[HN Gopher] Fighting the age-gated internet
___________________________________________________________________
Fighting the age-gated internet
https://archive.md/nDeuh
Author : geox
Score : 132 points
Date : 2025-12-04 13:34 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| Simulacra wrote:
| I think all of this has gone overboard, even though I agree that
| children should not be exposed to pornography, I don't know what
| to do about it because I expect parents to monitor their child's
| Internet usage, which is a losing ideal. Are there better
| alternatives?
| jmclnx wrote:
| > I don't know what to do about it
|
| 1. No smart phones for the child before the age of NN, me I say
| 18. A Smart phone makes a great High School Graduation gift.
|
| 2. Only internet access from a desktop computer with a hosts
| file that the child cannot change. That probably means no
| Microsoft Windows PC. See: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
|
| eazy-peezy
| casey2 wrote:
| >> Hmm I can't find any porn on the internet, better ask
| around
|
| > Sure Timmy I'll send you porn, but it's illegal and I'm
| taking a big risk here so you gotta do something for me, also
| you can't tell anyone
|
| You've failed to solve the porn problem and now you've
| created a larger grooming/CDM problem.
| jmclnx wrote:
| You can add porn sites to the hosts file yourself.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The point that people are making is that while
| restricting overt internet porn does remove it from sight
| of a lot of kids, it will also continue to circulate as
| "samizdat" through whatever filesharing mechanisms exist.
| When I was at school someone got busted for distributing
| BBS porn on floppy disks, no network required. Now we
| have terabyte SD cards.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Absolutely true. When I was a kid a few people got in
| trouble for drawing and circulating pixelated "porn" on
| their graphing calculators. You can't stop teenagers from
| being teenagers.
| casey2 wrote:
| hosts file isn't even the correct tool for this job. I
| don't know why this is being suggested a serious
| solution. I can add domain names and chose which IP
| address they resolve to. It can't even block websites.
|
| If I didn't know any better I would assume you are
| spreading misinformation to put children into an unsafe
| situation
| jmclnx wrote:
| Yes I know this is technically true. One could use
| iptables, but it is easier for people (users) to do this
| instead of getting iptables / pf or whatever configured.
| It is one size fits all.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| You either don't have kids, or your children are adults.
|
| It's impractical in today's world to raise children without
| access to devices like tablets and smart phones. That's like
| having a sugar-free, no TV, hand-sewn, ect, ect, household.
|
| What's more important is to know what your kids are getting
| into, making sure they are comfortable discussing what they
| see, and teaching them independent decision making skills.
|
| For example, a few years ago, my then seven-year-old
| complained to me about all of the Jesus videos that were
| popping up on Youtube. I told her to thumbs down them, and
| now Youtube no longer suggests them. She also knows that if
| other kids watch Jesus videos, that's their right and to keep
| her mouth shut.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| I'm curious, what were the "Jesus videos?"
| Retr0id wrote:
| Repurpose the IPv4 "evil bit" as an "is adult" bit.
| iamnothere wrote:
| As a culture we just have to come to accept that parents should
| be responsible for managing kids' devices, and provide them
| with the device-level tools for doing so. If a parent lets a 10
| year old hang out in a sketchy alleyway every weekend, we would
| blame them for the inevitable consequences. Why do we not blame
| them for failing to monitor what their kids are up to online?
|
| And before someone tries to bore me with anecdotes about how
| your particular kid evaded whatever restrictions you put in
| place, I think if kids put in thoughtful effort and planning to
| evade restrictions then parents are off the hook. Same as if a
| kid stages an elaborate ruse (one that would fool most parents)
| to get out of the house and drink with friends. That's not on
| you. Parents aren't prison wardens and we shouldn't ask for a
| police state to fill in parenting gaps.
|
| Making the state into the parent will affect us all, not just
| kids. I (and plenty of others) will fight to the end to
| preserve the last vestiges of the free, open internet. Overlay
| networks and even sneakernet if necessary. We're not going to
| accept authoritarian control of communications no matter how
| much politicians want it.
| seneca wrote:
| Well said. This is a social failure being exploited by shrude
| politicians to usurp more authority. Replacing parents with
| the state keeps playing out, and keeps being a horrible idea.
| Simulacra wrote:
| That's a very good point
| zug_zug wrote:
| Just because something isn't ideal doesn't mean it's worth
| making a law about. Running with scissors -- not best practice.
| Worth trying to legislate? Absolutely not.
|
| Somebody who's 17 choosing to look at porn? Not in America's
| top 1 million problems.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I don't know what to do about it
|
| Do something similar to what we do with video: make a
| government enforced voluntary rating system (that is, you use
| if you want, if you use and lie, the government hits you) with
| a standard where sites can tell their ratings to the clients.
|
| Have the parents decide if they will use the rating for
| anything.
| mhitza wrote:
| A fraction of the money poured into these mass surveillance
| systems and proposals would have gone a long way in developing
| better parental control software.
|
| If startups build parental control it carries the wrong
| incentives.
|
| Realistically what's needed for proper parental control.
|
| 1. Software that parents can install on phones, and computers
| (which comes as an upside of less lockdown on devices)
|
| 2. A way to whitelist websites and applications (particularly
| for phones).
|
| 3. A way to share, reuse and collaborate on whitelists. No
| enforcement of a central authority.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Assuming the reason for these laws is to protect children from
| pornography, you could ask, what are the specific harms from
| pornography? You could identify those harms through scientific
| study (some have been done; it appears the harms are mostly due
| to a lack of education and understanding about what's going on
| in porn) and address them (educate children to understand
| what's going on intellectually/emotionally and how to treat
| people with respect). But that would require talking to kids
| about sex, which adults are _petrified_ of. Our culture is
| puritanical, and uses fear and shame to avoid dealing with
| things like sex. It then perpetuates this fear and shame onto
| each generation, and it pervades every product and service we
| have. So we could try fighting the irrational fear and become
| less afraid of sex (and pornography would probably change
| because of it). But good luck doing that in this country.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I think we must think about what the downside of kids maybe
| being introduced to porn really. Realistically, it is pretty
| low. Given that, we shouldn't really be giving up anything to
| try and stop it. I was exposed to porn several ways pre-
| Internet. Older siblings, news stands, late night cable. If I
| wanted more, I could get it. It was simply not a problem.
|
| Maybe there is a problem for a tiny number of individuals, OK.
| A one size fits all approach like this still isn't the solution
| in these cases, though.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I was exposed to porn several ways pre-Internet. Older
| siblings, news stands, late night cable. If I wanted more, I
| could get it. It was simply not a problem.
|
| Yup. Me too.
|
| And it goes back much further. Cf. "Pictures of Lily"[0] for
| a pop culture exposition from nearly sixty years ago. The
| point being that "porn" isn't anything new, nor was it
| difficult to obtain (hence a popular song about "porn") even
| before computer networks.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-PHDR2yhxE&list=RDg-
| PHDR2yh...
|
| Edit: For those who would cite the current ubiquity of
| "hardcore" porn on the 'net, I'd say that's a difference in
| degree, not in kind. Something to consider.
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| A difference in degree can make all the difference.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If we had a way to prove age without revealing any other
| identity that could be used for tracking/profile building. I
| don't see that being supported by the tech industry though, as
| they are almost completely reliant on tracking to earn money.
| tarentel wrote:
| So it is up to me to monitor your child? I don't work in porn
| or an even remotely related field but I have to implement age
| verification now because of Texas's law. Someone explain to me
| how this is protecting any children.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Guess at some point in the future it will come out who bankrolled
| all this because multiple countries in Europe and America don't
| just roll something like this out in 8 months organically without
| someone paying off politicians to push it
| matwood wrote:
| It has nothing to do with age gating, and everything to do with
| tracking. While there may be some funding going on behind the
| scenes, governments love tracking on its own merits.
| iterance wrote:
| The fight for this kind of legislature has been ongoing for
| many years as part of a broader program that seeks to shape the
| kinds of information that can be stored, consumed, and
| propagated on the Internet. Age verification is only one branch
| of the fight, but an important one to the many who support
| government control: it is an inroad that allows governments to
| say they have a stake in who sees what.
| rkachowski wrote:
| It would be excellent to know who is pushing this and through
| what means. There is some unprecedented alignment across
| borders to restrict access and rights.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Those pesky... adults!
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| This strikes me as almost conspiratorial thinking, and it's
| reflected in the article. At one point they say KOSA is
| unpopular but.. it isn't? These laws (KOSA, OSA) enjoy broad,
| bipartisan popularity and politicians are jumping on the
| bandwagon because they want votes. It really is as simple as
| that.
|
| There's absolutely no way to counter this, or at least to round
| off the censorship power-grab this is allowing, if we don't
| admit to ourselves that people have become suspicious of the
| tech sector (us) and are reaching to clip our wings - starting
| with access to their kids.
| iamnothere wrote:
| The laws are only moderately popular in the abstract, but
| when you show people the reality and the future implications
| then popularity drops. The key is educating people about the
| dangers of this type of legislation, including dangers to
| privacy and authoritarian control over information. In the US
| especially both major parties hate each other with a passion;
| this animosity can be leveraged with proper framing.
| zug_zug wrote:
| What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have
| ever expressed interest in this?
|
| If the politicians keep voting for things their constituents
| don't (and in these cases actively push back against so hard
| that the politician are forced to withdraw the push) that
| seems like strong evidence that politicians are doing
| something with an external incentive...
|
| Politicians having bad incentives (e.g. campaign donations)
| isn't conspiracy thinking, it's a documented reality. Hell,
| we even had a supreme court judge taking a present from
| somebody who's case he was ACTIVELY OVERSEEING.
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| > What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have
| ever expressed interest in this?
|
| UK: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-
| results/daily/202...
|
| US: https://issueone.org/press/new-poll-finds-near-
| universal-pub...
|
| Aus: https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/51000-support-
| for-un...
|
| So far as I know there's nothing confounding here - people
| from across the political spectrum just seem to think it's
| a good idea to introduce age checks and to restrict
| children from accessing adult content.
| zug_zug wrote:
| That's a powerpoint of somebody really trying to push an
| agenda and has nothing to do with age verification. The
| 88% support is for "social media platforms to protect
| minors from online harms, such as the promotion of eating
| disorders, suicide, substance abuse, and sexual
| exploitation."
|
| I'm sure social media could say with 99% accuracy whether
| somebody is a minor already just based on advertising
| data and if a law prevented facebook from showing diet
| pill ads to a kid that has absolutely zero with some sort
| of government tracking bullshit.
|
| The fact that you are citing 3 studies without even
| reading them apparently really makes me suspicious of
| your motivation here.
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| I'm disappointed that you call my motivations into
| question instead of engaging me in good faith. It's not
| possible to solve a problem without being honest about
| the pertinent facts, and I think you (and the person I
| responded to) are engaging in denialism.
|
| My experiences are all in the UK but everything I've read
| and everyone I've spoken to (outside of tech circles)
| reinforces my belief that this is popular. If you
| disagree then fine but I don't think you can find any
| polling to support that.
|
| If you can then be my guest - I genuinely would like to
| see it. I'm not happy with my conclusions.
| Gormo wrote:
| This seems like an attempt to leverage something widely
| regarded as reasonable (stop kids from accessing pornographic
| content without parental oversight) as the camel's nose through
| the tent to establish widespread identity tracking on the
| internet.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I get the sentiment, but just denouncing that the given
| reason is a facade is not sufficient.
|
| It creates a divide between people that are looking for a
| solution to a problem, and people that disregard the problem
| completely. If you just ignore the actual problem and
| cynically call it a front for something else, you are just
| going to be ignored in the actual conversation. The problem
| is real and it needs a solution, suggest something better or
| be forced to stay out of the conversation.
|
| For example, if there's a lot of car accidents, and we
| suggest a speed limit, you might say that it's actually a way
| for cops and cities to control the population, and make
| everything slow, and increase city income by charging fines.
| But the problem still exists despite your cynicism, unless
| you suggest another solution for the problem, you won't be
| able to keep your precious speed freedom. Because of course
| reducing car fatalities is more important than the freedom to
| go super fast, that's not really under discussion.
| sfdlkj3jk342a wrote:
| I think it's possible that there are secretive efforts to
| destroy permissionless access to the internet, but my guess is
| that states are simply copying each other and/or global
| conditions are similar enough that they naturally come to the
| same conclusions around the same time.
|
| A somewhat analogous situation is how landlords raise rents in
| sync with each other, not because they're intentionally
| colluding to fix prices, but because nowadays it's easy to see
| average rental prices in neighborhoods, and the natural
| strategy is to set your rental prices based on that.
| mhitza wrote:
| > my guess is that states are simply copying each other
| and/or global conditions are similar enough that they
| naturally come to the same conclusions around the same time.
|
| I think that's the wrong guess. Even with chat control, in
| some previous forms, the proposals came of the back of
| lobbying. One such case was Ashton Kutcker's startup
| https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-
| start...
|
| The more recent proposals for chat control were drafted by
| non-public "high level groups", the identity of which wasn't
| revealed to the public https://mullvad.net/en/why-privacy-
| matters/going-dark
| sfdlkj3jk342a wrote:
| Do you think the main force is misplaced good intentions
| (which I assume is what drives Ashton Kutcher) or more
| sinister intentional efforts to harm the public?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Those are heavily co-mingled. Policing and intelligence
| agencies in particular view themselves as having good
| intentions which look like harm from the outside.
| mindslight wrote:
| Good intentions misplaced into efforts to control other
| people _are_ sinister intentional efforts to harm the
| public.
| mhitza wrote:
| I don't think anyone is that naive to not see the
| negative implications of the things they are proposing,
| or helping develop. They might feign ignorance, and
| excuse themselves with "following orders" but the
| majority know it's not right in principle.
|
| I tend to follow information in this space, and could
| talk about it endlessly (though it would still have
| minimal effect in the end).
|
| From the things I'm seeing right now, in my mind, all
| this clampdown on privacy is to have better control of
| the message and discussion in order to preserve the
| corrupt status quo. To give one example, many leaks and
| reports initially come in anonymous due to fear of
| repercussion from those in power. My country (Romania)
| changed the legislation a couple of years back to prevent
| people from reporting corruption anonymously (in a highly
| corrupt state). Maybe that's why Trump said he loves
| Romanians, recently, he'd like to do that at home as
| well.
|
| > more sinister intentional efforts to harm the public
|
| Until recently I wasn't the type of person that would
| entertain the idea of a shadowy organization that tries
| to puppetmaster the world. Though with the recent Epstein
| emails release that in black and white stated about
| Slovakia's 2018 government "the government will fall this
| week - as planned" (day prior to mass protests that lead
| to it falling), makes you wonder about the backroom
| politics of the western world, and why we need more
| transparency there, and less control from them.
|
| edit:
|
| And of course, any change that is put behind a "think of
| the children" message, should raise everybody's eyebrows
| to the max.
| _factor wrote:
| Just imagine a capable individual just like yourself, but
| with such a rotting core that they see the same devious
| plans you and I do, but lack the backbone/principles and
| moral/ethical fiber to prevent them from pursuing those
| ideas. Instead, they full endorse and selfishly benefit
| from them at the expense of others. With our large
| population, this individual, and many such like them are
| guaranteed to exist at all levels of the socio-economic
| ladder. Solipsism is the root of corruption continuing to
| sprout.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| Kutcher wrote a letter of support for his friend Danny
| Masterson who was convicted raping multiple women so if
| he is truly concerned about abuse of women it doesn't
| seem to apply when it involves people he knows doing it.
| When this came to light his defense was that he didn't
| think anyone but the judge was going to see the letter.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Off-topic, but actually a number of landlords raise prices in
| sync with each other because they use price-setting services
| like RealPage that intentionally try to maximize rents across
| multiple landlords. They just settled a lawsuit over this:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-realpage-
| settlement-r...
| everdrive wrote:
| Do social movements _always_ have people at the top pulling the
| strings? Is it _never_ the case that even when you can identify
| thought leaders, the movement itself is organic and broadly
| supported?
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Yeah, this is much more easily explained by the fact that a
| lot of things on the internet are damaging kids.
| mindslight wrote:
| Yes, and that thing is chiefly corporate social media.
| Which could be fixed literally overnight by parents, over a
| few weeks by school district policy, and over a few months
| with sites publishing metadata to aid client side blocking.
| Phones, the primary independent computing device for kids,
| are already locked down to the point that an owner has to
| jump through many (detectable and auditable) hoops to
| install arbitrary software.
|
| None of this requires some draconian regime where it
| becomes sites' own responsibilities to obtain and verify
| their users meatspace identities.
| tokai wrote:
| This isn't a social movement.
| everdrive wrote:
| Concern over accessibility of internet pornography is
| absolutely a social movement. I don't necessarily agree
| with some of what is being pushed, but there's a large
| constituency here.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Internet comments aren't a social movement
|
| Everything that these laws are supposedly regulating has
| always been there and we have an entire generation now that
| grew up with it. Everyone was fine just like video games were
| fine, movies were fine, racy books were fine, and the
| printing press was fine.
|
| The Internet comments make it seem like lazy parents but it's
| very convenient that the solution is to ID every single
| person on the Internet. Facebook pushed this hard with their
| real name policy and then had to back off because people
| complained about trans people being forced to use their old
| names. They've been successfully demonized so now it's time
| to push as hard as they can. It's probably not just Facebook
| but it's obviously not organic.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Internet comments aren't a social movement
|
| This seems strictly wrong. People talk online. People get
| their ideas online, and share their ideas online. Internet
| comments _alone_ are not a social movement, but they
| certainly do frequently represent social movements.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Musk in his tit for tat with Trump recently revealed huge
| numbers of the Internet comments supporting MAGA were
| foreign plants. He didn't reveal which accounts were bots
| though. All these comments supporting censorship appear
| mostly on platforms that would love to ID every person on
| their platform.
|
| Internet comments do not represent anything anymore that
| doesn't manifest in the actual world. They are excellent
| at having a few influence the many
| everdrive wrote:
| I agree with you, and probably more than it sounds. But I
| think the point you make is still too strong a case. ie,
| even if the online comments are ~90% foreign influence it
| doesn't also follow that everything is astroturfing or
| that real people do not discuss issues online.
|
| To your point though, maybe we can no longer reliably
| tell the difference, and so it'd be better to adopt your
| view as a rule of thumb.
| mindslight wrote:
| I think it's "organic" from the big tech companies looking
| to pull up the ladder behind them. These laws are straight
| up regulatory capture to make it much harder to start new
| Internet businesses, while forcing their users to divulge
| even more personal info.
|
| Google has been bugging me with Android popups _for years_
| "please add your birthday to help Google comply with the
| law". Obtaining that bit of my information isn't something
| they need to do - it's something they _want_ to do because
| every bit of personal information they scrape out of me
| makes their adtech surveillance database joins that much
| more accurate.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Plot twist: It's Ashton Kutcher.
|
| https://www.thecut.com/article/ashton-kutcher-thorn-spotligh...
| bparsons wrote:
| The Christian right has been pushing for this forever. They
| finally acquired enough political and cultural purchase to get
| this measure pushed over the line.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Protecting children is one of the four horsemen of the
| infopocalypse:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
|
| Governments are also getting more conservative recently with
| regards to domestic surveillance & social freedoms. In this
| regard, it's not anyone new, it's just the usual suspects: the
| same people who fund conservative media, the prison industrial
| complex, etc.
| RunSet wrote:
| > The SESTA-FOSTA law is a combination of two bills: the Stop
| Enabling Sex Traffickers Act; and the Fight Online Sex
| Trafficking Act. It passed Congress in March, and President
| Donald Trump signed it into law in April.
|
| > ...
|
| > The biggest companies say they can manage the risks. Match
| Group--owner of Match.com, Tinder, Ok Cupid and Plenty of Fish
| --says any potential legal issues give "huge advantages" to
| those with enough size to comply. "We are able to have a big
| legal team, a big customer care team," Chief Executive Mandy
| Ginsberg said.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-law-targets-sex-trafficking...
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| I consider myself lucky to have grown up before the internet, but
| after local BBS' were a thing. My parents had absolutely no idea
| what went on in those systems, and I found the freedom
| incredible. Being able to explore and spread my wings a bit was a
| huge part of my childhood and teen years, and it wouldn't have
| been possible if my parents were hovering over my shoulder, or if
| I were unable to make an account because I wasn't 18.
|
| That said, I was mostly dealing with griefers in Trade Wars or
| LoRD, and the worst thing I could find locally was GIFs of women
| in bikinis (and waiting for them to download was an excellent way
| to learn patience). I didn't have to worry so much about the
| threats that exist today online.
|
| I am so grateful that I grew up when I did and got to experience
| that.
| debo_ wrote:
| I remember winning a 10-kill LORD game on a local BBS. It took
| ages of me staying up until midnight to kill all the
| resurrected players after the daily reset. I had only one real
| competitor on that server and he gave up after I slew the
| dragon twice in one week (due to great luck.)
| nkrisc wrote:
| And when I was a kid some of my peers were watching Al Queda
| execution videos.
|
| I don't know what the solution is, but I do not think kids
| should have unrestricted access to the internet, especially if
| their parents can't/won't set limits.
| iamnothere wrote:
| If they won't set limits that's an issue with the parents,
| not the internet.
|
| If dad leaves the liquor cabinet unlocked the solution isn't
| to ban alcohol.
|
| A free and open internet is non negotiable.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Everything is negotiable. We collectively choose where to
| draw all the arbitrary lines you draw. Free and open
| internet is as arbitrary as a completely locked-down
| internet.
| iamnothere wrote:
| We, the people who build and operate the internet as well
| as the tech that enables it, collectively choose to
| maintain a free and open internet for the benefit of all
| free people.
|
| _Maybe_ with enough effort you can force the internet to
| fracture into a centralized TV-style internet and a
| "shadow" free internet, but you'll probably kill the
| economy in the process. Regardless, you'll never stamp
| out those of us who will maintain the free internet over
| whatever channels we can find.
| imglorp wrote:
| If we give up the ability to negotiate, then we would not
| be able to have this conversation in the future. As we
| have seen many times, all over the world, authoritarian
| regimes will absolutely suppress dissent and chill speech
| if they have the tools. Today maybe it's adult content.
| They're already attacking the press and anyone critical
| about the administration: they keep trying to get the
| corporations to fire their comedians and rein in their
| reporters. So this isn't slippery slope. We're there and
| nearing the bottom.
| quavan wrote:
| The day we have an epidemic of children and teens abusing
| alcohol to the point of it turning into a national
| healthcare emergency, you will find that stricter control
| of alcohol will certainly be put in place.
|
| We are at that point now with children having unrestricted
| access to online content that isn't age appropriate, as
| well as being influenced by insane weirdos on TikTok and
| the like at an age where they are particularly
| impressionable.
| stvltvs wrote:
| Isn't that day today?
|
| The CDC says 4,000 underage drinkers die in the US every
| year. Maybe we could reduce that with stricter controls,
| but at what point does that become too burdensome to the
| rights of legal drinkers?
|
| It's even harder to get the balance right when it comes
| to free speech issues like online pornography.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Alcohol _is_ banned for minors so that argument doesn 't
| work.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Kids also cannot sign up for internet service, or pay for
| it. So in both cases, we're talking about society gating
| access to something, adults obtaining that product
| legally and bringing it into their home.
|
| The question, then, is who is responsible for the
| children in the household? I've always answered this
| exactly one way: the parents. Power and responsibility
| must go together, so if the parents are responsible, then
| the parents must have the power. Parents have been held
| legally responsible for the crimes of their children, and
| given the coverage of parents being arrested for letting
| their kids go on a walk across town, I'd say this sets up
| incentives pretty well.
|
| But all of that is a sideshow; a narrative. What we
| actually have is a massive swing towards authoritarianism
| globally, largely fueled by in increase in the internet
| allowing for unprecedented surveillance overreach, and
| the folks trying to seize control of those reins are
| using children seeing porn as a way to seem benevolent to
| garner support from folks that don't understand what's
| actually happening. Huge swathes have been duped into
| believing the narrative and fighting for age-gating in
| the worst possible ways, and that's because they're
| missing the larger pattern.
|
| It's manufactured consent.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Kids can access the internet in all kinds of places
| outside the home, and outside the purview of their
| parents supervision. Schools, libraries, friend's houses,
| public wifi anywhere.
|
| You may be right about the authoritarianism; it's a
| tendency of our species and makes it all the more
| remarkable that Western freedoms have lasted this long. I
| think, though, that it's more likely simple greed. The
| giant tech companies, dependent on ad revenue because
| nobody would actually pay for what they are offering,
| must be able to track and profile people.
|
| The "protect kids from porn" lobby has always been
| around, it has nothing to do with surveillance or the
| internet. These people would be picketing a bookstore
| that sold _Hustler_ magazine back in the 1970s, and
| demanding that customers be made to prove their age.
| cocoto wrote:
| > Kids can access the internet in all kinds of places
| outside the home, and outside the purview of their
| parents supervision. Schools, libraries, friend's houses,
| public wifi anywhere.
|
| Then these places should make sure kids are not doing
| wrong things on the web on their machines. Just like a
| shop should make sure to not sell alcohol to kids. A
| library should have some kind of web filter anyway to at
| least block porn.
| bityard wrote:
| They meant banning alcohol altogether. A.k.a.
| prohibition.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| How does a parent check what the child does on the way to
| school or meeting friends in a shopping mall.
|
| Public wifi and smart phones chngaes what can be done and
| what needs to be done.
| iamnothere wrote:
| How does a parent check that a friend isn't passing pills
| to them in the back of the bus? How are they checking
| that they don't shoplift when out on their own? This is
| not an argument.
|
| Do your best as a parent and that is enough. Perfection
| is not possible or even desired; kids do have a degree of
| agency, and if they want to break the rules they are
| going to do it! And breaking some rules (ideally in a
| safe-ish way) is one way that we learn how to be
| independent from parents as we mature.
| seneca wrote:
| "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just
| because a baby can't chew it." - Heinlein
|
| If you hand power to the state every time people fail to
| properly handle their responsibilities, you end up in a
| dictatorship. It is a parent's responsibility to keep their
| kids away from the dark corners of the internet. Thoughtful
| regulation would create tools to allow them to do that
| easily, not hand parenting over to governments.
| mindslight wrote:
| Where are those former peers now? You reference this like
| their life trajectory must have been irreparably harmed by
| it. Are they in prison? Were they killed while committing
| violent crime? Are they on disability from being permanently
| emotionally crippled? Or what?
| birthdaywizard wrote:
| A little tangential since this is more about gating white
| supremacist content than violence or sex, but I was on
| 4chan when it was being infiltrated by genuine white
| supremacist organizations and Russians that talked about
| how manly Assad was to influence teenagers interested in
| anime. I had people in real life to talk to about these
| things so I narrowly escaped the influence. Looking at the
| current state of the US, not everyone did. That being said,
| despite my hope that older people would be less prone to
| such influence, it doesn't always seem to be the case.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| It was less commercial then. It was not as much "occupied" by
| intermediaries who think the internet exists for their
| commercial gain and anyone who uses it owes them something
|
| I think it is amusing how these commercial third party
| intermediaries today are trying to frame things like "chat
| control" and "age restrictions" as attacks on internet users'
| rights rather than attacks on their intermediation "business
| model"
|
| Generally, there is no age restriction on subscribing to
| internet service. However third party intermediaries that have
| now occupied seemingly every corner of the web, so-called
| "tech" companies, want everyone to believe that intermediaries
| _are_ the internet (as opposed to middlemen who seek to surveil
| as many internet subscribers as they can)
|
| I am glad I grew up before the internet so that I understand
| and appreciate the only service that matters is _internet
| service_. People today take internet service for granted
| perhaps but I can remember when it was a new frontier
|
| With internet service, there were so many possibilities. Today,
| so-called "tech" companies portray internet service as a given,
| apparently useless on its own,^1 whilst they advertise
| themselves as offering "services" (usually for free, a Trojan
| Horse for commercial surveillance). They utilise bandwidth paid
| for by the internet subscriber to transfer encrypted
| surveillance data to themselves
|
| 1. For example, when Mozilla claims something like without an
| online advertising "ecosystem" the internet would be worthless.
| The greed and self-entitlement behind this framing is both
| absurd and hilarious
| holmesworcester wrote:
| I think it's important to not throw babies out with bathwater
| here.
|
| One can disagree with Mozilla and think advertising sucks,
| and use tools to block it or FOSS products that don't force
| it on us, while also seeing how e2ee encryption bans ("chat
| control") and age verification rules are a restriction of
| _both_ the rights of service providers _and_ the rights of
| users.
|
| Another way to put it is, just because a regulation is a
| restriction of the rights of a service provider does not mean
| it isn't _also_ a restriction of the rights of a user.
|
| The former does not make the latter true, but in some cases
| both are true.
|
| I'd also add that if we can't stop bad laws that restrict the
| rights of (and piss off) _both_ service providers _and_ users
| , we have no hope of stopping similarly bad laws that _only_
| restrict the rights of users.
|
| (Service providers, even small ones if they take the time to
| speak with their member of Congress, can be very credible,
| sympathetic, and persuasive stakeholders. When we can fight
| on the same side--realizing that sometimes we will fight on
| opposite sides--it's better for user rights that we do so.
| One of the tragedies of the left and parts of the right in
| the Trump era is that they see any regulation that hurts Big
| Tech as a win, even if it also hurts user rights. User rights
| are safer if we can distinguish between regs that hurt Big
| Tech _and_ users from regs that don 't hurt users.)
| holmesworcester wrote:
| Same, so much so!
|
| My feelings of freedom in that era, as a teen in a small 90s US
| city, were what fueled me to co-found one of the organizations
| (Fight for the Future) cited in the article!
|
| (No longer in the trenches, just on the board, deserve zero
| direct credit for any of this work--it's all them!)
| ineptech wrote:
| I feel like we've always been living on borrowed time, due to
| the historical accident of the internet being built by
| academics and public institution employees. If internet
| protocols had been built by for-profits, HTTP requests would
| include credit card # as a mandatory header.
| ok123456 wrote:
| People were talking about micropayments for content in the
| early '90s. The first digital currency proposals were made
| with exactly this use case in mind. Ironically, the protocol
| that finally stuck the landing is terrible at handling this
| exact situation.
| fullstop wrote:
| Ha, I remember finding the adult section of the file uploads.
| It took fourteen year old me thirty minutes to download one
| jpeg of boobs.
|
| LoRD was fantastic, as were the turn based games that other
| people would dial in to take part of. It was such a different
| era, but we made it work by setting time limits and
| cooperating.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Born just in time to explore GIFs of women in bikinis. Born too
| early to explore trans porn and be confused about sexuality by
| age 13.
|
| That's a sweetspot if you ask me.
| benbojangles wrote:
| Internet Gatekeeping, ID Cards, New Facial Recognition Powers,
| Secret government talks have identified a huge problem, planned
| all this during the covid years is my guess. Something is going
| down and this is their safest bet i reckon. Possibly to do with
| unregistered recent inhabitants and improving the capability to
| identify them. That movie Scarface in the first 25 minutes tells
| you something.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| What does the movie Scarface have to say about it?
| benbojangles wrote:
| https://www.realclearhistory.com/2017/04/01/the_migrant_cris.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariel_boatlift
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/moviequestions/comments/133gbzl/in_.
| ..
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/we-talked-to-migrants-
| about-...
|
| From what i can gather, there was some confusion as to why
| some nations which clearly and obviously have very high
| crime/fraud/corruption statistics yet at the same time have
| incredibly low prison/prisoner statistics
| (https://www.statista.com/statistics/262961/countries-with-
| th...) and the governments couldn't figure it out or
| overlooked it. It turns out that those nations just kick out
| the trouble and the trouble arrives at other shores, quickly
| setting up black market trade routes, money laundering shops,
| heavy violence, and a complete disregard for laws.
| profstasiak wrote:
| nice conspiracy thinking. I for one can't wait for ID confirmed
| social media, where I don't have to read anything produced by
| russian bots
| pessimizer wrote:
| Corporations and center-left/center-right liberal governments
| support now and have always supported mass immigration because
| it lowers wages. Nobody especially cares about identifying
| them, the reason they flooded in recently (over the past couple
| decades) is because they were deliberately let in through
| written policies. They did this despite public objections. In
| the US, we know exactly who they are; we issue illegal
| immigrants special IDs and business licenses. They get bank
| loans; they're homeowners. They get in-state tuition at
| colleges.
|
| Starmer is currently using anti-immigrant sentiment to push his
| digital IDs, but that's because he is a cynic. He does whatever
| he needs to do to satisfy his bosses.
|
| > That movie Scarface in the first 25 minutes tells you
| something.
|
| It tells you that the US puts nations under siege for decades
| for committing the crime of self-determination, then lets in
| with absolutely no obstacles all of the economically destroyed
| and desperate, the extremely right wing, and the participants
| in CIA-financed death squads who flee, then uses them as a
| voting block (and a resource) to support the continuation and
| escalation of those sieges.
|
| edit: immigrants commit less crime in the US than natives.
| Their children commit more crime, because they rise to the
| level of natives at their socioeconomic bracket.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Social media is more damaging to kids than porn
| earlyreturns wrote:
| Porn is a special subset of social media.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Damaging in different ways. I'm not sure you can say one is
| worse.
|
| Sure most kids can look at naked people and not be too
| affected, we all have the same parts. But beyond that, a lot of
| really harmful behavior is depicted in some porn and kids are
| not really mature enough to understand that in real healthy
| relationships people don't actually have sex like that.
|
| Both porn and social media can be addictive and unhealthy if
| they become a substitute for interacting with real people. And
| this also happens with adults not just kids.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| Facebook is over 20 years old and has never enforced its
| minimum age (13 years.)
|
| I, for one, would have started with legal threats and financial
| penalties long ago. But it just won't happen. So I'm fine with
| technical solutions.
|
| Facebook is able to sell you ads based on your favorite shoe
| lace colour. They ban terrorists, bots, porn and people named
| "Mark Zuckerberg" all the time. Noone can claim it's too hard
| for them to ban minors under 13.
| Noaidi wrote:
| Google is suddenly asking to verify my age on an account I have
| used for five years linked to my credit card. This is about
| surveillance of all of us, not "protecting kids".
| sneak wrote:
| It's not age-gated. It's ID-required.
| tokai wrote:
| With how harshly HN users have been going at UK and the EU, I was
| surprised seeing that not only is the mass surveillance build out
| better in the US, but also the user verification.
| Bender wrote:
| I stand by my repeated statements of how this could have been
| solved simply using an RTA header [1] on the server side and
| require the most common user agents to look for that header
| putting the onus on parents where it currently legally resides.
| It's not perfect, nothing is nor ever will be but using the
| header solution is entirely private, does not store or leak data
| and puts the decision into the device owners rather than creating
| perverse incentives to track everyone. It may actually protect
| most small children whereas today teens quickly find a work-
| around and then teach smaller children how to work around these
| centralized gate-keepers. The current _solutions_ are just about
| tracking people by real identity and incentivizing teens to
| commit identity crimes.
|
| [1] - https://www.rtalabel.org/page.php
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Correct.
|
| None of these laws are _actually_ about protecting children.
| That 's not the real goal. The real goal is the complete
| elimination of anonymity on the web, where both private
| companies and the state can keep tabs on everything you do.
|
| Not being able to be at least pseudo-anonymous has a real
| chilling effect on speech and expression. Even if there are
| laws in place protecting such rights, people will self-censor
| when knowing they are being watched.
|
| It's how freedom of speech and expression dies without actually
| scratching that part off of the bill of rights.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It's a mix. I'm sure there are some people really trying to
| protect kids. There are other people that just want all porn
| off the Internet. And there are bad actors that want total
| surveillance. And they are all on the same side of this
| issue.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > I'm sure there are some people really trying to protect
| kids.
|
| yes, I believe the term for them is "useful idiots"
| robot-wrangler wrote:
| Not idiots necessarily, sometimes just long-time
| observers who have finally become cynical. People that
| were pro-guns for decades may watch several years of
| failure to adopt basic and uncontroversial gun-control
| regulation, then eventually become anti-gun. People that
| were in favor of regulating it once may suddenly become
| fearful for their safety, and want no regulations at all
| in case that regulation puts them out in the cold. Since
| both PR campaigns and any action on policy tends to cater
| to extremes, there's always pressure that is shrinking
| the middle
| tehjoker wrote:
| I think in the past few years we have seen how much kids
| are actually valued. Gazan kids can just be killed without
| a single worry. All kids on earth were foot soldiers for
| "herd immunity" (never achieved) and used as a vector to
| infect the elderly to kill them off faster.
|
| There are some people that care about kids, but at this
| point I have become very cynical about the use of children
| in politics. The United States won't even sign on to the UN
| Declaration of the Rights of the Child which would give
| them the right to food, education, healthcare, etc.
|
| Children are perfect because they can't advocate for
| themselves and so have no independent voice, but everyone
| is supposed to respect them except when convenient. A
| perfect foil.
| reactordev wrote:
| The goal was to put _Company A_ in between you and the web.
| Collecting data and selling it for profit. It's never about
| what they say it's about. Lobbyists have bought every aspect.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I think you're right. Surveillance power is nearly a side
| effect of the personal enrichment.
| TZubiri wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46154208
| alex1138 wrote:
| Youtube has been repeatedly told about videos that are abusive
| towards children and they do nothing about it. They're not
| interested in effective solutions
| Bender wrote:
| _Youtube has been repeatedly told about videos that are
| abusive towards children and they do nothing about it. They
| 're not interested in effective solutions_
|
| Youtube is user-generated content which is precisely why I
| would prefer they add an RTA header. Random people uploading
| videos can claim to be kid friendly when they are not. Take
| that responsibility away from the uploaders and away from
| Youtube and hand it to the parents. Less work, liability _and
| cost_ for Youtube should be a nifty incentive at the risk of
| blocking some advertising to children which is another loaded
| topic all together.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Take that responsibility away from the uploaders and away
| from Youtube and hand it to the parents.
|
| The system described still requires action by the
| webmaster. Their options are: deny the entire site to those
| sending an RTA header; evaluate the content themselves; or
| trust the uploader. (Or a combination: have uploaders opt-
| in to evaluation for a fee, with the content denied to kids
| by default.)
| oersted wrote:
| I mean they have invested a ton into their kid-friendly mode
| and there have been quite a number of "adpocalips" where ad
| revenue for many content creators was dramatically slashed
| due to YouTube's over-zealous moderation.
|
| It is a serious business concern, there are occasional panics
| triggered by consumers complaining that a brand ad is shown
| next to and benefits from the attention of some distasteful
| content, and they start to bleed important advertisers on
| mass. YouTube then proceeds to get defensive and demonetizes
| (removes all ads from) or tags as adult-only any video that
| may be concerning, where avoiding false negatives takes much
| more precedence over avoiding false positives.
|
| Of course this is not directly tied to protecting children,
| but this incentive structure is partly aligned and it is a
| strong one.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I can't believe in 2025, nearly 2026, that anyone would
| seriously suggest a _header_ as a valid way of doing anything
| like this. Headers can be spoofed, modified along the way, or
| flat out ignored. DNT header is the obvious go to example here.
|
| An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for
| all traffic on the network that the parental units never even
| know about. I'd venture there would be plenty of YT, TikTok,
| Discord threads, etc that would provide a step-by-step set of
| instructions to do it. Probably just point to an image to
| download to copy to your SD and voila.
| Bender wrote:
| DNT is a client header that failed to get traction and never
| did anything useful. RTA is a server header and small
| children will not be doing this for the most part and parents
| can of course disable parental controls assuming one day they
| are enabled by default for child accounts. Like I said, it's
| not perfect. Teens can of course bypass this a million
| different ways. For every 100 million dollars a company
| spends to lock teens out of something is just an extra 5
| lines of python or 15 seconds of their time on AI _if that_.
| Currently many teens watch pirated movies and porn _together_
| in VR and assorted games that allow placing a media player
| _in G-rated world building games_.
|
| It's probably worth noting that if teens can not view porn,
| they will likely produce porn making an entirely new tax free
| underground market on Tor or other networks.
|
| This is just for keeping small children out. Nobody in the
| history or future of earth have ever or will ever locked
| teens out of a thing. Archive this comment so we can review
| it at a later time.
| iamnothere wrote:
| This would require SSL interception, which requires a custom
| certificate on the end device.
|
| If your kid can figure out how to install a custom
| certificate on their device and MITM SSL to evade filters,
| (a) you never secured the device (b) you already lost long
| ago and (c) let's get that kid a job or a scholarship.
| dylan604 wrote:
| how many of those of us reading this right now would have
| been able to do this? how many of us reading this right now
| had parents that would had a clue about any of this to
| question it?
| iamnothere wrote:
| True hacker kids will figure it out no matter what. If
| the phone is restricted they will jailbreak it or beg an
| old one from a friend. If the network is locked down they
| will crack the password for the neighbor's wifi. If the
| clearnet is locked down due to authoritarian laws, they
| will end up on incredibly sketchy sites on the dark web.
| If you block all escape outlets they will do really
| stupid things in nihilistic protest like huff cans of
| whipped cream or scam money from crypto. The power of
| bored youth springs eternal.
| TZubiri wrote:
| > An aspiring teen could set up an RPi
|
| If circumventing a measure requires setting up a RPi and
| modifying headers, I would call it widely successful, that
| would be less than a thousandth of kids.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Every single discussion I have with folks on this seemingly goes
| like this:
|
| "Does the child pay for internet access?"
|
| "No, but they have a device that can access the internet!"
|
| "Oh, so the child bought the device and paid the bill?"
|
| "No, the parents do!"
|
| "Ah, so would you say it's the parent's responsibility to monitor
| their children's internet usage since they gave them a network-
| connected device?"
|
| "You obviously don't want to protect kids!"
|
| Look, I do want to protect kids. I really do, but I also am sick
| and tired of bad actors using "BuT tHe ChIlDrEn" to recruit
| idiots and -phobes in a quest to make the entire planet and all
| of its spaces magically safe for children of all ages - at the
| expense of the superior number of adults who need our own spaces
| devoid of kids for community, for socialization, for being our
| full, human selves.
|
| The internet already has an age gate, and it's called "the adults
| paying the damn bills". Those adults are responsible for making
| internet access safe for kids, not _the entire digital planet_
| dropping what it's doing to make every single private space safe
| for kids to access without parental supervision. Bring back
| curated services like Prodigy and Compuserve, or just don't give
| kids internet access until they're ready for it.
|
| Most of humanity grew up just fine without regular internet
| access as children, and there's no reason whatsoever we have to
| foist net-connected terminals onto kids of any age. That's
| _parental choice_ , and I refuse to be punished because of
| someone else's bad parenting.
| iamnothere wrote:
| > Bring back curated services like Prodigy and Compuserve, or
| just don't give kids internet access until they're ready for
| it.
|
| This comment should be highlighted on a forum like this. There
| is absolutely a business opportunity here, and it would double
| as a public service. You might even be able to get some grants
| for it!
| TZubiri wrote:
| "You've read your last free article."
|
| How ironic. Age-gating is immoral, but pay-gating is fine.
| torified wrote:
| As a child I had unlimited time to work out how to access stuff
| that interested me, a lot of which was forbidden in some way,
| because that's the most interesting stuff!
|
| In the process I learned about computers and eventually got a
| modem to access BBSes. It was exhilarating! I would have spent
| any amount of effort and time to access it.
|
| I basically attribute my entire career to accessing stuff the
| puritans would have tried to prevent me from accessing.
|
| Also, almost all of the porn I have came from private trackers.
|
| I very much doubt they will be concerned with any of these rules.
| Things will just move more underground if that happens. And the
| more underground you go, the more unsavory stuff you might find.
|
| But we all know this isn't actually about protecting children.
|
| In a way, I hope that it ends up being a good thing because the
| whole clearnet should probably be nuked from orbit.
|
| Us nerds can come up with something better. Federated, encrypted,
| anonymous and unblockable. It's just the spam problem that is the
| hard thing to solve. Maybe reputation with proof of work could
| work.
|
| I'll happily leave the normies to their milquetoast, corporate,
| manipulated existence.
| fragmede wrote:
| "isn't actually".
|
| It's dual use. It _is_ about protecting children, but also
| along the way these other properties happen to come along.
| Thing is, with enough cryptography, we could get a way that
| this would work, but it 's too complicated, which results in
| you being right after all.
| wagwang wrote:
| PLEASE give me an age gated, geofenced internet. I would pay for
| such a service.
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