And that's just assuming the law could even be perfectly enforced! In reality, it will not be, and there will always be sites without the requirement (which will also be the "seedier" sites), or kids who work around it. So the end result is that kids end up watching even worse porn, while adults get their identities stolen and linked to their porn browsing habits.
How many people who are of age would hand over their personal information to a porn site unless they are already paying customers? Many people would not feel safe just handing over all of that information. They would lose both minors and adults who do not want to share that information.
I am curious, how would you suggest they roll out this digital check without hurting the users privacy? I have not seen a proposal that can scale across countries without becoming a privacy nightmare.
From my limited experience, most people are pretty onboard with blocking minors from accessing porn. The conflict always arises around the question of how you will achieve that.
They fear a rise of a porn black market which is non-monetizable.
right now it's age-verification under the guise of protecting kids. but the next demand will be to remove all non-hetero content. and then they'll ban porn completely.
I would only wonder why a business would want to pay for something this stupid.
Alternatively, how would you propose a porn site do age verification that doesn't involve every porn site having giant databases of IDs and user photos? Moreover, as the big - trying to do things right - sites have repeatedly stated, all you're doing is ensuring that the only sites minors can access are the ones that have little to no controls on content.
I get that you may feel that hardcore porn is bad for children - I think the issue here is that that's the only stuff kids can access because less hardcore stuff generally has more aggressive access controls - but the solution here is to explain what pornography is, and how it does or does not match reality, etc. Pretending it doesn't exist results in kids accessing it (because hormones and failure to monitor what your kids are doing online) and not understanding that it does not accurately reflect how real relationships or sex work. It's similar to "protecting" children from sex by pretending it doesn't exist, and making it really bad/sinful, which is super effective at enabling abusers.
Speaking strictly on behalf of my friends and I from junior high, it's pretty self explanatory.
It really isn't all self explanatory. And most junior high students don't understand the depth, nuance and complexity of a lot of things until they're much older. And there is a lot to talk about in the realm of pornography.
Take it from me (completely anecdotal), i started watching porn at 13 and for just under a decade since I did not stop. I was completely addicted and I didn't even realise it was happening, and what it was doing to my brain. I didn't realise it was affecting my perception of women, of sex, expectations, I didn't realise id spend hours and hours watching it every day, I didn't realise it was essentially rotting my brain. Not to mention that the whole industry is scummy, and the actors are not treated well for the most part.
Now I am clean. And it was actually difficult to stop - another conformation it was addictive. But often I am STILL presented by imagery of the stuff I watched. This imagery in my brain is largely not under my control. It is disturbing that I cannot forget these things. And I often fear it will affect my sex life going forward.
Things you do not expect to have major consequences sometimes do.
Now, I'm not saying that you can't watch porn without being addicted, but i am saying at the time none of the downsides occurred to me until I was older.
And truth be told, if I were you, I would genuinely just steer clear of it in general. I personally don't think it's worth the risk, especially when you're so so young.
Stay safe.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140825061919/http://www.dayton...
this simply-phrased benign-sounding statement belies how terrifying it is to be the responsible party for doing digital checks at scale in production on _extremely_ PII like driver's licenses.
Defendant: I’d rather just confess to the murder.
- Believe that a large portion of their user-base is minors, and a ban would hurt their bottom line
- Are unable to cheaply and efficiently roll out the infrastructure to verify, and do these digital checks
In reality it's probably a little of both of these categories that's causing their temper tantrum. In an attempt to get the government to lax up on them, they're taking it out on people who would legally be able to view this content; that's a pretty underhanded play in my opinion.
Whether or not you believe that easy access to hardcore pornography is bad for minors (I believe it is, personally), you have to admit that attempting to manufacture public outrage by 'taking their ball and going home' really shows where the alignment of these companies truly is. Imagine if alcohol manufactures started refusing to sell alcohol to bars that ID'd their patrons, you would have to wonder if such a manufacturer really was interested in peddling their product to minors.