this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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All porn sites must 'robustly' verify UK user ages by July (www.bbc.com)
submitted 22 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
59 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Summary

Under the UK's Online Safety Act, all websites hosting pornography, including social media platforms, must implement "robust" age verification methods, such as photo ID or credit card checks, for UK users by July.

Regulator Ofcom claims this is to prevent children from accessing explicit content, as research shows many are exposed as young as nine.

Critics, including privacy groups and porn sites, warn the measures could drive users to less-regulated parts of the internet, raising safety and privacy concerns.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 20 minutes ago* (last edited 18 minutes ago)

Remember when the Snowden revelations came out?

Not only it showed that the UK was even more intrusive in their surveillance of their own citiziens than the US, but after those revelations, whilst the US walked back on some of the surveillance, the Government of the UK simply retroactivelly legalized all of it, the editor at The Guardian who published the Snowden revelations got kicked out and the entire British Press went quiet about it since then.

The chances of this being genuinelly about protecting children rather than about facilitating the identification of British internet users by the GCHQ, are pretty much zero.

Personally I lived in the UK back when the Snowden revelations came out, so switched to being behind an always on VPN and since then never lost that habit. (And yeah, it's of course not a foolproof mechanism, but it sure makes it way harder to be caught in the broad trawling done by the surveillance apparatus, plus it's also pretty useful for "sailing the high seas")

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 23 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

How long do they calculate until personal porn information is leaked?

[–] Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago

Id give a rough estimate of > 3 years until some DB gets rocked due to infostealers or some shit.

[–] janNatan@lemmy.ml 39 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

This is why we need decentralized, open source porn websites.

So, head on over to LemmyNSFW.com and upload a pic of your junk.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 13 points 15 hours ago

I'm shy, I'll just dm you instead.

[–] ogmios@sh.itjust.works 86 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (15 children)

My problem with all this nonsense is that it doesn't actually solve the problem, while causing many more. You'd need to fundamentally rethink the basic design of the technology if you were to actually prevent children from accessing sexual material with it. That's something they don't want to do, however, presumably because they're addicted to the power it offers them to spy on everyone, and exploit the population for profit.

We're in this mess right now because the one absolute truth preempting every other decision made by those who wield power is that the solution must first increase their power. Literally everything else is an afterthought.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 24 points 21 hours ago

Well you see... Despite what people say, the reasons behind these rules has very little to do with children. So they don't actually care if it solves the "problem".

[–] sleen@lemmy.zip 27 points 22 hours ago

I agree, the country is delving deeper into authoritarianism by each second. The children and minors is just another exploitable class to them.

[–] galaskorz 8 points 20 hours ago

Nah, you just need parents to care about what their kids get up to and to responsibly educate them without punishing them for being curious.

Bwahhahajahhahaa. Like that’s gonna happen.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

My problem with all this nonsense is that it doesn’t actually solve the problem, while causing many more. You’d need to fundamentally rethink the basic design of the technology if you were to actually prevent children from accessing sexual material with it.

Absolutely - this always happens with these "save the children" laws.

That’s something they don’t want to do, however, presumably because they’re addicted to the power it offers them to spy on everyone, and exploit the population for profit.

Jesus Christ... You ever hear the phrase "never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance?" Politicians do this sort of "make the people feel like we're doing something" shit all the time. They rarely consider the ramifications beside appeasing parents.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 13 minutes ago* (last edited 11 minutes ago)

The UK has a History of intrusive civil society surveillance which the Snowden revelations showed was even worse than in the US, and whilst the US actually walked back on some of it back then, the UK Government just retroactivelly made the whole thing legal.

Also, lets not forget how the UK has the highest density of CCTV cameras per inhabitant in the World (or maybe it's just London: it's been a while since I read about it).

Their track record on the subject heavilly indicates that this specific measure with the characteristics it has, is extremelly likely to have been purposefully crafted to extend civil society surveillance and information access control.

[–] ogmios@sh.itjust.works 9 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

You ever hear the phrase “never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance?”

Generalities like that can be useful when applied appropriately, but counter-productive when applied blindly. That positions of power are held primarily by those who are motivated primarily by power ought to be the most straight forward assertion possible.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago

Agreed. I feel we've been giving politicians passes on "ignorance" for far too long. First, ignorance is not a defense in any other situation. Second, these people are supposed to uphold our laws and virtues, so they should be held to a higher standard. Third, if you can find a pattern in their "ignorance" which somehow always seems to benefit them personally - they're not ignorant, but malignant.

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[–] chaosppe@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago

Every site is going to turn into a porn site, isn't it?

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 18 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I thought this was a USAmerican headline, but it's the UK 🤣 There will be another spike in VPN purchases, won't there? (Probably Proton VPN if people haven't read about their pro-MAGA stance).

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 11 points 15 hours ago

Germany had these kinds of laws since before the internet, that is, "are you 18?" questions simply weren't judged adequate to fulfil the pre-existing requirements.

Net result is that there's no German porn sites, and the big search engines filter their results. Which doesn't mean that you can't get porn everywhere, it just means that kids are learning a particular subset of the English lexicon quite early once they seek it out which is perfectly fine under German law as with anything youth protection it's not supposed to stop determined kids, once they're determined they're individually old enough, it's supposed to limit casual exposure.

The distinction Germany makes is "targeted at a German market/audience". So if your domain isn't on .de, if your payment options aren't Germany-specific, ideally if you don't even have a German UI translation, none of that stuff applies to you. Authorities will just ignore you.

Unless the UK is going down the Saudi route of blocking foreign sites, the exact same thing will happen. There's always going to be some jurisdiction with lax youth protection laws where porn sites can set up their legal headquarters.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

UK may be taking a slightly different path, but we'll both end up in the same shithole at the end. Incredible.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 minutes ago* (last edited 1 minute ago)

Back when the Snowden revelations came out the UK was worse than the US when it came to civil society surveillance and unlike the US, the Government there just retroactivelly legalized all that their NSA-equivalent (the GCHQ) did with no restrictions.

Oh, and the UK Press has a censorship mechanism called D-Notices.

In this domain the UK is already worse than the US, probably because the idea that the populus should know their place and be led by "their betters" is pretty old in Britain and, at least for the elites, the thinking about the relation between power and the people never significativelly evolved away from the original thinking in Absolute Monarchies, since the political and power structures there are still anchored on a Monarchy.

[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 51 points 22 hours ago

We're really globally going to return to the pre-WWII status quo, aren't we?

The past 50+ years were an anomaly in humanity's development, but we all collectively fell for the idea that it was, and would remain, the norm.

How wrong we were.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 17 points 19 hours ago

so....why the sudden pressure to track porn usage to IDs?

ohhh....the homosexuals.

this is good news. it means they don't already have a database of all the lgbtq+ communities.

I wonder if there's any crime committed if you sign up your local conservative politician for gay porn or monthly dildos. maybe even abortion drugs while you're at it.

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 35 points 21 hours ago (5 children)

Honestly I never understood this. I grew up with the internet so I've always had access to porn from a young age (If anything it was even easier back than). And pretty much everyone that's 35 years or younger did as well and I'd say generally we all turned out fine. At least not any worse off than any other generation. And honestly the only negative side effect it had on me was having unrealistic expectations the first time I actually had sex.

[–] lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 13 hours ago

It makes a lot more sense when you look at it in context, particularly in regards to trans and all LGBTQ+ people. These transphobic governments consider simply existing as trans to be pornographic, so they are trying to block access to educational information on us, while also compiling a list of anyone who does. It's the exact same shit America is trying to do with KOSA

[–] galaskorz 23 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I had the same expectations about love, so maybe we should ban romantic movies for giving people a false expectation of what romantic relationships are actually like.

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 7 points 20 hours ago

Dude same. I fucked up a lot of potential relationships when I was younger because I expected it to "be like the movies."

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

And honestly the only negative side effect it had on me was having unrealistic expectations the first time I actually had sex.

And that is what we should be worrying about.

I told my kid that she can watch all the porn she wants, I don't care. Just don't expect actual sex to be like that.

[–] Yprum@lemmy.world 6 points 20 hours ago

Yeah, and actually I would say with confidence we are actually better off. It's true that unrealistic expectations is a big issue (well, might be more like, I think most realize that porn is not real after experiencing it so it's not a big problem really for most), but at least we do have a good understanding of the possibilities and what is safe and what is not... At the very least we have a more openminded and informed point of view on sex and relationships. Which doesn't mean either "let's show porn to the kids" of course, but it's such an overblown topic in society.

Let parents be the responsible ones of what kids watch, not the webpages...

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Every once in a while I hear boomers waxing poetic about the wholesome days of old nudie mags.

Well, I happen know the boomer's own parents were plenty outraged by them, actually. And, have you ever read one of those? The copy is pretty damn disrespectful about the women appearing therein, as were the men running the show.

[–] Luckiesock@lemm.ee 31 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Okay chief. How bout you verify the ID'S of UK politicians who visit Asia for kids?

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[–] kirbowo808@kbin.melroy.org 19 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

uses vpn, lies about age and manages to access porn site, despite claims otherwise

Mission failed successfully

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Majority of people are like that Hank Hill meme about jpegs, they don't know what the hell a VPN is.

[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

I'm sure nobody will instantly search "how to bypass porn check UK"

[–] LNRDrone@sopuli.xyz 19 points 20 hours ago

I expect this to go just as well as for the US states that implemented similar laws. So basically anyone in the UK is blocked access and will just have to use a VPN for porn. Any kind of recording of IDs is obviously a huge security risk for everyone involved, and it doesn't really make sense for porn sites to open themselves for that.

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 24 points 22 hours ago

Yay, more invasion of privacy and censorship

[–] RangerJosie@lemmy.world 14 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

What is it with western countries thinking they can bureaucracy their way through any issue.

This won't stop anything. Won't even slow it down. Just teach people how to navigate the net better.

[–] galaskorz 9 points 20 hours ago

You mean like Eastern countries that right out ban and arrest people for making porn, like erotic fiction stories? Such freedom. Such navigation. Such teaching.

[–] random_character_a@lemmy.world 13 points 22 hours ago

Does this mean Brits need to through their bank to get a wank?

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

Would this be an appropriate cultural moment to pimp FUTO ID or something similar for (I think?) legitimate human online verification?

[–] essell@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago

Looks like I picked the right time to get a girlfriend

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Remember to apply this to 4chan, UK.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago

*chan, Facebook, Reddit, imgur, xitter, Lemmy, Mastodon...

well...maybe Australia had a good idea...

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