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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?