After Pornhub left France, this VPN saw a 1,000% surge in signups in 30 minutes

Post by mdp2021 » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 7:03 PM UTC

yhavr wrote: post #106

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The question is whether porn is poisonous, and many people (myself included) genuinely feel the answer is yes. Mature, responsible adults can often ration their consumption enough to avoid too many negative effects - as they do with alcohol - but even adults sometimes fail and for children it's much harder.

Well, social networks and *-toks are also poisonous for your dopaminergic system. As well as certain classes of games, I guess here's a spectrum. But the best option I see is to educate _everyone_ including kids about mental hygiene. Rather than enforcing unenforceable restrictions.

Post by toomanylogins » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

sltkr wrote: post #16

walthamstow wrote: post #2

Fascinating that France is PH's second-biggest market, presumably after the US.

How is that surprising? After the US, the three largest Western countries are Germany (which already banned Pornhub), the UK and France, but the UK and France are virtually tied in terms of population, so it was always going to be a tossup between the two.

Post by ryeats » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 7:06 PM UTC

callamdelaney wrote: post #66

ghusto wrote: post #17

> A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children Passive aggression level 10, and I approve.

This is the only true solution. Parents need to take responsibility for what their kids are doing online, what they’re viewing and who they’re talking to. This generation of parents should be prepared for that but apparently not.

Post by paxys » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

ryeats wrote: post #115

callamdelaney wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only true solution. Parents need to take responsibility for what their kids are doing online, what they’re viewing and who they’re talking to. This generation of parents should be prepared for that but apparently not.

I tried to block YouTube when my kids were remote learning during the pandemic, it took several attempts and they were in grade school. They even got around Apple's considerable content controls I had to set up a DNS proxy.

Post by lucianbr » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

baby_souffle wrote: post #31

lucianbr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “double-anonymity” or "double-blind" protocol: the site never sees the user’s identity, the verifier never learns which site is being visited, and only a yes/no “18+” token is exchanged. Isn't this an actually reasonable solution? I assumed age verification was supposed to be done by the site itself, and therefore it was considered a very bad idea. But this... what's the problem with this method?

> But this... what's the problem with this method? You're just hoping that there's never a leak of any UUID(s) that could be used to correlate things. The ad-tech industry has pioneered de-anonymization tech and they're very, very good at it. Tangential question: if the principal is divorced from the "is not a minor" signal, what prevents a thrifty youth from just buying/stealing somebody's token?