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Comment by tyleo | Hacker News Reader

This is a hard situation. I don’t think minors should be exposed to porn. Hell, I think even social media has a drug-like effect best kept from minors.

Age verification is the most obvious solution but comes with the downside of potentially leaking private adult activity or information.

I suppose my POV is that the benefit here outweighs the good even if imperfect. Porn just isn’t a necessity even if some folks really enjoy it.

I don’t hold that POV strongly, I pretty much formed it while writing this comment. I’m be interested in hearing other perspectives.

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> I don’t think minors should be exposed to porn.

The problem with that is that minors will be looking at porn. You're not going to stop a horny 16 year old.

These laws will certainly take care of age gating the decent, well-willing websites. The shady, probably unmonitored, or even niche websites outside of the mainstream, won't.

Aside from the obvious VPN workaround, this will only push curious teenagers towards worse websites.

As for privacy risks, privacy-friendly methods do exist. Yivi (previously dubbed IRMA) is a proof-of-concept that has been running for a while for privacy-friendly verification and data exchange using signed attributes (https://irma.app/docs/what-is-irma/). A signed "user-is-over-18" attribute is all a website would need to verify a user's age, without any other details.

Privacy-friendly age verification won't stop the other risks and problems these law may impose, though.

>These laws will certainly take care of age gating the decent, well-willing websites

Lol they won't. dark IDs or just AI altering their IDs, the second france enforces such law there will be some entrepreneur that makes an AI bot that accepts your ID and then changes the DOB and then spits out the video/images for KYC.

Use the national ID that surely has a digital DB, and make the check against those, which unless some corrupt officials has edit rights to, won't allow those simple bypasses.

Assuming they can check EU wide, since france is party to treaties allowing mostly free migration throughout the EU to France and recognizes the authenticity of those EU nation states IDs for commerce and domicile in France.

Well, the mentioned credit card checks would be applicable regardless of your residency/citizenship, so if you're visiting France and try to browse Pornhub, you'd be required to provide CC details for the verification, is my understanding at least

Or you have a ID issued by France, and you'll use that.

Besides, heavily depends on how the verification services implement their checks. Whenever I (Spanish resident, Swedish citizen) end up having to do verification checks for some EU/Spanish service, they usually have more or less every type of ID I could have been using available.

I'd also add that Google is pretty good at filtering out unavailable websites. My country fights windmills by blocking anythink porn-related. And Google with simple "porn" search will remove those blocked websites, but would add millions of yet unblocked mirrors and whatnot, so this block is laughably easy to avoid. It's not like porn is scarce resource available on the selected websites, quite the opposite. I'd guess that French teenagers would just do the same: search "porn", open 100 new tabs, find one that works and close the rest.

I’m not convinced by the argument. I believe porn use by minors is going up. That means they were impeded in the past more than they are impeded now. I believe age verification was a big part of that: folks were carded to buy Playboys. Sure you could get a fake card, but the barrier to entry was higher and that had an impact.

I also don’t take it as a good argument that, “some people will break the law and therefore there should be no law.” E.g., “decent, well-willing” people pay taxes but, “shady, probably unmonitored,” people don’t. Yet we don’t say, “there shouldn’t be taxes,” on this basis.

> I believe porn use by minors is going up.

Why do you believe this? I wasn't sure what to believe, and after some casual searches it seems like the percentage who reported ever having used pornography is actually decreasing, but the frequency of viewing pornography has gone up for those who actively view it. But it also seems to differ a lot by country, what I found for Sweden doesn't match what researchers found in Spain, for example, and I'm sure the US would be different too.

It would seem to me like parental controls and supervision of computer/phone use is much higher than when I was growing up. Basically none of our parents understand what this new "interwebs" thing was about today, but every parent today know exactly what it is. None of us kids had any parental controls on our computers AFAIK, but today it seems to be the norm, at least what I can tell from my own circles of acquaintances.

> I believe porn use by minors is going up.

In correlation, no doubt, with how many minors have cell phones that can be used anywhere, with a good expectation of privacy. It's not like how it was when I was a kid, where the average kid had access to maybe the family computer or, if they were lucky, a laptop.

> E.g., “decent, well-willing” people pay taxes but, “shady, probably unmonitored,” people don’t. Yet we don’t say, “there shouldn’t be taxes,” on this basis.

The better comparison would be with another vice. I don't particularly care about marijuana, but given the choice, is it better as a society to give people legal, certified, safe weed choices, or should it be relegated to street dealers that might cut their product with other stuff?

>minors will be looking at porn. You're not going to stop a horny 16 year old.

Sure, but this law will drastically reduce the amount of time the average 16-yo looks at porn. Also, if you are going to engage in a vice, then it is healthier if you have to exert some effort or run some risk (if only the risk of trying to access porn and failing) to do it rather than being able to do it perfectly safely from the convenience of your home -- and it is healthier if there is a delay between the impulse to look at porn and when you actually start looking.

> I don’t think minors should be exposed to porn

I guess the devil is in the details. I think you're talking about this from the context of USA, where I think a minor is up to 18, while a minor is up to 15. Then what constitutes of "porn" is also very different, I'm sure pictures of topless women could be considered porn in some places, while not in others.

So by some folks definition, a lot of content on current social media would be considered porn, and by others, a lot of content on porn sites wouldn't be considered porn.

What's lacking in these discussions are almost always: Not being specific enough about used terms and also providing enough context to understand the specifics and where those come from.

Fleeting, largely-unconsidered thought: given teenagers _will_ look for porn, that I can’t reliably be prevented and that some porn is worse than other, could/should we have a category of porn that can be accessed _for teenagers_ (>15yo for example)?

A category where there has to be no violence, no degradation, decent representation of sexualities/races/body types, no incest etc etc…

Basically give enough to teenagers that they’re satisfied enough with it without having to look elsewhere and be exposed to the worse stuff.

Doesn’t sound entirely like a bad idea

This is a reasonable take, and there is strong precedent that it can work.

In Germany, the drinking age for beer and similar lower alcohol drinks is 16 instead of 18, and it has a big impact in preventing teenagers from binge drinking vodka and such.

In the Netherlands, beer and wine are readily available in every supermarket, but you really need to get out of your way to get harder alcohol at designated dispensaries or liquor stores manned by a clerk.

Similarly, the laws on drugs make a significant distinction between softer drugs like weed (not legalised despite stereotypes, but tolerated) and harder drugs like heroin. There was a massive heroin addiction epidemic in the 70s, and such methods were remarkably effective in combating that.

IMHO it's not porn that is the problem, it's parents.

What minors are exposed to, and educated about, is the parents primary responsibility to deal with.

Minors will somehow get access to porn and nudies, age verification will not stop them.

I don't disagree but let me go one step further and say perhaps it is no one's responsibility. A parent cannot possibly monitor what teens are getting into at all times. When teens do 'bad' things it doesn't mean the parent or society is somehow at fault.

I'm sure teens of all times have had access to porn. I got it from a home built pay TV decoder in the 90s (sound didn't work but I didn't care so much lol)

And yes extreme types were already thing then too. Bukkake, gangbangs, all my friends in school saw these things. I'm pretty sure most of them have never done those practices in their lives. They're all pretty boring family men now. And they are respectful to women. Society is doing fine.

> What minors are exposed to, and educated about, is the parents primary responsibility to deal with.

Yes and no. We're sharing this responsibility in half with the government, due to public education requirement.

The moment a kid starts attending an educational institution - which can be as early as 1yo (daycare) or 3 yo(kindergarten), and usually no later than 7yo (where mandatory education usually kicks in), the parents lose control over what their kids "are exposed to, and educated about". But the problem isn't the educational institutions either (though they sometimes contribute).

The problem is other kids.

Minors will get access to porn and nudes in their teenage years, and there's fuck parents and teachers can do about it. There's always going to be a kid that somehow gets their hand on this stuff and bring it to the school. It takes just one for it to spread like wildfire.

To those who think a good parent should be able to protect their teens from exposure to porn: first demonstrate how one can stop a preschooler from contracting acute Paw Patrol or Frozen infection within first two weeks of kindergarten, and then we can talk.

I’m not convinced. Illicit content is more accessible to everyone than ever before. I question the efficacy of mounting ever increasing pressure on parents to police their kids. At some points we need to help shoulder the burden as a society and I think this is one of those points.

I see similar arguments for food, drugs, safety, social media, etc. Patents aren’t super heros with infinite time to purify across all these dimensions.

Do you feel the same about other guardrails typically aimed at protecting children? Tobacco control, driving licenses, gambling restrictions?

Good parenting combined with societal guardrails lead to the best chance outcomes.

IMO these are already controlled on the same level as web access.

The ISP verifies your age when you buy internet access. The clerk verifies your age when you buy wine.

The clerk doesn't follow you home and make sure you don't give your kid wine. And, symmetrically, the ISP doesn't make sure you don't allow your kids access to porn. Once the transaction is done, it's in the parent's hands.

The difference is that parent's aren't very keen to give their kids alcohol... usually. Although it is explicitly legal in a lot of places. But for the internet, they are very keen so it's normalized and nobody cares.

I don't disagree, but let's not forget that there is a significant difference with main things that are age-gated right now: alcohol, tobacco, driving...

It's not just about addiction or mental health, it's a whole different ballgame. These things carry big real-world physical risks, potentially deadly. Minors literally have different brain chemistries as they develop, and drugs can cause long-lasting effects unlike in adults.

Even gambling is not age-gated as strictly, with massive potential negative impacts to your livelyhood.

For the rest of things that might cause some psychological harm (maybe, hard to verify), like movies or videogames, we just have recommendations and some light barriers. Elevating porn to the top category is therefore quite a significant move, it is not the same.

I think porn has ~net neural effects on kids. One of the upsides is it’s a time sink replacing activities that can result in direct physical harm, just as video games do etc.

Without hormones driving people to it it’s uninteresting. After hormones kick in there’s upsides and downsides to porn, but those hormones are pushing a drug like effect and thus addiction either way.

> One of the upsides is it’s a time sink replacing activities that can result in direct physical harm, just as video games do etc.

This is a delusional worldview.

This is not a very constructive comment. Explain how?

I think they might have meant that video games are also a time sink, not that video games cause harm?

It's delusional to believe that porn and video games using the time that could otherwise be spent on any number of better and healthier actions is a good think.

Reality works on what is, “could be” is your delusion here.

Almost anything else a ten year old will plausibly get up to, even sedentarily, will be better than pornography.

Many things a 10 year old get up to have significantly higher risks of death.

Banning pornography nationwide, limiting video game time etc, therefore inevitably results in kids dying. So you need to demonstrate the benefits outweigh that tangible harm.

Is your argument that pornography has a lower risk than the median activity of a child?

If so, you are deluded and quite honestly disturbed. I mean this with pity, you should seek counselling.

> median activity of a child?

Mean, the median is irrelevant here for hopefully obvious reasons.

> you are deluded

You keep saying that word, but facts are facts. If your argument is it’s better for more kids to die, that’s fucked up. Alternatively you could be ignoring reality, but there’s no third option here.

Right — and the facts are that early porn exposure is linked to earlier sex, riskier behaviours, body shame, and higher odds of aggression and coercion, especially when the content is violent. That’s not some moral panic — that’s the current consensus of peer-reviewed studies, UNICEF, and public health bodies. Believing otherwise in the face of that evidence isn’t rational scepticism, it’s delusion. You need to stop pretending kids watching Pornhub is harmless — it isn’t.

Everything has some level of harm, the issue here is comparing relative vs absolute harm. Pointing out a positive doesn’t invalidate other harms, but finding the net effect requires everything to be considered.

Also, there’s significant questions around porn and early sexual activity with evidence in both directions. Unsurprisingly, people be complicated.

Just as an example the “explosion” of access to internet porn would, if the often stated theory of significant impact be correct, presumably have had population level impacts on when people first had sex but 1997 to 2007 showed ~zero changes. “The proportion of high school students who were sexually active has remained steady since 1997” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3064497/

Obviously being a survey the data is suspect but it is still a meaningful datapoint here. Political arguments don’t need to consist with reality but science does.

I think the implication here is that horny teenagers are going to do horny teenager things. So it's not fair to compare porn to just any activity, we have to compare it to things like teen pregnancy. Which is WAY down, by the way.

That's complete nonsense. Exposure to pornography during adolescence correlates with increased risk of teen pregnancy, risky sexual behaviours, and sexual assault.

Based on what? Just intuitively, there's significantly less teen pregnancy today than ten years ago and it's been trending down for decades.

I generally agree, except that I don’t like how this removes anonymity. (I also think fifteen year olds seeing genitalia isn’t a big deal but it does seem some porn can have negative impacts) The government shouldn’t need to know if I read hustler magazine but online I don’t know how to separate proof of age from identity.

While I don't think there is much harm, 'If you stare into the abyss, the abyss will stare back at you.'

You cannot be unaffected by events.

(I know the quote is paraphrased, and specifically talking about philosophy)

Yeah, big difference between seeing consenting adults have sex and some more violent stuff

All the code produced by this government agency it required to be open source, so unless you see a token tracker on GitHub, anonymity should be fine.

> Hell, I think even social media has a drug-like effect best kept from minors.

I'd venture to guess the exposure to social media is far more harmful than porn, but I could be out to lunch as to how much kids are looking at porn??

>Instead, users must verify their age using a credit card or a government-issued ID. This check must be carried out by an external service, not the porn site itself.

>This system, referred to as “double anonymity”, means the porn site receives only a yes-or-no confirmation that the user is of legal age. The age-check provider knows who the user is, but not which sites they visit.

So is there an issue here if the external service disposes of the card details immediately following confirmation? I'm not exactly sure how this would/could work though.

> Porn just isn’t a necessity even if some folks really enjoy it.

So isn't speech! Not everyone need privileges to talk about human rights or democracy. China's doing fine with neither(officially).

By the way, unofficially and anecdotally, coastal Chinese prostitution as well as porn seem to be getting bigger and more wicked faster. I wonder which comes first: puritanism, or erosion of industrial base. This whole slow movement could be just a symptom than culprit.

Counter argument: While I agree with your general sentiment, this will only take effect on larger sites and will lead to minors shifting to smaller, less moderated, and potentially more extreme content.

> Age verification is the most obvious solution but comes with the downside of potentially leaking private adult activity or information.

Honestly the older I get, the less I can strongly care about this. For better or worse, porn is a relatively mainstream topic. If we can't have discussions about why porn taste is so potentially devastating to leak, we don't deserve privacy.

Besides, it's not like "leaking" of this information would lead to a public index of who is watching what. And maybe it should, I'm no longer sure.

I wonder how effectively the regulation achieves its desired outcome of fewer minors being exposed to porn.

> Age verification is the most obvious solution but comes with the downside of potentially leaking private adult activity or information.

The system they have seems reasonable, though? Verifier doesn't know site; site doesn't know user. Not going to be perfect, but is quite good.

The problem is that the legit sites will implement this. These sites have actual takedown processes and they verify uploaders (to a degree) etc.

The ones that don't ... will have the nasty stuff.

I love the way you use the term POV so much. I see what you're doing there ;)

Minors already aren't allowed to look at porn, and in fact they're not even allowed to access the internet.

I mean, when you go to an ISP to purchase an internet plan, they're going to ask you for ID and they're going to verify your age. It is then the parents responsibility to monitor that. If parents choose to turn around and grant their kids free access, then fair's fair.

Just think about alcohol and tobacco. The clerk is going to ask for your ID in the store, sure. But they're not gonna follow you home and make sure you don't slip your kid a cig or a bottle. That's not their responsibility, their transaction is done. And, actually, in a lot of places this is explicitly allowed. I think in most US states minors can drink under adult supervision.

So, if we want to solve this, we need to aim at the parents and convincing them (as well as giving them more tools) to do this reasonably. These identity solutions are a tool, but IMO, a rather blunt and unnecessary tool.

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