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

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

mashable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 228 posts

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

#191

Post by baby_souffle »

lucianbr wrote: post #131
baby_souffle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I'd wager Your willingness to wager on something proves absolutely nothing. I'd wager you woulnd't really wager anything anyway. > my stance is "nobody gets nukes, period" Your 100% risk-free society does not exist. You risk things every time you leave the house. Nukes already exist, and one country that gave them up saw that to be a huge mistake. > less human-friendly governments take that as an invitation to copy…

> Nukes already exist, and one country that gave them up saw that to be a huge mistake.

"nukes" here meaning "de-anonymizing" the internet. I don't think "but at least one country already has them so of course the DPRK should be allowed to have them!" is a good attitude to have towards nuclear proliferation.

I have no problem with a site/platform having a "you need to prove to us that you're an adult" policy. I am terrified that other government(s) will use "because of the children" to force these policies onto the internet at large.

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

#192

Post by drivingmenuts »

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.

Did you tell them "Don't do that or there will be consequences" and then apply the consequences? Carrot and stick is a time-honored method that works.

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

#194

Post by baby_souffle »

sltkr wrote: post #130
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…

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. Th…

> Normalize age verification for adult-only services.

Lets not, please.

Normalization like this could absolutely invite overreach / abuse. The immediately/obvious one is now sites have a "this is/is-not a minor" data point to correlate with the user activity that they'll sell off to some advertiser/broker.

I don't recall where I heard it, but the quote was essentially "the perception of surveillance is itself restrictive."

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

#195

Post by mardifoufs »

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.

France usually has its own domestic alternatives for a lot of stuff. Even online. It's becoming less and less true (for example, instagram or tiktok are just as common there than anywhere else) though. So it could make sense to think that France would be a smaller market for PH than Germany or the UK.

I know Germany is similar to France in that regard, but I'm more familiar with France. And it also has a bigger population!

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

#197

Post by LPisGood »

sltkr wrote: post #185
LPisGood wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I worked for a FAANG company that took data protection quite seriously Me too, and it’s still funny how often user data gets leaked even with world class engineers and incentives. Moving beyond FANG, look at how absurdly common it is for user data to get leaked - financial institutions, romance services, transportation services, everyone.

You claimed: > laws and “audits” do little more than nothing to meaningfully protect data I asked you for evidence for this claim and you provided none. Please either put up or shut up. I'm not going to keep engaging with you while you spout incendiary catch phrases while doing absolutely nothing to support your claims with evidence. Case in point: > look at how absurdly common it is for user data to get leaked - fin…

> I asked you for evidence for this claim and you provided none.

My evidence is experience in the field and a knowledge of the many many publicly acknowledged data leaks that have happened in recent years. I’m not sure why you’re taking such a hostile tone; these things are well established.

I’m not particularly looking to have a formal debate where I dig up sources and you refute them; I’m only saying what is quite clearly true.

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

#198

Post by mdp2021 »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #188
mdp2021 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of trying to cure the epidemic porn brings into the life of everyday people Eh?! This makes no sense. Is it something like "smartphones bring addiction", i.e. the inability to deal with a tool normally as duly, because some people were left immature, is taken as an excuse to fall into bad logic? If everyday people faint in front of begonias, it's not the begonia. Treat the roots.

Of course since you have zero exposure.

You're still obscure. Poster would "see the OP making no sense because poster would have zero exposure to potentially addictive sources"? Is it that?

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

#199

Post by mdp2021 »

yhavr wrote: post #184
mdp2021 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But every source of pleasure could create addiction, so it is not valid to point to a specific one, and the requirement of self control and gratification delay remains generally fundamental.

Not every source of pleasure is equally addictive by its nature. However, I'm not talking about _addiction_, but messing with the dopaminergic system. It's, I'd say a specific kind of "pleasure" with particular mechanisms to trigger. The problem here is not that a person "is not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to them" ( https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addictio…

So, it seems you are saying that there exist products that, giving "pleasure upon command", make people akin to Damasio's rats - they would constantly go to the pleasure trigger.

But people are not rats: they are or can be made aware that crude pleasure is a negligible factor. Duties and other values count much more.

The dopaminergic system is inferior to judgement.

If there are issue in managing the dopaminergic system, the issue is cultural - and has to be treated in that framework.

It's like with the cognitive disaster in many medical doctors, that seem to equate "quality of life" with "pleasure" (in their own twisted ignorant subdevelopment): health itself has an extremely high value, crude veneers like said pleasure have not or can be plain countervalues.

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

#200

Post by lucianbr »

JCattheATM wrote: post #136
lucianbr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Well, we can't refuse a system or a technology on the basis of "depends". Of course we can, based exactly on the dependencies. If someone has an atrocious representation, we don't need to trust the system, if they don't then it becomes more reasonable to do so. > Your physical safety when traveling anywhere by any means depends on many factors. You still leave the house, don't you? Not all risks are equal.

Is this trolling?

> Of course we can, based exactly on the dependencies.

But you have provided zero exact dependencies or details. All you said was "depends".

> Not all risks are equal.

But you have claimed nothing about this particular risk. Is it big? Is it small? We have no idea.

This is sophistry. Fancy words attempting to sound smart with zero content.

You are not arguing either for this tech, or against it, or providing any insight into how one might decide. Of course it depends on some things. Gee, how did we not think of that before you told us.

Post reply on HN