Can we even prove its harmful?

I'm far more worried about a jordan peterson video than some benign porn, a gaping anus, or even zionazis murdering children.

Two things to remember:

• Prohibition has never been a deterant to consumption.
• For every technology, there exists an equal yet undoing technology.

Anyone who thinks putting barriers up will keep horny kids from finding porn doesn’t remember what it was like to be a horny kid.

Do you know what we had to do to see a single boob in the 80s? And we still did it, even if it wore out the movie on pause or involved sneaking into a creepy forest for a porn stash or watching scrambled channels for hours.

The only thing that taught me more about computers than pirating games was figuring out how to hide my porn.

Politics has always been over 90% show and/or spin so they can claim to be "doing something" about a problem. The problems are too complicated in most cases for the average voter to spend enough time learning about and understanding the complexities involved, but heaven forbid you should accuse them of not knowing what they're talking about or voting for - they're too afraid of being seen as "stupid" to admit the truth of the accusation. So they cover it up with arrogance and bravado.

Most of the politicians are just grifters who will tell their voters what they think they want to hear. The voters who have spent their entire lives too afraid of being bullied to feel comfortable admitting when they don't actually know what the best solutions are tend to be the real problem. Then they double-down & dig in further when things go wrong in order to avoid admitting they screwed up, which they keep doing in a vicious loop this making things progressively worse - all because they don't know how to be confident in themselves while also admitting they don't understand something that supposedly matters so much to them. So we wind up doing the same stupid things over and over again because the voters think they sound good at first blush to these obstinate idiots - "idiots" only because they keep doing the same things over and over expecting a different result. They refuse to be open and honest with themselves, let alone anybody else - all because they're too afraid to do so.

if those politicians could read they would be very upset

I just recently found out that UKs biggest export is money laundering. I mean I knew they did it, but didn't expect it to be that much.

These laws are designed to harm children

There's a similar bill working it's way through the Senate here in the US.

The Kid's Online Safety Act has the same problems as the one in the UK, and people here like the EFF have been sounding the alarm. I've written to my Congresscritter about it, but sadly, they're a bloody co-sponsor of the bill. Like the article said, they think the internet is made up of Facebook and Google, and they're ignoring the impact it will have on the small players, like Lemmy server operators.

In this case, I don't think just a VPN will help -- I think Tor might, as long as the small operators don't mind being borderline outlaws.

Another point, if protecting children online is indeed a legitimate argument, and not an scapegoat to make passing the law easier, shouldn't be the parents to decide what the children see online?

I wouldn't be surprised if it actually makes it worse

... but repeating lies until they sound truthy is what all the latest crop of popular politicians are doing... are you sure? /s