alt.hn

1/16/2025 at 12:35:08 PM

Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwye3qw7gv7o

by mysto

1/16/2025 at 12:48:33 PM

Those that do not wish to verify and cannot afford a VPN could start using 'free' VPN sites / extensions and in doing so open up their computer / network to more malicious content.

Those that do not use a VPN will be justifiably concerned that a breach at some later date will expose them.

Expected: articles from the likes of TorrentFreak which detail 'no logging' vpn sites.

The children will all be safe though, so there's that.

Pornhub's stats, which they publish, will make for interesting reading.

by markx2

1/16/2025 at 7:47:47 PM

That assumes children don't use "free" VPN sites/extensions.

by RandomBacon

1/16/2025 at 3:09:25 PM

The UK government was warned almost 10 years ago this is bad idea, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. They've decided to push it through anyway.

Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on, but the solution is not the government nannying everyone.

by cedws

1/17/2025 at 8:42:56 PM

It's not about children. They've done their dash with using 'terrorism' as an excuse to erode civil liberties, and so now they've switched to 'saving the children'.

by bigfatkitten

1/16/2025 at 3:38:50 PM

I’m in favor of the ban, but the 1990s privacy nerds had a good point when they said it would lead to other kinds of censorship: https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-...

The slippery slope happened a lot faster than most people thought.

by rayiner

1/17/2025 at 9:44:57 PM

It's a country that doesn't believe in freedom of artistic expression, either.

by Jigsy

1/17/2025 at 12:57:51 AM

­> Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on

I learned to distrust both my intuition and common knowledge but I may be convinced by solid scientific arguments and statistics.

by ghssds

1/16/2025 at 3:13:38 PM

A horny teenager won't be stopped by age verification. They will find other ways to access the content.

by avgDev

1/16/2025 at 6:44:20 PM

The GLARING hole in all of these age verification schemes is social media. That is the mechanism by which most people, particularly children get access to porn.

If you don't treat twitter/reddit like porn vectors, you're doing nothing.

by John23832

1/16/2025 at 5:31:50 PM

Kids are shown weapons everywhere. They are afraid to watch news and therefore only consume "news" from socical media, which we made an AI shithole and threat to a civilized society. They see how we have in large parts poisoned or destroyed large parts of their planet. They have to get drilled to learn how to get not shot in school shootings or elsewhere.

And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet?

Wow. Humanity really needs to see a Psychiatrist.

by Fischgericht

1/16/2025 at 11:57:36 PM

> And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet?

Most porn is a far cry from “making love”.

by Our_Benefactors

1/17/2025 at 10:31:12 AM

Matter of definition. Stuff on most porn sites is at least consensual.

My point is: Seriously and honestly talk to a kid these days. Or read detailed reports on where the suicide rates in young peoples are sourced in.

Even porn where whatever a granny dressed up as a horse is pissing into someone else's mouth. Might be very troubling to a teen trying to understand their sexuality. Surely not a good start as sex ed.

But that's still a far cry from kids seeing people killing each other FOR REAL.

Talk to the kids. Porn is nowhere near the Top 10 of what's causing their anxieties and depressions.

This is grown-ups taking their standard route: Let's not change anything of relevance, but instead let's put a useless ban on something that won't go away by a ban, anyway.

by Fischgericht

1/16/2025 at 4:34:43 PM

Hot take: I'm in favour of this.

There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites.

There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age verification service (e.g. a government run service, or a bank), but crucially not the reason _why_ you're proving your age (i.e. the bank doesn't know if you're visiting a porn site or a casino). That service gives you a bunch of signed tokens proving you're over the age of 18/21/whatever, and you can redeem a token on the porn/gambling/alcohol-purchasing website for access. It uses various fun bits of cryptography (e.g. blind signatures) to ensure anonymity for the user.

With such technologies, anonymous age verification becomes achievable. Now, whether age verification is inherently "bad" is up for debate, but that's a matter of opinion. Obviously this technology isn't infallible and it will be possible to work around, but we don't need a perfect solution here. Preventing 99% of children that would have viewed violent pornography from viewing it is a massive win, and the fact that we can do it in a provably-privacy-preserving manner using cryptography is very very cool.

by mysterium

1/16/2025 at 4:52:34 PM

My concern is that the existence of such technology doesn't mean that it will be required -- and as more private technology often has a cost or a downside, it kind of has to be required for uptake -- and even further doesn't at all imply that it is even on the radar. If you want to be for this, you shouldn't be for this because it COULD be done well: you should insist that you will only be for this IF AND ONLY IF it WILL be done well, and if the draft laws don't say this then we should then not be for it.

by saurik

1/16/2025 at 5:11:34 PM

Very reasonable, and indeed the July deadline will make it very likely that they _don't_ use a privacy-preserving method like Privacy Pass (and it's very reasonable for people to raise concerns).

My main issue is whenever the topic of age verification is raised, the consensus from the tech community is "the only way to achieve age verification is mass surveillance and I won't stand for it!", and as someone who works in an adjacent field to this, I feel the need to dispel that notion. We should be directing our collective energy into ensuring age verification is secure and private, not fighting against the notion entirely.

by mysterium

1/17/2025 at 8:50:11 PM

It may be possible, but I think you've approaching this with the very naive assumption that the authorities actually have any interest in allowing you to preserve your privacy.

by bigfatkitten

1/16/2025 at 6:13:56 PM

The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting?

It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devices for example. But this is not the intention of course. No one is blamed for handing a toddler a phone with TikTok on.

by rolothrow

1/16/2025 at 11:08:44 PM

> The obvious question to me is why pornography?

Because there is some kink in the Anglo Saxon psyche that means it's appealing to voters? I don't know, but I can't think of another explanation. The European countries focus their ire on violence and anti social behaviour, which makes far more sense to me.

It pretty clearly isn't because porn is particular harmful. If it was the explosion of porn the internet has made available would have some obvious effects. Yet all we get is the occasional report of some porn addicted individual. Not good, but it's more than offset by the reduction in sex crimes in the same period. And as addictions go porn addiction does seem that bad. Wasting time on porn is still wasted time I guess, but isn't actively harmful like, sugar addiction, nicotine addiction, alcohol addiction or gambling addiction - all of which are tolerated.

by rstuart4133

1/16/2025 at 8:28:06 PM

This feels like a perfectionist fallacy. One has to start somewhere, pornography is something we can pretty much all agree children shouldn’t be watching. It’s theoretically a mostly-achievable goal.

Solving one problem doesn’t mean we can’t also work on solving the others.

by mysterium

1/16/2025 at 8:35:04 PM

My point is not "if we don't solve everything it's not good". My point is "if you focus on this very specific part of the supposed problem while never mentioning the rest, I very much doubt the sincerity of your goal" (you being the government in this case). This is just "think of the children".

by rolothrow

1/16/2025 at 10:01:29 PM

The thing is that it's already illegal for minors to see pornography.

It's not illegal for minors to access their technology devices or watch disturbing news footage.

This is merely an enforcement vehicle for rules that already exist. It is an acknowledgment that the law that has been in place for years doesn't work anymore.

Back in the pre-Internet days the adult video store or cinema would make sure you were of proper age to patronize those businesses. Sure, you could sift through your Dad's Playboys but essentially, an adult could reasonably be able to figure out how to limit exposure of content to their children.

In the current environment it's basically impossible.

An analogy to the status quo would be if drinking for under 21/18 was illegal but no bars or stores were required to check ID. That makes it effectively legal.

Now, as to your point on whether these rules make sense in the first place? I think we can reasonably assume that most of the voting public isn't in favor of legalizing pornography for minors. It doesn't really have to make sense when compared to other things we allow exposure to.

In other words, the existing laws already roughly reflect our cultural values. Most people in the Western world are literally more okay with showing their child something violent versus something pornographic.

If we all collectively as a culture decide to change that in the future, great, but I doubt a referendum to that effect would have majority agreement.

Essentially, the only concern with this law should be the anonymity of the age verification. All other concerns are addressed by the fact that a minor viewing pornography is already breaking the law.

by dangus

1/17/2025 at 1:05:01 AM

> it's already illegal for minors to see pornography

Really? What law makes it illegal for minors to see pornography?

by trogdor

1/17/2025 at 3:30:25 AM

https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/citizens-guid...

> It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet that includes obscenity and is available to any minor less than 17 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 231 –Child Online Protection Act of 1998).

> The standard of what is harmful to minors may differ from the standard applied to adults. Harmful materials for minors include any communication consisting of nudity, sex or excretion that (i) appeals to the prurient interest of minors, (ii) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable material for minors, (iii) and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

The most important part of this quote is that the standard for minors is different than that of adults. Material that is not considered obscenity for adults (e.g., legal pornography) can be and is considered obscenity for minors.

by dangus

1/18/2025 at 12:08:32 AM

That makes it illegal to display pornography to minors. It doesn’t make it illegal for minors to see pornography.

by trogdor

1/17/2025 at 9:24:44 PM

As someone from the UK, which is where this article is on about, it is not illegal in this country for minors to see pornography in and of itself.

Selling it to, etc. obviously are.

by Jigsy

1/16/2025 at 11:13:46 PM

You make the mistake of assuming they're doing this in good faith.

I'm in Australia and we're going to have the same problem with our under-16 social media ban.

There's privacy-preserving ways to do it, but they definitely won't use them.

by torified

1/16/2025 at 4:49:58 PM

It's definitely possible to do it in a way that's less invasive but still effective. The question is whether that will actually happen.

by awkward

1/16/2025 at 11:18:14 PM

States where pornhub is banned due to age verification:

Alabama Arkansas Florida Idaho Indiana Kansas Kentucky Mississippi Montana Nebraska North Carolina Oklahoma South Carolina Texas Utah Virginia Louisiana

Essentially Republicans who advocate for small government went aggressive on ban and propped up the industry for VPNs.

UK, Canada, Australia and NZ are likely to follow suit.

by nojvek

1/16/2025 at 3:53:11 PM

What's stopping the U.K from banning VPN's for private use? Creating a carve out for workplace usage, or requiring a license and acceptable reason like firearms?

I doubt there would be much public pushback.

I mention this because people always mention these workarounds as being impregnable. If the U.K is okay with telling ISP's to block websites they certainly will have no problem banning VPN's

by hnpolicestate

1/16/2025 at 3:42:44 PM

VPN = Virtual Porn Network some kind of ad blaster, and non-bank currency is going to become so much more common, than if there was a simple,"its my phone,buzz off mind your OWN business" check box that is legaly required, and protected and minors could get a "juvi sim" till they reach the age of majority, which of course, would only deter the lazy ones.

by metalman

1/16/2025 at 12:42:29 PM

In my country, there are time limited age verification wallet code.

Namely, you don't need to use your credit card online (yeay!).

by sylware