I don't like this but don't have another solution other than the porn industry self-policing which isn't promising.
Virtually everyone gets their internet from an ISP that is regulated in the country that the user lives in. There are no technical barriers to implementing a permitting system in the United States.
Linking connections to real people is self-enforcing when there is a usage-based tax.
[1] https://www.africanews.com/2018/04/13/uganda-s-social-media-...
For example, on Discord, all your messages are scanned for such. On Cloudflare as well (for over 5 years).
For now it means they have no interest to remove such content unless coerced or affected by the public opinion.
This would destroy all content though, not just for minors.
Absurd, but it works, in North Korea (death penalty), Iran (death penalty), China (10 year prison), and also protects victims from rape, or "rape" under financial pressure.
The alternative is to let responsibility of the parents to install web filter to their kids, and let others live freely on the internet, without sharing their history or IDing them.
In reality, TikTok also has really traumatizing content, yet is engaging tons of kids and teenagers, and IDing won't solve that, but good parents can.
CP is an edge case but that's because it's almost impossible to make CP without abusing children and you could view CP as an incitement to violence -- as incitement to abuse children.
Parents should ultimately monitor what their kids do. I have a pi-hole that subscribes to lists with millions of porn domains, but I'm a technical person. Non-technical parents are helpless, and kids can easily access it at friends' houses etc. The industry has not empowered non-technical parents to do this, probably because there's a conflict of interest. Lots of parents would use such options to keep kids off social media, and like all addictive things social media wants to hook them early. (I think kids should be off social media too, but it's not quite as nuts as letting them watch fetish porn.)
Porn is different now too. It's worse in a way. Like everything else it's subjected to a pressure to get "edgier" to maximize engagement. So today's porn is loaded with simulated incest, simulated rape, extreme BDSM, etc., things that young children are not equipped to properly contextualize. (Some adults aren't either, but at least with adults you can say it's their fault not the porn's fault. The line cuts differently with children which is why children can't smoke, get tattoos, buy alcohol, get credit cards, etc.) If you want to see the consequence of young kids (mostly boys) being raised with unfettered porn access go visit any women-coded space on the Internet (like Reddit) and search for threads discussing why so many men want to choke their girlfriends. Where did this sudden choking fetish come from?
I just pushed this idea as a "solution" to see what others think, but I don't know. Again perhaps educating the parents about how to educate kids about the dangers of internet, and perhaps a web filter for kids.
This is actually one place where AI could be useful, to do dynamic local content classification (instead of a blocklist), especially if integrated directly in Android / iPhone.
Like https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121 but more dynamic.
Perhaps find a way to force Windows / Android / iOS to include such "firewall"/webfilter by default.
WG traffic is easily identifiable and able to be blocked, it's what happens in countries that ban VPNs.
Somehow we've inappropriately shifted responsibility away from parents/guardians in some areas like internet access.
In other areas, like letting your kid go outside by themselves, we've criminalized reasonable caregiver actions.
It's a wild world.
And parents aren’t in control of children 24/7. Schools tend to provide tablets and laptops everywhere, and how much trust should parents have that things like a content filter are adequate to keep children from asking objectionable pornography, hate sites teaching misogyny and so forth?
I think most would agree that there's a significant difference between a physical product that shortens the lifespan of virtually all humans who use it, and looking at images and video, no matter how extreme.
> And parents aren’t in control of children 24/7. Schools tend to provide tablets and laptops everywhere, and how much trust should parents have that things like a content filter are adequate to keep children from asking objectionable pornography, hate sites teaching misogyny and so forth?
Agreed.
Parents and guardians should definitely be aware of and concerned about what internet filters are in place at schools.
Neither of the words you used give parents any control over the situation. Legislation is the circumspect way parents are exerting control over websites that are unable to police themselves.
People have bothered with downloading low-quality Mp3s from Napster, figuring out video codex and modding game consoles to get free video games. If the need is dire enough, the users will figure it out, no matter how high the friction is.
Those with enough technical chops will figure out how to do it by themselves, those with enough intelligence will find resources on the internet, the rest will ask a friend or pay a local IT person to get it set up for them.
Schools have traditionally been ground zero for culture war in the USA, so this fits.
The "porn has been giving men violent sexual fantasies" line has existed since before I was born but it always ignores that they're the top fantasies among women too. Among my friend group the more common refrain is women who want to be choked but their boyfriends are uncomfortable doing it.
I think the real issue is that the definition of "reasonable" is subjective and often changes with time/culture/people in charge at the moment.
That's not "enough", it was extremely nice and probably less than 1% of population
Those remaining very likely have multiple advantages like advance technical knowledge, connection to powerful people in business / governments, money and legal support in case they end up on wrong side of law. There is very little benefit and lot of effort to catch these unless they are running some kind of criminal organization which adversely affects their government/regime.