Starting today, UK adults will have to prove their age to access porn online. Experts warn that a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech and ultimately harm children and adults alike.
  • masterofn001@lemmy.caEnglish
    60·
    13 days ago

    It is not age verification.

    It is privacy invading, morality policing, de-anonymizing, state surveillance.

    Nothing less.

    PS. If you want to download a video from a site that doesn’t have a download button, use the Inspect feature (right click on the page, not the video, and click inspect)

    *On the Network tab - Sort by size. Reload page. Find the video. Open the video in new tab. It will be just the video. Right click and save as, or click the download button, or click the 3 dot menu button and select download.

    On Firefox you can often bypass this entirely by shift + right click. And should see a save video as option. If not, the inspect feature works the same.

    For hls/TS videos (m3u8 streams), if you reallllly want, you can copy the link for the stream and use VLC to convert the stream to a file.

    This also often lets you download at higher resolution than they offer to download.

    Yes, I porn.

    *forgot Network tab

    And thanks for all the suggestions. I’d rather not install browser plugins if I can do it without. CLI tools are cool though. The less I need to install the better.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      15 days ago

      If it makes you feel better, this isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

      Because these regulations never do.

      • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4·
        15 days ago

        I’ll take that bet. Probably won’t be effective, but I’m betting this shit is here to stay. There already hasn’t been enough push-back.

  • Korkki@lemmy.mlEnglish
    18·
    15 days ago

    All the big adult sites will probably just die or at least shrivel in popularity. Most Europeans simply will not use whatever “tell Brussels or London where or what what you are watching” option is. In the place of the big sites there will be a billion shady and likely virus-lottery proxy sites whose only selling point is that they do not do age checking or require registration. Those then get occasionally smacked down by Brussels, just to be replaced with 10 more clones the by the next week. On the side piracy and vpns will thrive. Kids will not be protected nor will people’s privacy, quality will be worse.

    I would also bet that when the landscape decentralizes there will be a lot more cp, revenge and peep-videos and other illegal shit in the mix that will get through through the cracks since massive established sites had to actually fear shutdown and losing all revenue unless they had robust gatekeeping mechanisms. If Brussels wants your 2 month life-expectancy site dead anyway, because of it’s only selling point of having to show id, then why really bother with the quality control of the material. Especially if site holder has no personal qualms about that stuff.

  • WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    151·
    15 days ago

    Since the earliest days of the internet, governments have been scheming to gain control over the dissemination of content - to have authority over what people can and cannot see.

    Autocracies like Russia, China and North Korea simply established censorships regimes, but the best that western governments have generally been able to do is ban content that is illegal in and of itself, like child porn. Their goal, all along, has been to establish systems by which to censor content that is not in and of itself illegal.

    This is the most success they’ve had yet.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      The people technologically competent enough to pull it off are usually not stupid enough to want to pull it off and make their lives harder.

      They also generally make more money not working for the government.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        14 days ago

        That’s just not true. People (including competent enough) are well willing to make the society worse for everyone if they are going to be gentry. That’s been this way for all of human history, thinking otherwise is that new thing of the 90s, when American exceptionalism has been expanded into “post-Cold-War globalist” world exceptionalism, similarly to how Judaism expanded into Christianity.

    • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
      24·
      15 days ago

      If that’s been their goal for decades then there would be something written down to that effect. Policy statements, press releases, meeting minutes… Got anything?

    • Voytrekk@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      6·
      15 days ago

      They are allowed to chill their own speech. The government does not have the right to restrict speech, at least in the US.

  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    14 days ago

    This isn’t about being “age-checked”. It’s about IDing everyone on the internet and tracking where they go and what they do.

    The world we live in is far far worse than anything from 1984.

    • LordCrom@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      14 days ago

      Exactly this.

      Governments have a rock hard boner for detailed face scans of every person.

  • HexesofVexes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    14 days ago

    See, there are a few ways this could go.

    1. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, and it’s left at that. I like to call this “the miracle”, and we all know those don’t happen.

    2. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a government asks for “access to data to prevent crime” - things degenerate from there. This is the “systemic failure” scenario.

    3. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but new scams evolve around it to make it dangerous. This would be the “criminal element” scenario.

    4. Age verification is not as secure and private as promised, and a leak occurs destroying lives and careers. This is the “system failure” scenario.

    5. Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a few companies start scraping and selling data, leading to widespread harms. This is the “unethical merchant” scenario, and the most likely outcome.

    All in all, there is only one “ok” scenario, and a lot of horrific ones. The math says we’re entirely boned ^_^

    • D_Air1@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      14 days ago

      Or all of the above while still not being “as secure and private as promised”.

    • Tony Bark@pawb.socialOPEnglish
      01·
      14 days ago

      Five seems to be the most plausible. Although knowing how shit corporate security is, I foresee a mix of three and four being common.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    14 days ago

    I legitimately dont understand who supports this. Who are these parents that can’t parent their kids properly? It’s so incredibly easy these days.

    So instead of handling shitty parenting we restrict adults and with surveillance. Make it make sense.

    • Sunsofold@lemmings.worldEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      One of the biggest problems with human societies is that parents, by necessity, have their brains broken and, due to modern values/life, are under constant strain. Being a parent means (generally) the kid is priority 1, then there’s everything else. This is a necessary irrationality, but if this means you have to do the occasional genocide or violate someone else’s civil rights to ‘keep our kids safe’ then, by god, those people are just going to have to suck it up and die. Sometimes, if you have the time, you can talk some people around and remind them, one day their kids are going to have to live in society as one of those 'someone else’s and won’t always be their precious little baby, but almost no one has the time and energy for a more nuanced thought than ‘save the babies!’ much less if they also have to work 48 hours, commute 10 hours, and parent their kid(s) for 167 hours each week.

    • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      Who supports it? Fascists. It’s about controlling access to information and robbing the populace of privacy at the same time. An oppressive, authoritarian police state needs tools to maintain control. These are the tools.

    • ilovecheese@feddit.ukEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      It’s the parents that wont face the fact that it’s them paying for their kids internet access.

      Parents intentionally and deliberately pay for their kids to access this shit. But none of them want to accept that when it can all be someone elses fault.

    • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.onlineEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      Parental controls for internet use have been around since the 90s. There are even some vintage porn sites that have been running since then that have ads for them. I know this. I saw them back in 1999 and 2000… when I was an underage guy looking at porn online.

    • subignition@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      There are SO MANY parents that are not willing to teach and monitor their kids online safety. I would even say most parents don’t take that responsibility themselves.

    • elucubra@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      Most parents are way less literate than their kids. Most censorship/site restriction, can be circumvented easily.

      • Fondots@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        14 days ago

        We’re at or reaching a tipping point where I’m not sure that’s true anymore.

        Most people with kids now are (roughly) in their 20s-40s. At the older end of that range, you have some gen-xers who might have missed the boat on computer literacy, but by and large we’re talking about millennials and older gen-z at this point. Kids who grew up with the internet, probably very clearly remember their family getting their first computer if they didn’t already have one when they were born, had computer classes in school, etc.

        And we’re running into an issue where younger Gen z and alpha in many cases are less computer literate in many ways. A lot of them aren’t really learning to use a computer so much as they are smartphones and tablets, and I’m not knocking how useful those devices can be, I do damn-near everything I need to do on my phone, but they are limited compared to a PC and don’t really offer as much of an opportunity to learn how computers work.

        There’s a ton of exceptions to that of course, some of my millennial friends are still clueless about how to do basic things on a computer, and some children today are of course learning how to do anything and everything on a computer or even on a phone.

        But overall, I don’t think there’s as much disparity in technological literacy between the children and parents of today as there was in previous generations, and in some ways that trend may have even reversed.

    • rozodru@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      a lot of people. The other day I saw a post on mastodon by some politician or someone in the UK stating that if people find any site that is geoblocking the UK because of the age verification to report it to some link he provided. it was boosted A LOT with a lot of replies in support.

      bootlickers.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        14 days ago

        report, lol. what does that douchebag want to do? fine a foreign website for not serving content to his oh so precious country?

    • shaggyb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      14 days ago

      And if I can’t, I’ll just stop using the internet for anything I don’t absolutely have to.

      I don’t really need my smartphone. A laptop will do.

  • jpablo68@infosec.pubEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    Well time to sell thumbdrives to teenagers filled with “tutorials.mp4” and “online class.mp4” lol.

  • absquatulate@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    I wonder what it was that made Pornhub cooperate this time around. Iirc in texas and france they just “left” instead of implementing the age verification.

    • Damage@feddit.itEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      Maybe Britons are depraved porn fiends and spend so much that Pornhub can’t afford to lose this market!

  • queueBenSis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    these laws are all about control and tracking what you do online. they make the internet MORE dangerous, because (as with everything the government restricts or bans) there will be a black market, which is always more dangerous and exposes people to more things than they were looking for in the first place. you think dark web providers are gonna make you upload your id to stay compliant? no, they’re gonna continue anonymously operating through TOR and serve up some very questionably sourced content to those teens that are searching “boobs” and can no longer access pornhub

    • G4Z@feddit.ukEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      Fuck it, let’s get back to something like the way it was.

      Anonymous, amateur, just slightly hard to access to keep the mouth breathers out.

      • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        That’s what this is going to become. And that’s another point to this. They can just go after people using the dark net claim it was for kiddie porn even if it wasn’t. the masses will just believe them.

      • xiwi@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        14 days ago

        There’s like a gazillion porn sites on the clearnet though, I can’t imagine them being able to track then all

        • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.onlineEnglish
          2·
          14 days ago

          I am aware of many, I am just saying looking at the dark web is not a good idea because… well… OK we’re all adults here. That’s where all the CP is and I have no interest in seeing that shit.

        • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          14 days ago

          There is so much of it on the internet in general that you can’t really do much about it. On top of the fact it is still all over torrent websites as well.

        • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          14 days ago

          If a government agency cant find them, they will be very difficult for average users to find as well

  • SuperCub@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    13 days ago

    I mean, schools (k-12) pretty easily blacklist websites you can access, not sure why parents can’t just do that if they want as well.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      12 days ago

      Because it was meant as a “soft ban”. First you make it troublesome to access porn, but also blame the providers if kids are circumventing it in any shape or form (no section 230-esque protections). This, alongside with payment processors, act as a chokehold on the industry, and also on the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole if you can read between the lines. The long game is to make it unpopular enough in a few years, that it can be easily outlawed.