> "About half the 10 year olds I know (which is more than a few) have phones with no filters on them."

This is on parents (and how they are educated around parenthood) IMO. Notice the comment about Reddit, even with all the sanitization it's ridiculously easy to find very hardcore (in every sense of the word) stuff.

In the same way that you hold hands when you walk past a busy street, you cannot expect the internet to be a safe place. As a parent you have the responsibility here.

I felt it was better to teach them that 'there's stuff out there you can't unsee', because I realized they were one sleepover away from getting around any filter I could put in front of them.

It's like the infinite monkey theorem, but faster. Give a bunch of tweens long enough and they'll find their way around any internet filter.

This is how it worked for us. Parents did what they could to block PC access, but me and my brother managed to break them all to do what kids do online. At certain point, you have to actually talk with your kids even if it is the kind of 'smoke that cigar until you are sick' approach. Naturally, my dad being my dad, took a different tack. He just picked the PC and took it to his shop.

Different times. Needless to say, I don't think I will be able to try the same approach.

Yes, great, this is in line with my point. I'm not saying you should take control of the internet but you are responsible for how they interact with it.

> This is on parents

Growing up my father believed playing the GTA would be detrimental to my development. He banned them from our home and told the parents of my friends not to let me play those games at their house, if they said they wouldn't enforce that rule I wasn't allowed over.

Didn't matter, I played the games to completion at friend's houses because their parents didn't really give a crap.

Looking back, I think the only way my father could have reasonably stopped me from playing these games would have been to isolate me from my friends and wreck our relationship. Now luckily, we're pretty sure no harm was done in this case, but the point is that there's not actually that much parents can do to limit access to content if other parents aren't similarly vigilant.

>Growing up my father believed playing the GTA would be detrimental to my development.

Almost all parents think that, COD included. But I think recent studies said that video game violence does not influence kids and teens to commit real life violence. At least kids and teens today play Minecraft and Roblox which are to lesser extent violent than GTA and COD.

I rather have my kids playing GTA than stuff like Candycrush or whatever mobile game is popular now. At least GTA requires some amount of brain activity.

It has a lot of useful life lessons. For example, that the way to make truly big bucks is not to rob banks, but to manipulate the stock market.

>For example, that the way to make truly big bucks is not to rob banks, but to manipulate the stock market.

Ah so that's why GameStop Stonk meme happened :)

It’s crazy to me that “just exercise complete control over what your kids do and see” is touted like it’s not the start of a black mirror episode.

> In the same way that you hold hands when you walk past a busy street

This logic isn’t scale dependent and I know you have a line somewhere before “it totally fine to have landmines in random patches of grass — parents responsibility!” Where is it?

Isn't "just have megacorps exercise complete control over what everyone can see" even more of a terrifying Black Mirror episode?

Seems to me that most black mirror episodes are about the loss or restriction of freedom. I can't imagine a black mirror episode that starts with giving the protagonist autonomy and freedom instead of preventing it.

Your alternative I presume is just to treat everyone like a small child equally so that nobody can see anything potentially painful or commit any thought crimes (the ends etc etc). Certainly the internet is very hard to regulate with children but maybe they just shouldn't be spending so much time on it. It's much harder to keep track of 15v hours of usage a day vs 1 or 2. But again that's a personal responsibility thing. If a child gets hit by a car we examine the circumstances surrounding it, the logical conclusion most people would assume is not to sue the car manufacturer to prevent the operation of their vehicles. There's definitely a balance between corporate and personal responsibility but I'm strongly against the childification of the internet and apps that is occurring. It doesn't matter that most people don't understand something, if you prevent them from observing or utilizing it you're effectively enforcing that ignorance.

We should not be enforcing such restrictions. Any restriction may benefit some children, but will rob everyone of the ability to learn how to discern good from bad. We should not be training total reliance. Encountering difficulty is an essential part of human existence

> I can't imagine a black mirror episode that starts with giving the protagonist autonomy and freedom instead of preventing it.

I was confused by how your comment related to what you were replying to, until I realized you just assumed that a child can't possibly be deserving of any autonomy at all, or even be considered a protagonist.

Thank you, I was so confused I didn't know how to reply to them. I was like "but we're specifically talking about taking away all autonomy from kids. This is the opposite."

It's super wild to me that there are so many people who parenting as "I own this child" and not "I am the proximate caretaker of this independent person."

This makes no sense. Both sides of this interaction already seem to agree that the child should be restricted.

One uses it as a justification for the sanitizing of the internet and the other thinks it should be the parents job.

Don't pretend to champion some sort of bigger faith in children, that was never the point of the discussion

Perhaps there are more than two sides, or the sides aren't what you think they are.

Please note that I didn't say anything like that and you're making an assumption. The other option is teaching your child to be safe, as you would when they are old enough to stop holding hands.

You don't hold 10 years old hands when crossing the street. At that age, they are going through streets alone when they go to scool or club or visit friends.

> At that age, they are going through streets alone when they go to scool or club or visit friends.

In the united states, this stopped being socially acceptable sometime time in the past 20 years. Letting your kids walk to school before high-school (13/14) is considered child abuse by many. Not everywhere, not everyone. But there has been a huge shift in views around what kind of out-of-the-home-unsupervised activity is seen as normal.

In Switzerland 5 years old walk unsupervised. Literally. Every August/September there is big campaign for drivers "be careful inexperienced kids on the roads" with billboards and what not. That is it.

It might be other extreme. But it does seem to me that if you are not letting them navigate world until 13, you are probably harming their development.

Is that true? In Germany in most cities children walk to school alone when they start elementary school at 6 years old. They are only accompanied by the parents for the first few weeks when they start school.

Unfortunately, disastrously, it is more or less true, yeah.

Here's a recent episode of the podcast 99% Invisible, about the Japanese TV show about toddlers running their "first errand" alone (which has become popular in the USA via netflix, perhaps because it seems so wild in the US?), and comparing US (and apparently Canadian) physical landscapes for children. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/

The episode touches on the fact that in Japan dropping off your children to school by car is generally prohibited, with a principal explaining why. I have heard this is true in Germany. It is definitely not true in the USA -- and the US physical and social landscape has been built in such a way it would be largely impossible. It's a disaster.

> 3. Kids and the Internet. About half the 10 year olds I know (which is more than a few) have phones with no filters on them. Kids running wild. If more things were more easily accessible than the culture around screens and handling that with kids will need to change. Kids are ready for different things at different ages and the way they view things during their formative years impacts the way they view and treat others.

Honestly, this was not different in my youth. When we found access to the internet, we of course looked for weird stuff (for those who remember: for example rotten.com; I was rather disturbed by it and learned my lesson that you shouldn't click on every link that you see on websites).

I can tell you how this transformed me: if you have seen the early free spirit of the early web in your formative years, you become deeply suspicious of the political attempts to censor the internet - for example to "protect the children". This is what the authorities really fear: that people don't believe that this is all for their best.

Yep. Same.

I played Doom as a toddler, in my dad's lap. I had early and unfettered access to all kinds of porn. I listened to insanely homophobic, sexist, and generally antisocial music (Eminem, D12).

If you wiped my brain and gave me amnesia and asked me if those things will mess a kid up, I'd say yeah -- how couldn't they?!

It turns out they had no negative effect on me that I can notice; they were just fun. As an adult, I don't do drugs, I've got all the fashionably cosmopolitan social views, etc. :p It's anecdata, but I think the biggest factors for how kids end up are "did you come out screwed up already" and "are your parents emotionally and financially-supportive while vaguely indicating the glide path they think you should follow, with stuff like off-handedly remarking on how racism is pretty bad at some point and generally forcing you to do well in school and putting you through college".

It was true before the Internet. BBS porn was a thing.

> Sex slaves and porn are a thing and a problem. There's both more of it and more awareness of it. In many places there are laws about this that companies who process money have to take in to account.

Citation needed. Unless you're taking about CSAM shared on the dark web, I seriously doubt that sex slaves account for any significant portion of pornography. The only way I can see this being true is with a very wide definition of "sex slave" that includes someone doing porn to pay for rent.

#3 was no less true in the 2000s - I can attest to that myself.

I used to have your view, then I learned about the amount of porn production that happens via organized crime that traffics young (17-22) girls for this express purpose.

It looks the same as “normal” stuff. You can’t tell from watching it.

> I learned about the amount of porn production that happens via organized crime that traffics young (17-22) girls for this express purpose.

I know of one instance [1] of criminal porn production, and it involved deception and fraud rather than kidnapping women - which, to be clear, is still terrible and should be prosecuted. And it ended with the people in charge getting convicted and imprisoned.

I am not at all convinced that a substantial portion of legal pornography involves organized crime. Again, the logistics of producing content that also serves as video evidence of a crime is difficult to overcome. If there is evidence that this is more widespread, it'd be good of you to share it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GirlsDoPorn

GirlsDoPorn case is somewhat surprising to me because I think US regulators failed to prevent abuse of protentional and eventual victims of this porn company. The company was active from 2009 to 2020 and they only stopped their business when they ended up in court. Why weren't they earlier under legal scrutiny and why wasn't their license to do porn revoked? And it seems like most of this girls didn't have any legal advice or assistance prior, during and after of signing contracts with GirlsDoPorn. Imo amateur porn is fishy and should be more regulated.

“Amateur porn” is regulated, by the same laws in fact. People hosting such content for commercial gain are expected to obtain sufficient documentation of the performers identity, age, and consent, so as to not be liable under such laws.

As with most laws, the level to which they are enforced correctly and complied with varies.

You also can’t tell if what you’re saying is factual because you’ve provided no source

I’m not trying to persuade you to believe me.

I’m trying to persuade you to be skeptical of claims that it is approximately zero.

Are you bot going to tell us what the amount is? 0.001% of the pre-pornhub scrub porn?

I assume you speak about East Europe and perhaps South America but most of them are lured into porn not forced.

Lured and forced can be very similar though. Especially if poverty, mental illness or similar are involved. Plus the fact that many people aren't really 'adults' when they turn 18.

Come on now... Do you really think some of the pr0n out there was consented upon by all parties?

Let's be real. Even the largest pr0n sites have had a shit ton of cases come to surface, which should've put them out of business for good. And yes, some of it is about sex slavery.

The pr0n industry is all rotten. Great to see legit, humane alternatives gaining traction, don't get me wrong. But, most of it, is just pure misery.

What is the motive to producing non-consensual pornography? The risks are large: you're literally recording yourself committing a felony and publishing evidence of the crime to the world. Most porn production companies are looking to make a profit, not land themselves in jail. In the US, there's regulations to ensure all actors are of age and consented to recording [1].

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

What's the motive to producing pornography? Because it gets someone off.

People are investing in pornography production companies because they just like to get people off? No, the goal of production companies is to make money. The goal of the consumer is to get off, but the production company's goal absolutely is to money. As other commenters have pointed out [1] non-consensual pornography is indistinguishable to viewers from consensual pornography, so the risk of filming yourself commit rape and uploading evidence of the crime to the internet is not a decision I can see productions companies being keen on making.

For a very loose idea of "sex trafficking" that includes people deciding to work in porn to make ends meet - but at this point you could say your janitors are being trafficked because they wouldn't do their job if they didn't have to pay rent.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33028286

In the same way a bus company shouldn't be liable for transporting a wanted criminal a porn provider shouldn't be liable for nonconsensual porn.

They should take it down in a timely manner, which most sites do.

There are quite a few resources and stories available if you have a real interest in learning about it. The term 'sex trafficking' is more widely used than 'sex slaves' for what is being discussed.

https://theexodusroad.com/porn-and-human-trafficking-the-fac...

https://fightthenewdrug.org/by-the-numbers-porn-sex-traffick...

https://exoduscry.com/articles/here-are-the-biggest-cases-of...

https://nbc-2.com/news/2021/01/12/heres-how-your-porn-habit-...

https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/the-relationship...

To be blunt, these sorts of articles are precisely why I'm skeptical of the claim that sex-trafficking is a significant portion of pornography. Nowhere in any of these links is there a claim for what percentage of pornography features non-consensual or trafficked actors, and details about the methods used to arrive at that figure.

Instead, the articles either focus on anecdotes (e.g. "California Substitute Teacher Filmed and Profited off of Incest") or broad statistics non-specific to pornography, (e.g. "By some estimates, 4.8 million people are trapped or forced into sexual exploitation globally.) Nobody doubts that there are instances of non-consensual pornography. But 50 people out of 13 million is a small, small percentage.

It’s 0.00038462% and I completely agree with your point that the majority of this discourse is based on anecdotes and non specific statistics, I don’t support slavery of any kind but I also don’t support pressuring social change based on bullshit. I’ve had it happen to me once for a small and largely inconsequential thing arbitrarily banned by my state government and I will never stand for it again it’s a feeling of powerless violation for nearly zero genuine social good, yes there’s probably some, but it was like this, on the order of a few police officers less inconvenienced each week.

> Sex slaves and porn are a thing and a problem.

They are two different things. Did you mean "sex slaves in porn"?

Also, any kind of slave is a problem. You don't need to qualify it.

I think he meant human trafficking. There's a lot of videos out there of women under duress.

It's not complicated. It never is.

Either you believe in an open internet or you don't. Either you're with us, or you're against us.

It's complicated. Unfortunately real life is never binary. There are several gradations between open internet and dystopian closed internet that only allows you to see what the governing powers want you to see. Most people are somewhere in the middle, as with all things.

>Most people are somewhere in the middle, as with all things.

And they're wrong. I'd agree that perhaps there should be guardrails, but for those who want to leave the safe-zone, it ought to remain without filters.

It's about the same argument as general computing. Should it be illegal to have root access on your devices? Do you think it's a fair compromise in order to be able to have convenient streaming entertainment?

I rooted my android phone and now I can't access Netflix (well, not without putting in effort I don't care to). Fair trade for me, I prefer to actually have control over my devices.

Nope. There is no middle ground. It. Is. Not. Complicated.

Either you think of the internet as a utility where everyone is equal, like a telephone, or you think people should be "nudged" into harmonious behavior, where it takes on the worst aspects of a broadcast medium.

The problem with "nudging" people is there's an equal and opposite reaction through the cybernetic system. For instance, adding fact check labels to every sensitive topic, COVID vaccines for instance, will lead people to think that it's all part of a larger conspiracy and they'll get a hit of dopamine when they "follow the qlues."

Even utilities have limits on the behavior you can use with them. Granted you gotta really go out of your way to trigger those limits but there is no society wide system in existence that follows that level of openness

Doing actual actual crimes or committing a fraud using the phone, computer, fax, telex, or whatever other electronic means generally falls under wire fraud.

The phone company doesn't de-platform "literal nazis" simply for being "literal nazis."

You are correct, but now you are getting into shades of grey more nuanced than

> Either you believe in an open internet or you don't. Either you're with us, or you're against us.

The distinction is between perfectly legal speech, and specific acts fraud or things that are direct, actionable, and credible threats to physical safety (e.g., bomb threats). This isn't a complicated blah blah, where we need a technocratic meta-god to put his thumb on the scales. The existing legal pre-computer legal frameworks cover these cases.

And if the literal nazis we’re actually using a private person to person (can be through a service) communication medium like a phone the number of people who want them deplatformed would drop to basically zero.

Your argument has to account for the fact that Twitter is more like public radio than a phone and that WhatsApp is more like a phone than radio.

To be fair I do see articles written pointing to the fact that hate groups are using signal or discord, the implication being that such companies are "platforming" those groups.

What happens if the literally nazis robo called thousands of people with nazi propaganda?

They might get cut off for robocalling, but (if the telephone company is obeying the law) in a content-neutral way.

I would be surprised if the number of people who believe in a truly open internet like that are even a 10th of a percent of the population.

> 3. Kids and the Internet. About half the 10 year olds I know (which is more than a few) have phones with no filters on them. Kids running wild. If more things were more easily accessible than the culture around screens and handling that with kids will need to change.

Why? As a child who grew up either the free Internet of the early 2000s I can tell you it does far less harm than thing like going to school where a teacher dislikes you. If you're worried about kids getting an inaccurate impression from porn that take them aside and show them real sex tapes.

I had unfettered internet access at 10. I picked up programming and hacking by age 12, watched fetish porn at 14, figured out Tor and FreeNet, then got into (learning about!) clandestine drug synthesis by age 16, rhodium and the hive and all that. Very formative years.

Sure, I got myself into sketchy situations, but I wasn't at risk of getting murdered. The worst that would have happened is being emotionally scarred or going to juvy. A good exchange, for me.

For 3 - kids have been on the internet for a while now. If anything there was much more of a moral panic about it in the 90s.

I think point 1 is key - the internet is a bigger place, which also means things get more specialized and separated. You dont stumble across specialized content as much anymore, you have to go looking instead.

Does "female presenting nipples" === porn? It was a SCJ who said, "I'll know it (i.e., porn) when I see it". Also, it's a double-standard to say men can have free-will to present their bodies as they see fit but women can not.

> Kids and the Internet. About half the 10 year olds I know (which is more than a few) have phones with no filters on them. Kids running wild

And whose responsibility is that? People start treating the internet like TV and radio, so we have to start sanitizing it like TV and radio?

Yes because the internet, really the web, is a shared public broadcast medium. What makes it any different than radio? Don’t say logins because sites where basically anyone can join is essentially public.

Did you have internet access when you were ten?

> and porn are a thing and a problem

Says who btw. Does that include 3D porn ? AI generated porn? American prudishness is the problem, as well as all the backwards religious societies which are now more dispersed around the world than ever and support it. I think it's important to remember that liberalism is what brought technological progress to the west, not the inward-looking repressive attitudes. And that includes bodily liberalism as well.

And why should 3 be my problem?