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

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

#121

Post by lucianbr »

JCattheATM wrote: post #71
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?

It depends how solid the implementation is, and what the competency reputation of the government implementing it is.

Well, we can't refuse a system or a technology on the basis of "depends". Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you? Even if you don't, most rational people do, daily.

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

#122

Post by bdangubic »

paxys wrote: post #117
ryeats wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My condolences, you are raising software engineers.

all kids in 2025 are SWEs :)

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

#123

Post by baby_souffle »

sltkr wrote: post #79
baby_souffle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws. So we are limited to unintentional breaches of privacy which can be guarded against with auditing requirements. Second, you have to look at the potential damage such a leak would have on the affected porn watchers. Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the…

> First, intentionally leaking this type of data is extremely illegal under Europe's strict privacy laws.

Good thing we only ever have intentional leaks, then.

> Is it really that damaging to your reputation if someone could prove that you visited Pornhub in the last year?

LGBT individuals have killed themselves over being outed before they were ready to. I'd wager that any leak that could positively link a person to a site will also include at least some activity on that site. But even if not, there are other people that do have things to loose from being connected to pornhub in any capacity. The simplest example would be anybody seeking sexual health/wellness information; it isn't the core purpose of pornhub, but they are a source that somebody in a sexually repressive environment may seek info from.

> ... extreme societal taboo on enjoying erotic cinema in the notoriously puritanical country of... checks notes France?

I think we're on different pages here. Your argument seems to be "we should let the good countries have nukes" and my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period". France shows the world that it's possible and less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy, but worse.

The only winning move is to not play.

> ...you are accessing Pornhub via your residential ISP or your mobile phone, then your ISP already knows you are visiting Pornhub.

Assuming use of ISP controlled DNS servers, the ISP only knows the account holder's name. They don't know if it's a neighbor/guest that's cracked/borrowed the WiFi ... etc. VPN or even just not using ISP managed DNS circumvents this collection.

> Given that ISPs appear to be basically trustworthy

The word "basically" is doing a lot of work there. If you could have said "ISPs are paragons of virtue that are always guaranteed trustworthy" I'm sure you would have. But you didn't so we both agree that anything that follows is predicated on a bad-faith premise.

I still have yet to see a good answer to "how do you prevent borrow/theft/buying/renting/selling of ID vouchers?"

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

#124

Post by jajko »

pkkkzip wrote: post #35
jpalawaga wrote: post #10

(The VPN service is Proton VPN, for those coming directly to the comments.)

why this VPN in particular?

Its a Swiss one, so compared to some sites its probably in French out of box. Has a good reputation, located in country that doesn't take much bullshit from EU or given government (Albeit some of it is good, this is not).

Also cares more about privacy than most other countries globally (if folks grokked what "numbered account" meant then there wouldn't be so much baseless hate about how "Swiss took all jewish and nazi money and profit from it till today and that's core of their prosperity".

Couldn't be further from truth, I live here and watch these matters closely from both inside and outside perspectives.

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

#125

Post by mdp2021 »

yhavr wrote: post #109
mdp2021 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is poisonous With all due, some may want to advise you to check into that. It could be that it does strange things because of the way you are wired. Please note (about similar corners) what I have already written in the page, "for some it brings a satisfaction and this is an outlet valve that reduces adverse social effects; for some it is a kindler and it will increase adverse social effects". To some it will be th…

Well, doesn't porn-ish entertaiment fuck up ones reward system? I'm not talking of porn specificly, but about a range of products that turn people into "dopamine rats", constantly pressing a button for more bursts of novelty?

> fuck up ones reward system

I am personally not aware of those (products that would damage one's reward system), can you name some?

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

#126

Post by paxys »

diggan wrote: post #19

> "and having offshore porn sites or any other third parties collect IDs from adults and becoming a repository of potential blackmail material comes with its own risks [...] A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children" said the company's (Proton's) spokesperson While I agree with their second point, the first argument sounds a bi…

Their proposed alternative is even worse IMO. Even if you can figure out some privacy-safe way of doing on-device age verification, the end result will be a web that only works if you are browsing from an "approved" client - i.e. a platform controlled by Apple, Google or Microsoft.

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

#127

Post by jajko »

nashashmi wrote: post #78
mirekrusin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs too. Doesn't seem to stop ones that want to do it though by looking at some neighbourhoods.

It does stop kids from being openly advertised drugs and makes it difficult for kids to get drugs. That is the whole point of legislation, not to eliminate but mitigate.

LOL. You should walk around some french cities a bit. Getting drugs for locals is certainly not a problem, despite harsh punishments like its 80s.

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

#128

Post by thaumasiotes »

david-gpu wrote: post #32
azrrik wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people have things they don't want everyone to know. how is wanting a small amount of privacy ridiculous?

Why would anybody even want to know the porn you watch? And what would they do about it, or how would that affect you? "Hey, Jimmy, I went searching for your porn habits and found that you are into fat redheads. Shame on you, shame on you. You are now excommunicated from... Somewhere" . How is this not a much bigger social faux pas for the accuser rather than the accused?

> Why would anybody even want to know the porn you watch?

They might be interested in seducing you.

Otherwise, no reason.

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

#129

Post by manquer »

littlestymaar wrote: post #41
landl0rd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only thing that verifier does is verification for accessing digital pornography, it remains blackmail-able. Not in the sense of identifying the specific content accessed but in the sense of "this user has gone through the steps to gain access" which is, frankly, good enough. After verifying the ID, there is no reason the verifier needs to know to whom a token belongs, which would help this. It doesn't need to…

Threatening someone to tell people “There's a high likelyhood that X watches porn” is a blackmail-worthy threat IMHO. Unless you have access to someone's specific kinks or routine (how often does he/she watches porn, for how long), you're no going to scare many people. Facebook has these information by the way, thanks to the “like buttton” scattered everywhere (at least for people who don't browse porn in private mod…

Is it though? In this day and age I would think that someone who doesn’t watch porn is in the minority, it is like saying this person has sex.

On the other hand what kind of pornography, or how frequently and so on could be social pressure , same as what kind of fetishes or kind of sex or with type of person/gender, most people aren’t that sex positive to talk openly about.

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

#130

Post by sltkr »

landl0rd wrote: post #29
diggan wrote: post #19

> "and having offshore porn sites or any other third parties collect IDs from adults and becoming a repository of potential blackmail material comes with its own risks [...] A more technically sound approach would be content controls directly implemented on the devices parents chose to give their children" said the company's (Proton's) spokesperson While I agree with their second point, the first argument sounds a bi…

If the only thing that verifier does is verification for accessing digital pornography, it remains blackmail-able. Not in the sense of identifying the specific content accessed but in the sense of "this user has gone through the steps to gain access" which is, frankly, good enough. After verifying the ID, there is no reason the verifier needs to know to whom a token belongs, which would help this. It doesn't need to…

The solution to that is to make sure the age verification is used for a variety of different purposes.

For example, why not use the same age verification system to block access to sites that advertise or sell alcohol or tobacco products? Or sex toys. Or dating apps. Or loans applications. Or for any number of adult-only apps that aren't necessarily blackmailable? Normalize age verification for adult-only services.

That provides people with plausible deniability. “Oh, I wasn't looking at porn! I was just trying to find the perfect brandy to buy as a business gift.” or “Oh, I was just trying to get a quote to refurnish my apartment on credit.”

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