How the American war on porn could change the way you use the internet

a survey of 1,000 young people concluded that pornography can normalise sexual violence and harmful attitudes among children.

That's irrelevant. This argument assumes that age verification laws will reduce children's consumption of porn. The war on drugs has shown us that prohibition of this kind of stuff doesn't reduce anything and only ever makes it worse. All that will happen is children (and adults) will now go to worse/less moderated websites which will on average have more CSAM and other real sexual abuse.

How could American politicians be so against pornography, when so many keep getting caught with prostitutes?

Typical. Rules for thee I guess.

For those wondering about the upswing here:

If the age verification movement goes unchecked, it's possible that you could be forced to tie your government ID to much of your online activity, Gillmor says. Some civil rights groups fear it could usher in a new era of state and corporate surveillance that would transform our online behaviour.

"This is the canary in the coalmine, it isn't just about porn," says Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group. Greer says age verification laws are a thinly veiled ploy to impose censorship across the web. A host of campaigners warn that these measures could be used to limit access not just to pornography, but to art, literature and basic facts about sex education and LGBTQ+ life.

it's not a war on porn; it's a war on lgbtq people and content. the people pushing for these bills have straight up said that.

Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great.

If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk

From my cold, dead, lubricated hands!

Luckily we have lemmynsfw.com 🥳

Papers please: for millions of Americans, accessing online pornography now requires a government ID

And I imagine everyone wants a picture of your ID. Which is horrible on so many levels...

MAKE PENIS AND VAGINA ILLEGAL!!!!!

"If they removed porn from the internet, there would only be one website left and it would be called 'bringbacktheporn.com.'"

Why are they even in war against porn?

/j lust is just the second layer, try doing something about worse stuff like greed or gluttony

So USA slowly becoming China now? What's next VPN users will face jail time?

3 boats of Puritans and we still all have to suffer.

We had these kinds of debates when I myself was a minor (in the late 2000s). I would have thought it would be over by now and people would have realized that allowing teenagers to watch porn isn't actually very harmful to them at all. Seems not, humanity doesn't get smarter over time.

How the American war on porn could change the way you use the internet

looks slightly annoyed

I'm not particularly enthusiastic about such state laws, but the UK spent the last several years having committed to mandate age verification itself prior to eventually abandoning it, and I didn't see Voice of America trying to get people in the US riled up about British law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_UK_Internet_age_verification_system

With the passing of the Digital Economy Act 2017, the United Kingdom became the first country to pass a law containing a legal mandate on the provision of an Internet age verification system.

And if I recall, they had some follow-up effort, which I assume is what is briefly referenced in the article.

looks

Yeah.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/guidance-service-providers-pornographic-content/

Implementing the Online Safety Act: Protecting children from online pornography

This is the second of four major consultations that Ofcom, as the appointed online safety regulator, will publish as part of our work to establish the new regulations under the Online Safety Act (2023).

Currently, services publishing pornographic content online do not have sufficient measures in place to prevent children from accessing this content. Many grant children access to pornographic content without age checks, or by relying on checks that only require the user to confirm that they are over the age of 18.

The Online Safety Act is clear that service providers publishing pornographic content online must implement age assurance which is highly effective at correctly determining whether or not a user is a child to prevent children from normally encountering their online pornographic content.

Not Americans in the sense I see it. Flag pissing regressives is what they are. A minority that gerrymanders their way into power and pushes their childish backward thinking on the real Americans. Many the rot in their closets from which they only emerge every four years to crash grinder.

If I was a teenager, I would find a way.

A side thought: what would the world look like if you needed to be 18+ to make a social media account?

First they came for the porn.

This should give the dems all they need.

“You do what you need to do in that voting booth, we don’t judge”.

No doubt this is all BigVPN's fault!

_/s

laughs in californian

Don’t care I just generate my own anyway

"Could" is the important word here. In other contries, we long have laws making age verification mandatory. It's just that it's a popup asking "Are you over 18?" And you can click whatever you want. Also the companies are in different jurisdictions, don't comply with local law while the internet spans the globe. I don't see any substantial difference here.