Not a fan of selective enforcement. We all know there is no way to prevent a technically savvy 17 year old from accessing porn. And “everyone’s breaking the law, we’ll decide who to prosecute based on who they are” is a terrible way to regulate.

That is very much the opposite of good governance. Instituting mandates with no rules for how to comply with them leaves the door open to abuse on all sides.

For example, a malicious inspector could open the site and pass any verifications in place while a minor is in the room, notice that the site did not prevent the minor from seeing the content, and fine the site.

Conversely, the site could claim they have found some fancy data analysis method to prevent access to minors in the wild while simply implementing some "we believe you are minor" page to be randomly generated once in a while, and claim in court that they have done their best and at most a small handful of children are getting around their complex protections.

That is not correct.

In law making the is a concept of standards VS. Rules - look it up.

"you can not serve explicit erotica material to people under the age of 18" is very much a rule. It is super easy to asses whether you do it.

The law should not mandate how to comply.

Law makers do not care if you refrain from pressing the speeder or drive an under powered car.

Idk dude haven’t we all watched it since age 13 ish and turned out fine?

Given the massive levels of low libido, erectile dysfunction, reduced birth rates, anxiety, depression etc. I don't think it is fair to says that people turns out fine.

The question is what role porn has.

Regardless, my comment was more aimed at how we regulate than the effects of porn.

You’re making some huge leaps in assuming the direction of causality.

Where?

I explicitly mention that I do not assume this is related to porn.

I merely say that we did not turn out fine.

I mean I imagine people would also feel all that if you burned their house down, and with the modern heat waves we should expect a lot more houses to burn in the coming years.

So I reckon the right answer to houses being burnt down is not "but we turned out just fine"?

We shouldn't be discussing how to most effectively infringe upon people's personal liberties before first discussing whether there's one iota of evidence that these liberties are to blame for extremely serious issues you mentioned. The root cause of these problems is almost certainly a lot closer to the general state of economic and social hardship than porn.

Of course it's a lot easier for those in power to divert attention to a moral panic like porn instead of acknowledging that our economic system and core values are making people depressed and hopeless to the point that they're becoming incapable of performing the one thing they've been optimizing for over millions of years of evolution - reproducing.

Absolutely no doubt!

Something indicates that the feeling of equality (which most easily can be achieved with actual equality) would be more beneficial.

But then again, this would likely require taxing - something in particular Americans loathe for some reason (hint: decades of aggressive propaganda)

You sound like you have a lot of complaints about the world and a lot of will for some finger pointing, evidence backed cause&effect and staying on topic be damned

No. No we have not turned out fine

???

not a comment on you specifically but - ime - when someone says they turned out fine, it's a strong signal that they didn't

I actually really like this idea of letting regulators dictate the "what" instead of the "how"

More simple (because not on a case-by-case basis): put a blanket ban on porn online, and create rooms where you can watch porn (like in Japan: ビデオボックス), and these rooms should verify identity and age. This will also prevent people from watching porn at work, while strolling at the park, in the queue at the supermarket or while driving a Tesla.

Basically a cleaner society.