The European Commission preliminarily found Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) for failing to protect minors from being exposed to pornographic content on their services.

  • MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    That’s not how the internet works.

    The onus is on the users. The parents are the ones who have to figure out a way to ensure what their kid’s devices can access, or that they are educated enough not to seek it.

  • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    If kids are willfully seeking porn, then it ain’t anybody’s business to stop them. Exploring and enjoying your sexuality is part of growing up, and “moral” whackjobs shouldn’t get to decide how people grow up.

    Protecting the kids should be about providing useful information, contraception, and official aid against predators.

    • Reddfugee42@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I’m pretty liberal but nobody’s kids need to watch anyone get tied up and anally fucked while they scream.

      I get your point about regular stuff, but there is a fuckton of irregular stuff

  • chunes@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I am once again asking why a non-European website (pornhub) should have to care.

    If you want to censor stuff so bad, then hop to it. Why are you asking people outside your borders censor themselves?

  • grapefruittrouble@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    Hey EU (and all other regulatory agencies interested in “protecting the children”), how about you provide information to parents on how they can setup their own blocking tools, like DNS. You can do this for free, today, right now and actually get the results you supposedly want.

  • ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    The real crime here is while the EU is trying every angle to error your privacy, that time is not being spent on real issues. You are being sold out by the very people put into positions of power to serve you. If the data supported their goals, I would be there with them, but the data is very clear on the matter and the it indicates we are in for big issues with all these IDs being stored by centralized targets.

  • febra@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    And that’s how it begins. Soon they’ll start asking everyone to provide ID to access the internet.

    • nforminvasion@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Exactly. Chat Control being rejected is a minor victory unfortunately. There are VERY powerful actors and organizations behind the scenes for these policies.

      I think they realized chat control wasn’t going to work, but do not abandon the watch post, they will be back with a different approach.

      • toebert@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        Chat control is absolutely going to work with some time, they can just propose it every week. It can afford to fail 100 times, it only needs to pass once - it’s not like these people run out of money. Depressing

      • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        There are VERY powerful actors

        God, I fucking hate this timeline. You know you’re talking about Zuckerberg in that way, right? It’s disgusting that he ought fit such an eery description.

    • qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 days ago

      That’s why we need decentralized infrastructure like a meshnet or personal/community satellite network. Reticulum based networks are imo the best candidates for that, right now and in the foreseeable future.

    • jackal@feddit.uk
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      3 days ago

      If they want to know who I am they can already ask my ISP, I don’t see why they need to also have a copy of my driving license.

  • HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social
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    5 days ago

    I wonder why the EU didn’t find the parents of the kids to be in breach of whatever relevant child “protection” laws there are? I guess they are okay with the porn websites raising the kids. Maybe the EU can make PornHub to start a chain of day care centers?

      • HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social
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        4 days ago

        Agreed. I was making a tongue in cheek comment about the absurdity of this whole thing. In my opinion, the parents are more responsible than the porn sites, but no one should be punished because young Peter managed to see a boob.

    • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
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      4 days ago

      So let me get this straight:

      When I was 13, I managed to figure out the router password, disabled child protection for myself, then watched porn on my Android 2.3 phone that I had managed to put a custom ROM on because I liked the way it looked and had no idea what a “launcher” was yet.

      This is not a hypothetical btw.

      My parents were smart enough to enable appropriate blocking and secured access to those settings. I’m not sure something on-device was available at the time, but I included the bit about the custom rom to demonstrate that, even though I didn’t know WTF I was doing, I was more than capable of fucking around with the tech to get it to do what I wanted.

      So were my parents in breach of their duties on child protection?

      I don’t think they were. They actually did educate themselves (visiting a course / parent meetup to discuss and learn how to protect me from the Internet), and implemented everything they learned.

      I was just a little shit and found a way around this.

      And this is NOT an edgecase. Because guess what. It takes one kid in the friend group to figure out a way to circumvent parental controls, and then EVERYONE knows how to do it.

      It simply does not fucking matter how well intentioned, knowledgeable, and present the parents are (mine were all of that).

      Going “this would not be a problem if parents parented” is the LAZIEST fucking excuse, and I’m sick and tired of reading about it on here.

      (Because I probably have to make it clear: I’m not advocating for photo/passport scanning, third party age verification,… and all that bullshit. What I think would be a FANTASTIC idea would be privacy-preserving age verification. There are two good ways to do this: 1) on a login attempt, prove that you are of age by presenting a fresh, signed token from a government service proving that you are over 18, and nothing else; site does not get any info, government does not know what you were trying to access; 2) a device-level age field. Proof here comes from the device itself, and can be 100% privacy preserving; just a “yep, is of age”. In this scenario… GUESS WHAT, PARENTS GET ENABLED TO PARENT “PROPERLY” BY PROVIDING THEM WITH A GOOD, SIMPLE, PRIVACY-PRESERVING TECHNICAL SOLUTION.)

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        4 days ago

        Id say your parents managed to get you to educate yourself in lots of useful skills by giving you a motivation. Good job.

        • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
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          I’d also like to think so. In this case though, this was clearly not what was intended, and also involved a lot of porn.

      • HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social
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        I really should remember to put a huge “THIS IS NOT A VERY SERIOUS COMMENT” on most of my comments. I find I’m way too snarky for text based communication.

        Anyways. I’m not saying parents should be punished because their kid managed to watch porn. I was just making a joke about how stupid everything is.

        I didn’t grow up with routers and android phones. My equivalent of breaking into the router and changing the password was to climb into the paper recycling container to find Donald Duck comics but ending up finding porno mags.

        The fact is, kids are always going to find porn. There’s just no way around it. If they put ID proof protections on the websites, they just gonna figure out torrents or some other way of downloading stuff.

        • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
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          4 days ago

          In that case: sorry to blow up on you. I have seen to many comments on here claiming these things while being 100% serious. I just saw your comment and incidentally had time to write the above for once, so, here we are.

          I agree that there’s no way to completely cut teens off from porn. Your torrent example is perfectly demonstrating this.

          But I also do not understand the current outrage at anything trying to improve the situation, even when it’s not some stupid “scan your face” scheme.

          • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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            4 days ago

            It’s mostly just that I don’t want the government to know precisely which websites I visit. Nor do I want the the porn sites to know exactly who I am.

            Let me have my privacy. I’ve been watching porn since I was 12 or 13 and absolutely would’ve figured out a way to do it even if there’d been age restrictions because I was horny af. Nothing bad has happened to me because of it. Perhaps a mild addiction to masturbation unless I’m having sex but that hurts literally nobody. Worse case scenario I last a little too long occasionally.

            Block pornhub and teens will find much seedier sites.

            • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
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              4 days ago

              It’s mostly just that I don’t want the government to know precisely which websites I visit. Nor do I want the the porn sites to know exactly who I am.

              I understand, I want that too. It’s easily possible though (just one example for a scheme):

              • you visit porn site
              • porn site sends your browser a random nonce
              • you/browser tell government service: sign this if I’m >18
              • government signs the nonce + a timstamp to prove freshness
              • your browser forwards the result to the porn site
              • porn site can verify signature per standard public certificate chains
              • now porn site has proof that you are >18, but knows nothing else about you; and government only knows that you wanted proof that you are an adult, but not for what site or purpose you wanted to prove that

              Alternatively, if we go the “device has an age bracket field browsers access” route, it’s even simpler, and just as if not more privacy preserving.

              • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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                4 days ago

                That already tells the government that I’m accessing porn because why else would I need to confirm I’m an adult online? And why would they implement it in a somewhat private manner if it could be implemented in a privacy-infringing manner?

                • smiletolerantly@awful.systems
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                  4 days ago

                  And why would they implement it in a somewhat private manner if it could be implemented in a privacy-infringing manner?

                  I honestly don’t think most democratic governments have an interest in making this privacy-infringing. Lobbyists/companies on the other hand… But all the more reason to write legislation that ensures age verification must be handled like this.

                  That already tells the government that I’m accessing porn because why else would I need to confirm I’m an adult online?

                  Cinema rickets for FSK18 movie? Ordering alcohol? Gambling? Renting a car?

                  Basically anything you’re only allowed to do as an adult.

                  But that’s kind of why I mentioned, it’s just one rough draft for such a protocol.

      • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        While I agree that your situation isn’t an edge case (I found dads locked porn collection of VHS tapes and learned that that lock could be circumvented with a fridge magnet) at the age of 9?

        But on the other hand, let’s say you post something to the internet that may be considered not okay for children. And let’s say that thing is about gun powder (which you absolutely can make from foraging natural ingredients). It’s your personal website, it’s labeled as not intended for children and you aren’t a big company so you don’t have the ability to just hire another company for things like age verification.

        Then you get sued by a regulatory body in another country because you didn’t adhere to their laws? Does that sound reasonable to you?

        If a parent or guardian is taking every precaution to keep their kid safe that is reasonable within the law and that kid still gains access to something that can harm them that’s an accident. If the parent takes no precautions and allows their child that they are legally responsible for the well being and safety of to raw dog life with no precautions whatsoever because that’s too hard, or they don’t care or whatever, then it seems reasonable to me that they be held responsible under the law.

        Their right to have a third party protect their children ends at my right to privacy which to me extends to my right to anonymity specifically because it has already been shown that without anonymity privacy just doesn’t exist in this age of the internet.

        What does that mean? It means that companies that collect your data but promise “privacy” cannot be trusted to uphold that promise, which means the only option left is to be as anonymous as possible.

        I want you to understand that I do agree that when one kid figures out the loophole, that loophole spreads like wild fire.

        But on the other hand, if a child figured out how to turn off the security system to the family car, grabbed the keys and went for a joyride with their friends, is it the fault of the parents or the fault of the car manufacturer? Because one of them is legally liable under the law.

        Would it be acceptable to have to send your thumbprint to BMW every time you wanted to drive your car?

      • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        While no system is perfect, technology has improved a lot since you were a kid.

        For one, like it or not, many phones no longer allow custom ROMs or tampering. But even that aside, network inspection takes way less processing power now so a basic gateway can now handle dynamic block lists, DNS filtering, VPN detection, etc. If properly implemented it could ensure your parent’s use a password with good complexity and require MFA in order to turn it off.

        Now, circumvention techniques have improved as well, but cheap cryptography really changes things and it can be used to make a very secure system. I think this is where our effort should be focused, on making sure ISP provided hardware has these options available to parents. It makes much more sense than trying to force this on all endpoints.

  • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 days ago

    porn should be behind age of consent not behind 18; being allowed to fuck someone but not see media of sexual things is total bullshit

    and not as a law. this is not the government’s job at all. prohibition doesn’t work. the only solution is proper sex ed

    just because it’s harmful to the self (according to dubious claims) doesn’t mean that people should not have this freedom. people’s freedom is more important than prevention of them harming themselves.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      Whoever’s currently responsible for the kid should be responsible for watching them and keeping them out of shit they shouldn’t be getting into. Expecting everyone else to put up with this privacy invading shit is fucking stupid.

    • ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      The smart people never enter politics and so rational solutions like yours never see the day of light. Plus, it is more about collecting your data and control than protecting anyone.

  • timestatic@feddit.org
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    4 days ago

    And what do you think happens when big platforms have to introduce age verification? People will just go to smaller unregulated sites which may inadvertently be worse because of malware risks and unregulated content. You just can’t take the porn out of the internet, people always find a way

    • Mac@mander.xyz
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      4 days ago

      Yep, this is already happening with Pornhub in The States.

  • GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I suggest that instead of age verification for kids, we do parenting verification licences for anyone wanting to have kids, before they have kids and then don’t raise them.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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        4 days ago

        It’s not eugenics if you just confiscate them at birth. This is already being done with severely unfit parents

        • tmyakal@infosec.pub
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          One: that’s not what was suggested. OP said parental verification/authorization before birth.

          Two: you’re proposing something like residential schools instead. Which, even if you don’t agree constituted genocide, was still pretty bad.

          I’m not advocating for our government’s insane privacy-violating measures. Just pointing out that OP’s proposal is worse. There’s got to be better ways to protect children than “police state” or “genocide.”

          • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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            3 days ago

            I cannot believe the downvoting coming your way for this.

            On one - how the abuse of this cannot be foreseen by the most clueless person is beyond me.

            On two - are people under the impression that the current child welfare system is adequate for the children that are currently in it? What about that system makes them think it would be suitable to increase the number of children in care.

            Fucking mental.

            • tmyakal@infosec.pub
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              Yeah, I almost wrote a whole counterpoint on how horrible the current child welfare system is and how nearly every trained professional agrees that breaking up families should only be the last resort in the most extreme circumstances, but I had a feeling this thread wasn’t the target audience for that particular reality.

          • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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            I’m not proposing anything, I’m saying that if you’re a drug addict or a violent criminal, this already happens so it’s not that far-fetched.

            Rather than going to residential schools, these children usually go to relatives who can actually take care of them, or if that’s not an option they might go to the admittedly not ideal system we already have for children whose parents are dead or just completely absent.

    • BlindFrog@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Some might be upvoting this in cheeky irony, but I see this as a modest proposal.

      This position deserves a longer form article & widespread publication, and numerous calculations & studies detailing how much more ethically beneficial this would be for society. Would it not be more efficient to curb idiocy among the masses by regulating people’s choices in population control than conducting intimate mass government surveillance? Would it not be a higher ethical stance to give people the illusion of choice by making them work for the privilege of birthing, maintenance, and management of another human being?

      Counterpoint: it is cheaper and cost-effective to dehumanize and control the masses with the technical advances we have today , and-also, to hell with ethics. Think about it. If car manufacturers would be made responsible for designing cars to identify bad actors, we wouldn’t have to deal with the inevitable consequences of people who gain their driving licenses but bend the rules anyway. We could do with discarding licensing altogether because it’s not perfect. Only by singling out and reprimanding each person for their faults with the conviction of a Walmart micromanager and the ruthless efficiency of Palantir surveillance - can we create a more perfect bubble of safety for society.

      ~(I don’t have time to even pretend to cough up statistics, k thx bye)~

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      And then it pushes people into darker areas. I just sw a post about a horrible rape ring and it hosted videos on sites that I saw on 4chan over the years.

      How about parents be parents and monitor kids.

      • innermachine@lemmy.world
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        For real. This is like saying all underage drinking is the alcohol companies fault rather than the parents that leave their alcohol easily accessible to their kids, basically providing it for them. Underage kids say 16 or under should absolutely not have unmonitored access to the internet, and that is solely on the parents to enforce. You don’t have to buy your kid a smart phone or tablet or computer. When you do your providing then access to the internet and hoping they make the right call.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          I think you mean monitor their usage.

          And to be fair, this is fairly technical. Many parents aren’t very technical. They’re unaware of parental controls they have access to, and I think that’s by design (as it would be unprofitable for social media).

          • innermachine@lemmy.world
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            When I was a kid I got to use the family PC in the living room. While my peers that got on smartphones early started brain rotting on Facebook I was on my bicycle with my best buds and curfew of when the street lights come on. Kids can live without smart phones, and definatley don’t need unmonitored access to the internet. Doesn’t take parental controls, they simply don’t need the internet in private. Their too young and curious to be trusted on it for their own good.

        • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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          You don’t have to buy your kid a smart phone or tablet or computer.

          You do if you want them to be normal members of society with any skills. Things are happening on a computer now, so if you want your kid to not be a socially isolated looser they kind of have to have one.

          • innermachine@lemmy.world
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            What is a 13 year old missing out on by not having constant unmonitored access to the internet? They can go ride a bike or something. Maybe see their friends in real life instead of chatting with 30 year old maga predators on the internet and considering it “socializing”.

            • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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              In US? Unless you’re very lucky with location, and 99% aren’t, you can’t ride a bike anywhere, it’s dangerous and there are stroads everywhere. You can’t see their friends in real life because there is no place to gather, and nobody is doing that anyway. Kids are talking to each other on various internets and talking in memes the pick up online. You can’t even socialise with non-technology freaks and wonabe amish, they’re all home schooled.
              It’s slightly different in other, more developed countries. But even then, not being able to connect with your peers on discord will cost the kid a bunch of socialising points, and make their social life that much harder (up to impossible) for no reason.
              And that’s just social life, I’m not even talking about the fact that you practically taking away any prospect of a good employment rising them like that.
              Maybe talk to your kids once in a while so they don’t want to seek connection with 30 year old maga predators on the internet as a crude replacement for personal connection, instead of locking them up in a tower.

              • innermachine@lemmy.world
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                I have lived many places in the US (rural, suburb, city) and have been able to bike in all of them. There’s roads in every civilized country, the idea u can’t bike in 99% of USA I manufactured by nanny culture. We gathererd at old mills, parks, friends houses. Kids has social lives before the internet so your argument is pretty moot. Not saying lock them up with no Internet but letting them have unrestricted access will lead to poor outcomes.

                • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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                  Kids has social lives before the internet so your argument

                  I will let you figure out yourself what’s wrong with your logic without insulting you with stating the obvious

            • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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              All their peers are on discord shit talking them for being the weirdo that can’t do anything. While I agree that it needs to happen, fixing this is going to require more than just individuals restricting their own kids. It’s going to take a collective effort, requiring a decent time investment, from all parents or at least enough of them to ensure their children have a decent social network. I’m not optimistic with how fucked up and exhausting every single aspect of life has become. There are things politicians could focus on to actually improve the situation but they’d rather cater to all the data stealing corporations.

              • innermachine@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                Yea and plenty of kids shit talked me for being a weirdo before discord was around what do u expect from crotch goblins. But I agree that unfortunately our info is more and more being harvested and sold, and their buying the right to do it through our government. It’s sick.

                • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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                  That’s what I expect of them. That’s why I said it. Getting bullied was far more damaging to me than anything I ever encountered on the Internet.

                  My point was you can’t just restrict the kids access to the Internet, you have to also make sure they’re able to hang out with their peers. There has to be a balance between giving them the freedom to do shit and sheltering them.

      • General_Effort@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        But the parents are doing it wrong! Most don’t even disown their kids when they come out as gay or trans; which is the fault of social media anyway.

      • kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        I unfortunately know what you can come across and how stupidly easy it is to find it…

        Parents shut be parents indeed. But not be afraid to explain things. When a kid finds a adult website, explains to them not hide what it is. People forget how quickly kids figure things out.