Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask this, but I thought actual developers with a deep understanding of how technology actually works would be the people to ask!

If you were tasked with setting up a safe and secure way to do this, how would you do it differently than what the UK government is proposing? How could it be done such that I wouldn't have to worry about my privacy and the threat of government suppression? Is it even theoretically possible to accomplish such a task at such a scale?

Cheers!

EDIT: Just to be clear: I'm not in favour of age verification laws. But they're on their way regardless. My question is purely about the implementation and technology of the thing, rather than the ethics or efficacy of it. Can this seemingly-inevitable privacy hellscape be done in a non-hellscapish way?

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[–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

This isn’t true.

The internet has been around since the late 90s at the earliest…that’s when some kids started freely accessing adult content.

When I was a kid…(and I grew up unsupervised and poor with one working parent - I was free range)…porn mags were like the holy grail. I literally didn’t see one until I was about 14 and I found one in somebodies forest fort. So think about that…not only could I not find a porn mag…but the person that had one had to go hiking to “use” it.

I mean…we also had homophobic molester gym teachers teaching us health class…

There’s got to be a workable happy medium between no access and no information - and everything always all the time to the max.

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  • [+] 0 points 7 months ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    You said teens. I didn’t know you meant 18. Even if it wasn’t your topic…surely kids having access to hardcore porn, fetish scenarios, etcetc before they have access to sex ed isn’t optimal.

    Yeah…things are better, sex ed wise, then they were in the 80s. Miles better. That’s a great thing - but as I said above, sex-ed can’t keep up with what children are being exposed to. We’re not talking about Playboys and R-Rated movies here. 

    You didn’t really get my point, no. My point was that some children are being bombarded with sexual information from all angles, and it’s having unintended consequences. We essentially opened a new all-encompassing type of media and barely tried to regulate it.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    The question isn't whether having access to hardcore porn is harmful. The question is the relative degree of harm.

    When a web service can reliably distinguish between adult and child, it can specifically target content to either. Netflix can provide age-appropriate content to its users. That's great.

    Groomers can specifically target members of their desired audience. That's not so great. That's bad. That's really, really bad. That's much worse than kids finding hardcore pornography. And that degree of targeting is only possible with widespread age verification laws.

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