I’m old enough to remember when age verification bills were pitched as a way to ‘save the kids from porn’ and shield them from other vague dangers lurking in the digital world (like…“the transgender”). We have long cautioned about the dangers of these laws, and pointed out why they are likely to...
This is all dumb. If you’re worried about kids surfing porn sites then the legal guardian should act accordingly. There are so many methods to blocking porn sites that it’s almost hilarious. Web filtering; most ISPs are able to support website filtering on their supplied gateway or DNS. Parental controls on device; most devices come with opyional locks built-in at this point especially if it’s aimed towards children.
Sure, it’s not perfect but it’s better than removing yet another layer of web anonymity. We see how well browser fingerprinting is going, let’s not make it easier to track who is browsing where than it already is. But that’s the real point behind these bills, isn’t it?
Edit: I guess I was ranting mainly about the porn, but honestly, these are all things that parents should be aware of their children doing. If it’s an awareness issue, then that should be the next step. The government going straight from “oh there’s a problem” to “let’s make it illegal” without trying to raise awareness is extremely heavy handed.
Block it to the point where you are not going to accidentally stumble upon it. Once they are determined to find it then there really isn’t much point.
Also, Reddit will block anything NSFW if you are under 18. Anything related to sex often gets flagged as NSFW. So I guess fuck you if you are 16 and trying to have safe sex I guess. NSFW probably shouldn’t always mean 18+
This is all dumb. If you’re worried about kids surfing porn sites then the legal guardian should act accordingly. There are so many methods to blocking porn sites that it’s almost hilarious. Web filtering; most ISPs are able to support website filtering on their supplied gateway or DNS. Parental controls on device; most devices come with opyional locks built-in at this point especially if it’s aimed towards children.
Sure, it’s not perfect but it’s better than removing yet another layer of web anonymity. We see how well browser fingerprinting is going, let’s not make it easier to track who is browsing where than it already is. But that’s the real point behind these bills, isn’t it?
Edit: I guess I was ranting mainly about the porn, but honestly, these are all things that parents should be aware of their children doing. If it’s an awareness issue, then that should be the next step. The government going straight from “oh there’s a problem” to “let’s make it illegal” without trying to raise awareness is extremely heavy handed.
Block it to the point where you are not going to accidentally stumble upon it. Once they are determined to find it then there really isn’t much point.
Also, Reddit will block anything NSFW if you are under 18. Anything related to sex often gets flagged as NSFW. So I guess fuck you if you are 16 and trying to have safe sex I guess. NSFW probably shouldn’t always mean 18+
Agreed, they are and will be relentless. We’ll need to be comfortable ‘missing out’ on popular sites e.g., Lemmy instead of Reddit.
For those who want to rewind the clock to when the web was anonymous, check out how to access I2P.
And for parents, there are some good blocklists at https://oisd.nl/ including NSFW blocklists.
I love that we’ve gone so far that finally the left and right are on the same page. This is the progress I’ve dreamed of.
Giving the government more power is like letting someone beat you up for his fare when you could just walk 1km.