When I was 8, I remember being bored and curious and touching a lot of parents stuff… phones… wallets… legal documents…
Most parents don’t put their stuff in safes…
Like… THE WALLET IS RIGHT THERE… I COULD JUST GRAB IT!
If they had age verification stuff back then… I could’ve just… quickly snap a pic of their ID and just YOLO it…
This is binary thinking and is false. The law does do something by putting up an obstacle to seeing porn. Hundreds of thousands of children are seeing porn by accident, way before they are ready, not because they’re horny little teenagers. Yes, those who are highly motivated will find it, but you should not be this absolute.
The cost of this law in privacy violation is not worth the benefit it brings to children. But it still does bring a benefit, and you’re unlikely to convince anyone if you can’t see where they’re coming from on that.
If you think it’s a benefit, pushing everyone to use less moderated platforms then sure. You clearly don’t understand the internet. If you click a link and are exprected to show a video with your ID and face visible, what do you do? I say it is extremely dangerous and criminal for a government to demand this from their citizens. So many people will have their identity stolen, I guarantee it, it’s already happening and will get much worse. https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/25-percent-of-kids-will-face-identity-theft-before-turning-18-age-verification-laws-will-make-this-worse/
This isn’t really about the internet; it’s about human psychology. If you make something more difficult, fewer people will do it. Especially people who are doing it by accident. Kids aren’t going out and accidentally downloading a VPN client.
I made it clear that I don’t think it’s a benefit overall
Ever applied for a bank account online? I am certainly used to handing over identifiable information. I do it carefully.
Yes, this is the Chilling effect, and it’s not a good thing. You don’t need a VPN to watch porn online without ID verification, not even in the UK. I’m sure the great UK firewall will come eventually tho.
Yes, I went to my local post office and showed them my ID, I’d never send my ID and face over video. This applies only to banks, what if a porn site asks you (and you want to visit it)? If you don’t want to do it, your freedom is taken away from you.
Chilling effect has a different connotation. This is a directly desired effect.
Do you disagree that it’s harmful for young children to see pornography and the distorted view it presents of sex and especially of women? If it were just a question of chilling adults who want to look at porn, rather than of privacy violation, it’d be an acceptable price to pay. For example, if they used zero-knowledge proofs, that’d be completely fine.
I, as an adult who wants to visit a site, circumvent such a requirement. As a child who does not, I obviously would not.
Yes, and you’d probably do this by using unregulated sites, like many impacted by the UK law https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/unregulated-sites-porn-uk-age-verification-b2895231.html
A child with unregulated access to the internet will always see content not appropriate for them. Personally i’m much more concerned about violent and morbid content than porn. You’d never see that censored because it’s part of the news and plastered all over the internet.