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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

#41
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…

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 mode, but having done IT support in college, I can tell you there are many people who don't).

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

#42

Because apparently french parents can't handle the education of their children.

There's a big cultural gap here. To people who are concerned about porn, it's like asking why we have to stop children from buying handles of vodka. Can't you just educate them to avoid drinking to excess? No, you can't, they don't have that level of self-control yet. Isn't it unfair to the responsible bakers who just want a really tender pie crust? Yes, it is, but they're going to have to deal with it. Won't a deter…

> it's like asking why we have to stop children from buying handles of vodka

I would argue that part of the answer is because with vodka they can easily harm themselves. However this doesn't hold for porn.

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

#44
post #5

It’s smart to be using a VPN for any sort of adult internet use these days anyway. Vixen Media Group is extorting people by threatening to leak their identity if they don’t pay up[0]. And not by a 3rd-party collections company either - it’s their own parent company making the demands. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vixen_Media_Group#Legal_action https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/1d3wfiz/my_exp...

Why does anybody care that their porn viewing habits become public? To me it sounds as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log of the food we eat or the music we listen to.

Empirically, there's a sizeable market of people willing to pay thousands to keep their porn viewing from becoming public. Prenda Law[0,1] was an extortion racket that blackmailed people with their porn history, and demanded in the region of $4,000 per victim. Their total revenue was at least $15 million, that the courts could find.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=prenda

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

#46
post #5

It’s smart to be using a VPN for any sort of adult internet use these days anyway. Vixen Media Group is extorting people by threatening to leak their identity if they don’t pay up[0]. And not by a 3rd-party collections company either - it’s their own parent company making the demands. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vixen_Media_Group#Legal_action https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/1d3wfiz/my_exp...

Why does anybody care that their porn viewing habits become public? To me it sounds as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log of the food we eat or the music we listen to.

> as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log

And in fact, privacy laws saw slow codification because the violations they are relevant to are largely preposterous.

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

#48

Lovely, people would go to prison, just to see some porn! > engaging in illegal activities while using a VPN remains prohibited under French law. https://medium.com/@green21/is-vpn-legal-in-france-exploring... France has very stupid and strict laws, that apply accross borders! For example paternity test gets you two years, even when physically done in another country!

Wait what? You can't do a Paternity test in France?

Wild. What is the rationale?

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

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does anybody care that their porn viewing habits become public? To me it sounds as ridiculous as somebody threatening to publish a log of the food we eat or the music we listen to.

Porn is considered a highly private activity for many reasons: societal disapproval, religious prohibitions...heck in some countries, watching gay porn is potentially a death sentence.

I get wanting to keep illegal activities unknown to the authorities, so I'll concede that.

But in the context of this thread, where a company was threatening to do this in a developed democratic country, that is not an issue, is it?

Societal disapproval can be divided between people you interact with and strangers. Why would anybody what strangers think of them, particularly when those strangers would have to been rummaging into porn watching databases to begin with?

As for coworkers, friends or family, why would they be interested in learning about your porn habits again? And if they bother you about it, wouldn't you want to rethink whether you want to keep them around? Personally, I don't keep in touch with people who seriously judge my life choices -- and that has only happened once, so it's not such a big deal either.

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

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have privacy if you have nothing to hide? On another note, a lot of places, including those in the west will ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong foods.

Why would you care about remaining in good terms with somebody who would ostracize you for listening to the wrong music or eating the wrong food? Is that a person that deserves your friendship?

They can sometimes kill you too.
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