The amount of adult content creators using YouTube as soft advertising has exploded too. I only subscribe to tech/gaming/etc. channels and my feed is filled with this content. They use services like linktree to add one hop to obfuscate their channels from the 'adult' (pornography) content they have on other platforms.
I'm surprised at the lack of care for children in commentary around social media bans, the UK's online safety act blocking discord/porn/etc without proof of age, and sexually violent video games being removed from stores due to payment processors.
If we see a child bullied in school, we don't say the parents of the victim are not doing enough parenting. If an adult flashes or cat calls a child in the street, we don't blame the child's parents for not doing enough parenting.
Why is it when it comes to social media/pornography/sexually violent games (that would not have received a rating if sold in stores 10 years ago) everyone is up in arms that things are going too far. All you see is conspiracy theory nonsense at how the state wants to mind control us.
Apple tried to fix some of this at the client end with CSAM scanning and automatic dick pic blurring but had to roll some of this back due to the uproar and accusations on spying etc.
We no longer live in a high trust society and children are paying the price for it, as well as adults.
I don't want my phone scanned or to be denied access to adult discord channels or have to submit an ID to visit "adult" content like home-brewing beer subreddits. But now that's the price I am having to pay because no one wants to be responsible. Especially the companies making money off of children.
But what are we supposed to do instead when everything has been shot down previously? The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it.
> But now that's the price I am having to pay because no one wants to be responsible. Especially the companies making money off of children.
> But what are we supposed to do instead when everything has been shot down previously?
What would "being responsible" have looked like, prior to these pushes?
> If we see a child bullied in school, we don't say the parents of the victim are not doing enough parenting. If an adult flashes or cat calls a child in the street, we don't blame the child's parents for not doing enough parenting.
Perhaps not, but we also don't abolish schools or ban kids from going outside, do we?
> The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it.
What does this mean, exactly? And what sort of source do you have?
> I'm surprised at the lack of care for children in commentary around social media bans
I think you're misunderstanding the pushback. I think most people are perfectly agreed that yeah, children shouldn't be exposed to some things until a certain age. The problem is the question of how we do that without utterly destroying privacy for everyone else too? If the answer is "we can't", then it might be we have to look at ways to deal with our children being exposed to those things - either, you know, don't let your kids on the parts of the Internet you don't agree with, or teach them the right morals and ethics so they learn to recognize and avoid those areas themselves.
How about phones and computers themselves can be configured as belonging to children, and services/platforms being required to respect rules when a device tells them a child is accessing their services?
In terms of YouTube all I want as a parent is (a) to ban Shorts from my kids accounts (b) be able to see a list of what they're watching. I want this respected on the app and website.
Good platforms have decent parental controls. Bad platforms don't. YouTube is just awful in that regard. Which is a shame, because there's a tone of good stuff to watch on YouTube. But it's on them to fix their platform.
> Perhaps not, but we also don't abolish schools or ban kids from going outside, do we?
No but we heavily regulate schools and the behaviour of people at them. Which is more akin to what we are doing with these laws rather than just saying it's the parents fault their child is groomed or exposed to adult content without their consent.
> What does this mean, exactly? And what sort of source do you have?
It means more children are victims of sexual abuse than before, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.
> The problem is the question of how we do that without utterly destroying privacy for everyone else too? If the answer is "we can't", then it might be we have to look at ways to deal with our children being exposed to those things - either, you know, don't let your kids on the parts of the Internet you don't agree with, or teach them the right morals and ethics so they learn to recognize and avoid those areas themselves.
"It's the parents fault". My entire point here is that clearly parents are not equipped to police their own children's use of the Internet 24x7. Social media companies are doing a a bad job of it, because they want engagement and clicks not reducing usage and blocking content.
Companies have tried implementing this on the client, for example Apple and CSAM scanning, and had to roll it back because of 'privacy' concerns.
And now this is what we have to deal with. No one wants to do anything about it because of 'privacy' and yet children are still being exposed to harm.
To be clear: I don't want these laws, I don't want my life scanned, I don't want to have to submit IDs, but as a society we have obviously dropped the ball on this and now we're screwed. There are implementations that retain privacy like buying single use codes from shops in person that can be used to prove you are 18+ for online services.
Or having tokens that you can get attested/signed from a government portal that you can give back to services to prove you are 18+. That can also be designed to retain 100% privacy. (Assuming the government doesn't have access to these services through a back channel, and assuming these one use tokens are not saved by the service provider you are wanting to use.)
Personally I think blocking all kids from social media is probably one solution that doesn't get adults complaining about privacy. Unfortunately social media companies make an absolute fortune from content aimed at children so they are obviously unhappy with this.
> No but we heavily regulate schools and the behaviour of people at them. Which is more akin to what we are doing with these laws rather than just saying it's the parents fault their child is groomed or exposed to adult content without their consent.
This is not how I see it. These laws are more like what I suggested. The equivalent of that regulation in the case of the Internet would be simply not allowing whatever behavior you disagree with from social media companies and the like.
> It means more children are victims of sexual abuse than before, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.
Can you link some source on this?
> My entire point here is that clearly parents are not equipped to police their own children's use of the Internet 24x7
Neither can they "police" their child's life 24/7. Nor do have to to prevent their kids from falling into various holes out there. Take, for example, drugs and alcohol. We've, more or less, arrived at a reasonable system for keeping these out of the hands of children (most of the time) - but we also accept that, due to this system not being 100% fool-proof (and indeed that such a system could not possibly exist), sometimes kids are going to get access to drugs and alcohol. And yet, most parents (at least, that I know) would agree that that doesn't mean your kid is going to turn out to be an addict or whatnot.
My point is, that with sane regulation - that doesn't inherently erode privacy for everyone all over the world, and gives even more control to (Western) governments and companies - and parents doing their jobs, we can minimize the harm done by social media. We can't eliminate it entirely, but that's the price we pay.
(I question how much actual harm is done by social media, but that's another discussion)
>The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it.
Children are being groomed by high-profile paedophiles and trafficked to powerful people with no consequence, and you want to give those people more control over the internet?
You're both egregiously wrong. The vast majority of victims of grooming are victimized by people they know and trust, mostly family and authority figures.
Right. And, just to be clear, "authority figures" means people who are in a personally relevant position of authority, like a teacher, police officer, or priest - not more distant authorities like a politician or wealthy person.
He is not saying that most children are groomed by the these people. He is saying that they are doing that, we know and nothing happens because they are too powerful. So giving them more power is not a good thing.
> All you see is conspiracy theory nonsense at how the state wants to mind control us.
The online safety act is much more than a porn ID law. Look at this stuff about controlling public discourse. Even if you trust a Labour government with this power you might not trust a future Reform one.
"This clause enables the Secretary of State to give OFCOM directions in circumstances where they consider there is a threat to the health or safety of the public, or to national security.
This includes directing OFCOM to prioritise action to respond to a specific threat when exercising its media literacy functions and to require specified service providers, or providers of regulated services generally, to publicly report on what steps it is taking to respond to that threat.
For example, the Secretary of State could issue a direction during a pandemic to require OFCOM to: give priority to ensuring that health misinformation and disinformation is effectively tackled when exercising its media literacy function; and to require service providers to report on the action they are taking to address this issue." - Explanatory Notes relate to the Online Safety Bill as brought from the House of Commons on 18 January 2023; Clause 156 - Section (8), available https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/49377/documents/273...
People assume it's pressure and not the payment processors looking at what people are complaining about and independently deciding it is too risky.
These are the same payment processors that stopped allowing payments to porn sites due to the epidemic of 'revenge porn'. I would argue that was a net benefit to society as now these sites only allow 'verified' uploads.
I would strongly argue that a game that's only purpose is to seek enjoyment from the forceable rape of your family members is no 100% squarely in the 'degenerate' camp. Fictional media or not.
I strongly suggest that you spend a couple minutes reading what that word means and where it comes from before you continue to use it. It may say something about you to others that you would really rather not have them believe about your beliefs.
Again, where it comes from is an important part of this. You are cherry picking the most extreme example you can think of while using a word specifically implying genetic inferiority.
You are using that term when talking about an issue that disproportionately targets marginalized groups and victims of traumatic assault.
There is one very specific, well known group in history who would take your side on this issue and use the same terminology. You know who they are.
No, I am using the word as defined in the dictionary. Take your pearl clutching eugenics tosh somewhere else.
A video game whose purpose is to take enjoyment (and let's be hoenst, sexual gratification) from rape and sexual assault media is morally reprehensible.
> You are using that term when talking about an issue that disproportionately targets marginalized groups and victims of traumatic assault.
No, I am talking about people who enjoy rape media.
If you are saying this is in effect targeting marginalized groups then you are saying these groups enjoy rape media at a higher rate to the wider public. I am sure that's not what you're trying to say, but that's how the argument is sounding from reasonable people who think games that promote rape should be banned.
Stop hiding disgusting behaviour behind "marginalized groups". It won't do anything good for them.
This is the exact system I suggested to a friend. I don't mind having to 'prove' my age, but I do not really want a third party to have my identifiable information nor do I really want the Government knowing what fetishes I may or may not have.
For a digital only solution, I think the best system would be some form of public-private key attestation:
The government advertises their public keys for 18+ verification.
A website generates a unique token - this token is then taken by the user and submitted to the government receiving a signed attestation. This can then be given back to the website to prove the user is 18. It only has to be done once per profile and no information is shared between the Government and the website on who is who.
Unless of course the token is saved by both the website and government in some forever database and then a lookup is done.
Another solution could be a timed/signed token produced by the government that has no input from the website. But this still has the downside that this could just be saved by both parties and in future you could identified if both sides compare data.
I must admit the amount of pornography in different forms is now apparently everywhere on social media. Including social media I thought was "safe":
I see videos that I think are overtly sexual in nature on YouTube, even if the video is something supposedly "innocent". If you click through to their profiles there is an inevitable link to 18+ content most of the time. I am subscribed to only tech/film/gaming channels on youtube and this content is now always put into my feed. I probably have cursed myself by checking these people's profiles after the fact.
You are right though that by bandwidth, streaming services including Netflix make up the majority of data over the Internet and it is not pornographic/dangerous for children at all.
> I probably have cursed myself by checking these people's profiles after the fact
I think you really did. I don't watch much YouTube and don't use social media beside Instagram—which I mostly use for messaging friends and not exchanging photos—but I don't see a lot of erotic content on the mainstream platforms.
I wouldn't call it Erotic. It's hard to describe but you just know that it's somehow sexualised. I would think that somehow maybe I am a crazy prude but these profiles then do link to adult content (from their youtube via link aggregators, which is definitely not an 'adult content' platform). I think it's some form of cross platform advertising while skirting around the 'no adult content' rules of youtube.
There's also a reported epidemic of women being choked during sex unprovoked, and who certainly don't want it. Unfortunately these laws are being made from things happening in the real world that get traction.
Is the law a good way to stop this? I don't know. The main tool of governance for our elected leaders are laws, and so that's what they do.
I have no reason to believe pornography caused that. If anything, I'm more quick to assume puritan values caused that.
We don't teach people about consent and sex. We tell them stupid things like "don't have sex, it's evil" and then send them off. And then stupid things ensue.
I think this is an inaccurate description of what has been happening: people have criticised the government heavily for being extremely harsh on people "just making tweets". A woman was sentenced to nearly three years in jail for posting a message online that said "set fire to the hotels for all I care" (paraphrased).
These riots are spontaneous and "organised" via people getting riled up online. There isn't a central organisation that people see as leading these anti-migrant riots/attacks. They seem to be an emergent property of the protests. If there is a named group organising criminal action and it includes things that threaten/damage national security then that group should be banned.
Palestine Action was conducting organised criminal raids with the specific intent to cause damage to anything it felt was Israeli, Israel related, or somehow benefited Israel. A lot of the time the link was tenuous at best. They also attacked national security assets. Honestly this group's actions has done more harm than good for the Palestinian cause.
Or target it under the same law. All you need to do is shift the blame for providing adult content onto the vpn provider and suddenly they'll stop providing services to the UK. Might be a little more tricky to enforce globally but perfect enforcement isn't necessary to be a deterrent
If the 'political speech' is not adult in nature, which is true 99.9% of the time, then it can't/won't be blocked under this rule.
Unless of course this political speech is happening on a porn site, or a subreddit that has been deemed 18+. Which I can't see a legitimate reason for.
It seems like videos of violence are also getting blocked, and I expect eventually stuff about LGBT relationships etc will fall under it. Lots of things are adult that aren't porn.
We all know why - because people view LGBT people in a uniquely sexual light. The elephant in the room is that, for a lot of people, when they see two men holding hands their minds are immediately thinking about anal sex.
Yes, that sounds harsh and crude, but it's true. I've noticed it for decades. It's weird, it's not right, but it's how people react.
That's why a children's book with Mommy and Daddy is so mundane, so boring, so... nothing, that we don't even blink an eye. But Daddy and Daddy is different. Because of the implication.
Of course, only adults make the implication because they're nasty perverts. And they then project that perversion onto the innocent.
I mean, it's so fucked it's almost comical. We put babies in "ladies man" onesies and nobody cares. Do we not see how fucking weird that is? But suddenly we so much as acknowledge the existence of homosexuals and it's so risque.
This is a shockingly ugly and ignorant comment. These are very basic and tiresome arguments that the LGBT community has refuted for centuries.
You are the problem. You are very very wrong and it hurts people. Please educate yourself and overcome these flaws in your worldview.
> Because they swing their p*nis in front of children during parades and whatnot.
I live in Seattle where public nudity is legal. We have nude public beaches. We have a solstice parade with nude cyclists. Nothing about the LGBT community makes them more or less likely to participate in these things that straight people also do because they are things people do.
Nudity is not sexual. Wearing a bathing suit is not sexual. Wearing clothes is not sexual. If you find these things sexual it is because you sexualized them in your own mind.
> Sounds like a good enough reason to me and it sounds pretty much "adult" to me, unless you think genitalia is not "adult", but then why do we have this porn restriction in the first place if some people could go outside and engage in this type of behavior, in front of anyone, including children?
Good enough reason for what? Infringing the rights of citizens who have done nothing wrong?
> Maybe they should stop shoving it (their "business") down your throat?
It seems to me that the LGBT community has had a lot more forced down their throats in the form of marginalization and outright aggression. Where is the LGBT community forcing anything down your or anyone’s throat?
> I do not have a problem with homosexual people.
You clearly have a problem with homosexual people. The fact you conflate homosexuality with the LGBT community is even more of a red flag.
> I have a problem with them only if they invite me to their bedroom.
Inviting you to a bedroom is free speech. You can say no. Simply being lesbian or gay or bi or queer is not an invitation. Personal expression is not an invitation. If you interpret that as an invitation, especially a forced invitation, that is your own ignorance and insecurity showing.
> It is none of my business, and please do not try to make it my business by force.
That’s right. It’s none of your business. Where or when has the LGBT community forced anything on you? Demanding equal treatment is not forcing you to do anything other than mind your own damn business.
> You clearly have a problem with homosexual people. The fact you conflate homosexuality with the LGBT community is even more of a red flag.
The G in LGBT literally stands for gay, so no, it is not a red flag, and for your information, that was an example because it is related (or relevant). And please, do not tell me who I have or don't have a problem with. Who are you to know better than I? I have a couple of homosexual friends and I could not care less about their sexual orientation. I do not care about yours either. Why would I care about anyone's sexual orientation? It is their own business, not mine, and I do not want you or anyone else to make it my business. This is the most important part.
It is wild that there are people like you who think nudity is not sexual. There was some guy who made into the HN main page and it turned out that he was in prison for "SEXUAL EXPLOITATION/EXPOSE ORGANS". Exposing organs, nudity, yeah. So, if there are adults being naked around children, why restrict porn online? Okay, I will give you that in Seattle they may not do that, I have no idea.
In any case, swinging your d*ck in front of children is disgusting and apparently illegal in many places. There are many videos of it online of this happening.
For the record, I treat people equally. If someone, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, religion, or whatever starts swinging their d*ck in front of children, I will have a problem with that.
I am not going to reply to the rest nor will I engage in a conversation with someone who straight out attacks me and tells me that I am the problem.
I wish the members of the LGBT would actually mind their own business as you viciously said; yeah, that would be great.
Thank you. Next time please be less hostile and assume less. For what it is worth, you strengthened my preexisting beliefs.
'videos of violence' is quite wide: children shouldn't be watching videos of people being executed by gangs for example.
A lot of LGBT content is aimed at adults. I think we should always be clear when we are making statements like this because it causes great stress, a worked example:
People will claim that LGBT is under attack because this law potentially affects some LGBT spaces. These spaces will clearly be meant for 18+ audiences and so fall correctly under the law. Then other people see the first group of people, and from their point of view that group is complaining that their 18+ spaces are blocked from children. "Think of the children" drama ensues.
It is similar to Steam taking down incest/rape games and people claiming it was an action against LGBT creators. I don't think that's an argument that should ever be made for obvious reasons.
I don't think the government, even if it were under the Conservatives, have banning gay spaces on their current agenda.
Even if you think a lot of the content captured by the ban should be banned, I don't think age restriction mechanisms should be put on it. Talks around sexuality, the mere mention of certain crimes and unrest are being banned by social media companies, all because of this act. Companies seem to be acting out of caution.
I simply don't want to be forced to provide my ID / face to be able to read or access politically important news on social media. Some people would be happier if the bill was limited to only pornography: they likely don't think it has a major effect on UK politics.
