology isn't infallible and it will be possible to work around, but we don't need a perfect solution here. Preventing 99% of children that would have viewed violent pornography from viewing it is a massive win, and the fact that we can do it in a provably-privacy-preserving manner using cryptography is very very cool.
Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July
#10Hot 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…
It's definitely possible to do it in a way that's less invasive but still effective. The question is whether that will actually happen.