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Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

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Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why would the solution to dehumanising women be "minors shouldn't be able see it"?

The whole point here is to prevent impressionable children from growing up watching videos of women being treated like objects, so that they don't grow up to view women as objects

If the states banning porn weren’t generally the same states restricting medical care for women, I’d say you have a point, but that’s simply not the case.

“Protecting women” is the sales pitch, not the objective.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#342
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very strange take on governments, treating them as a singular entity. A government that deserves that name is first and foremost and elected set of representatives of the constituents, and thus like citizens that vote for them again, act in their interests. If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.

> A state is its population. Very dangerous thinking. Unless each and every citizens has approved the elected "representative" and every decision they made (which will never happen), you cannot assimilate the state and the population. The state has to be considered a separate entity, one which operate beyond the common man's thinking.

> Unless each and every citizens has approved the elected "representative" and every decision they made

But they have, by electing the representatives that ought to represent them, and thereby yield the power to make decisions on behalf of their constituents. If they do no not act accordingly, they will not be elected again in subsequent terms; if they act against the law, they will be fairly tried; and if the laws don't sufficiently capture the reality anymore, they will be adapted. That is how a representative democracy should work. If it doesn't, you have an implementation problem, not a systemic one (admittedly, this is almost a true Scotsman, but still.)

> The state has to be considered a separate entity, one which operate beyond the common man's thinking.

This isn't mutually exclusive. Of course the state has to make higher-level considerations and people in power will invariably be corrupted to some degree, but concluding that the state is your enemy and cannot be trusted is the wrong one, in my opinion. With that attitude, you're just waiting for it to become truly evil so you can say "See? I told you all along." Better to try and shape the state you have into something better while you still can.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#343
post #337

I'm on several UK-based soccer message boards and none of this seems to be required there. The forums are running on Xenforo or PhpBB, self-hosted by the admin. Some of those forums have thousands of user accounts registered. Is Discord considered to be different as it's a centralized aggregator platform like Reddit, vs a standalone thing like a message board?

I haven't read the article. They aren't coming for Evoweb next are they? The UK is looking screwed man... something bad is cooking there...

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#344
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does being vegetarian or vegan. So does being not the dominant culture in any aspect of life. That's a decision for parents to make and honestly "they'll be left out" is such a crap parenting take. Especially since it's a bunch of parents together who don't want their kid to have access thinking this together. If they actually talked to each each or just made a stand so people could see, we wouldn't even have this…

Your points only make sense in the absence of bad and/neglectful parents. For many decades it was required to prove age in order to consume porn. Porn on the internet ought to have the same requirement. I don’t know the best way to implement it but since the industry isn’t trying to find a solution then government should impose one.

That's just not possible in practice. There's lots of people who enjoy publishing their sex, not commercially. There's no place under a single jurisdiction that can be filtered or required to prove age. Any social network will contain groups of people using it to distribute porn. When common ones are closed, dedicated ones are created.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point here is to prevent impressionable children from growing up watching videos of women being treated like objects, so that they don't grow up to view women as objects

Has there been some outbreak of this? Genuinely confused. My impression is that sort of behavior has been decreasing my entire life while access to porn has been increasing.

As a recovering porn addict that had issues with socializing with the opposite sex growing up... I don't think there's enough evidence to scientifically conclude anything either way.

As for me, I sought out a large amount of porn "too early". The porn was not violent and I was ashamed to talk about it with anyone. Then again this was before social media became mainstream. I wanted to talk to girls my age but had too much anxiety and depression from my upbringing. ..the real reason for my addiction. So I got called a teenage stalker and got punished so hard I stopped talking to women entirely. The porn was because I was so depressed in the following years. Nobody even realized I had a porn addiction to this day, because I didn't talk about it because... it was cringe.

Still a bachelor but I go to meetings and have worked on it for several years by now. When I worked on my issues enough the urges went away. To the point I wondered why this was such an issue for so long. I no longer feel the need to find a mate to feel complete anymore. Which ironically would make talking to women possible again. But that wasn't because of porn - it was because of depression/anxiety.

I ascribed the causes incorrectly for a long time ("excess porn usage causes the tendency to sexually harass/assault people you're attracted to") which only contributed to my shame and depression for a long time. I think it's because people don't want to admit that they cannot help every person with major depressive disorder ("you need to want help to get help"), so they go after bigger fish that are open to litigation to make it seem like the problem is being addressed. And all this labeling of porn as a problem rubs off onto actual addicts who misjudge the real root of their issues like me.

I have a hypothesis that telling teenagers their minds will be permanently corrupted by too much pornography of any kind and they should be ashamed of themselves for having sexual urges is... not exactly the most productive decision. Especially when gore videos remain unregulated and legal. I think depression/anxiety has a greater chance to cause the behavior they're talking about - "hurt people hurt people" - and those people just so happen to be addicted to something to self-medicate. Shaming people is certainly one way to make them depressed.

But I was sorta glad I avoided talking to people I was attracted to for so long, in my depressed state not much good would have happened. I now have a healthier appreciation of the other sex without completely abstaining and in my view it had nothing do with porn. It was actually about seeing and accepting reality for what it is, not through a depressed filter.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing being demanded is decidedly not a good idea. A reasonable demand would be that sites over a certain size include a standardized age or content rating in the headers. That would facilitate a whitelist approach, which is the only viable way to accomplish the stated goal.

The issue is that there are some online activities which we all agree that children must be banned from no matter the cost to do so. Society has now started shifting in what actually falls in that group, but no one is arguing against the group entirely. There are very invasive solutions to this that have historically been accepted in the most agreed upon use cases, but not that society has started to shift on what fa…

Whitelisting is literally the only available technical solution. None of the others work and they can't realistically be made to. Anyone who tells you they do is either hopelessly non-technical, woefully misinformed, trying to sell you snake oil, or has an ulterior motive (surveillance).

I suppose something like the Great Firewall is also kind of sort of workable but that's government coordinated filtering so expansive that it begins to share more in common with whitelists than blacklists.

For every site that complies with age verification laws there will be uncountably many that don't. And that's before getting to file sharing networks. And then there's the dark net. Both of the latter are readily accessible outside of the Great Firewall.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to teach our children that different people have different restrictions. Some of my daughter's friends have no phone. One of them has no phone, but does have a tablet. To the best of my knowledge, none of them are ostracized by the group. I mean, I've seen them hanging out at our house and other places.

Just curious, how old are they? I'm planning on having kids and I'm afraid of how to answer the smart phone question. I imagine that it could start to be an issue by 12 or 13

Not even close. Some peers will have effectively their phone at 6 or lower. https://www.waituntil8th.org/ tries to promote delaying till 8yo. It may start being an issue as soon as they get to primary school.

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#348
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Jesus, how does your society still function when underage people can see videos of people having sex?! It kind of isn't anymore. But not just because of porn, obviously. Early porn exposure goes hand in hand with the problems we see typified in the recent Netflix movie Adolescence. Seen women constantly railed and treated like meat when that young probably does do something. "Videos of people having sex" is deliber…

> "Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading, modern porn is not dry educational science videos.

Implying the opposite is deliberately misleading too. "Modern porn" is not entirely 1 thing or another. Much of it's sensible, a lot of it is extreme. Much like any area in life, I think, the real solution is to teach our children what's wrong with the more extreme stuff.

People are scared of porn causing their children to "objectify women"? Then teach them to respect women from a young age and when they see the extreme side of things they'll be like "That's wrong"

It's probably easier to blame the Internet though and to try to neuter it instead - rather than teach your kid the values you want them to have, just make sure they're never faced with values other than those!

Re: Discord's face scanning age checks 'start of a bigger shift'

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the ways that a corner shop verifies age don't have the same downsides as typical online age verifiers. They just look at an ID document; verify that it's on the official list of acceptable ID documents, seems to be genuine and valid and unexpired, appears to relate to the person buying the product, and shows an old enough age; and hand the document back. The corner shop has far fewer false negatives, far lo…

That's exactly how a digital ID system would work, and yet people argue against those all the time as well. Additionally, the corner shop does not have far lower data privacy risks - actually it's quite worse. They have you on camera and have a witness who can corroborate you are that person on camera, alongside a paper trail for your order. There is no privacy there, only the illusion of such.

When the corner shop checks your ID, they won't take a photo of it. Digital IDs can easily be stored without the user's knowledge. That's a privacy nightmare.
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