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Comment by Quarrel | Hacker News Reader

> surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new

Many countries, including the US, claim jurisdiction if you are providing services to their citizens. Some claim jurisdiction if someone in that country sees your web page (ie you've now "published" it there).

You've been blissfully unaware, perhaps, but this has been a thing for a long time.

You have probably seen sites having sections of their TOS tailored specifically for Californian users- this is not that different.

I think the UK legislation here is hamfisted and very harmful, but the jurisdiction argument is nothing new.

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Classic case of Wolfenstein 3d being banned in Germany in the 90s rings a bell.

Germany has laws about displaying nazi emblems. The same game design reskinned would be fine.

Right, but the point was there is precedent for laws affecting American operations when distributing software into a jurisdiction.

Regulators are fed up with billionaires in the US turning a blind eye to porn just to make more money off it, even if kids can get around the restrictions. Look at Elon Musk, one of the first things he did after buying Twitter was open the floodgates, letting anyone upload or search for porn without any proper safeguards.

Reddit shows porn to kids too, as long as they tick the "Show mature (18+) content" box. Same with Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and the rest.

The only apps that don't seem to turn a blind eye are Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. Epic Games and Roblox also do a great job, both have strong moderation teams and built-in tools to protect younger users. Every company should use them as examples. They've shown it's possible to build huge platforms without ignoring the safety of kids online.

Now that the UK forced these reckless billionaires to update their software to comply with the rules, every government should do the same.

This isn't a uniquely American problem. Age verification is a huge pain to implement and completely tanks user sign up metrics. No tech company will do it unless absolutely forced by a major government, eg. see the recent US state-level laws that require age verification for porn sites. Websites are using IP-geo checks to apply the age verification process to as few users as possible.

Also I'd question putting Roblox in the child-friendly category. Hindenburg Research characterized the platform as a "Pedophile Hellscape". They obviously have a financial angle as a short-seller, but they point out some issues that seem pretty significant, in my opinion.

> We found Roblox to be an X-rated pedophile hellscape, replete with users attempting to groom our avatars, groups openly trading child pornography, widely accessible sex games, violent content and extremely abusive speech—all of which is open to young children and all while Roblox has cut content moderation spending to appease Wall Street and boost earnings.

> We put together a brief video compilation of Roblox moderation failures

https://hindenburgresearch.com/roblox/

Oh, I was wrong about Roblox. Some users even encourage 8, 9-yo to install Discord so they can groom them. So I guess there are two different issues here: porn sites showing indecent images and videos to everyone, regardless of age, and sick people grooming kids on social media and in games.

> The same game design reskinned would be fine.

The same game design reskinned wouldn’t be the same game, though.

I respect the Germans for their decision to pass and enforce their laws in Germany, and to have an opinion about how websites are displayed to German IPs, but I also am sensitive to the artistic intent of id software, while questioning the necessity of making the games in the first place. Nazi symbols are problematic for the same reasons that war movies are: even if you’re trying to make an anti-war or anti-Nazi piece, it still portrays the very same imagery and context in order to subvert it or supplant it. It’s somewhat self-defeating, and it’s fodder for fans of the things creators themselves may oppose to rally around and agitate for or against to raise awareness for their ideology and their support of it.

Ironically, id didn’t even start that franchise, though they did popularize the genre and their own place in it with Wolfenstein 3D.

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

That said, the original stealth based games were loosely based on real events in which Allied forces killed Nazis, so I’m kind of okay with publicizing notable historical instances of Allies defeating Nazis in World War 2 to a point. We’ve probably crossed that point as soon as id made Wolfenstein 3D, if not before that under Muse Software, which curiously disestablished itself after the second game in the franchise before id continued it. I don’t mean to find fault per se but the moment has passed to make these kinds of content in my opinion.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140710-can-a-film-be-t...

> “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film,” is a quote often attributed to the late French filmmaker François Truffaut.

Harmful in which way? Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction.

High school students with phones at school are showing porn to their friends, even younger kids. Some schools have banned phones, but teens aged 12–17 can still access porn sites freely when they get home.

In my opinion, gambling sites and porn sites should always verify age, same goes for shops selling tobacco and alcohol.

> Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction.

I've heard this before, but I've never, not even once, gotten an evidence-based approach to if this is true.

I've only ever gotten morality-based arguments, which, IMO, aren't arguments at all and aren't worth mine, or anyone else's, time.

We cannot just act like pornography being harmful is a foregone conclusion. No, we need to prove it. We should not be legislating things, and giving up our privacy and freedom, before even defining a problem.

Intuitively, sure, it makes sense that porn is bad. It depicts sex, and in western puritanical cultures, that's bad. If people are exposed to sex, surely they're at greater risk of teen pregnancy, or STIs, or whatever.

But is this actually the case? In the past 20 years, teen pregnancy has fallen off a cliff. Rates of STIs are lower, too. In areas that teach abstinence-only education, they actually have higher teen pregnancy. Taking a more puritanical approach does not guarantee better outcomes, and based off the real-world statistics, it seems to do the opposite.

In addition, I have zero reason to believe porn addiction is even real. There's a lot of dispute among psychologists, with most not recognizing it as an addiction. The problem here is that an addiction is not a compulsive action. An addiction needs to impair your everyday life. That's the clinical definition of an addiction.

We're not seeing a lot of bad outcomes or impairment from pornography. It is exceedingly rare that someone who is consuming pornography is doing it to a degree where it negatively affects their lives. Sure, it's possible, but for the vast, vast majority of people this just does not appear to be the case.

Now, to get ahead of the curve because I've already had this conversation a hundred times - no, I am not addicted to pornography and I very rarely consume it. I have a happy and healthy sex life. I just reject the idea that it's harmful with no evidence provided, and I reject moral arguments in general.

Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction.

What I mean by porn addiction:

In 2025, the average person watches around 6 hours per week of pornography. That's from recent industry and survey data. In 2005, the average was roughly 1.7 hours. So porn is clearly becoming more addictive.

Sex work has exploded online, especially with webcams and platforms like OnlyFans. In 2020 there were over a million sex workers. Now, there are over 4 million. And that doesn't include the many who are pushed into cam work just to survive.

This isn't just about kids spending money to watch their crush undress on a porn site. It's also about the workers, many of whom are exploited because the demand keeps growing.

This industry needs regulation, not to censor it, but to make it safe for everyone.

> Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction.

You're right - I haven't, because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them.

Also, sex work and pornography can't lazily be compared like that. No "demand" for sex work makes people become sex workers. People become sex workers because they enjoy it, or because they're fine with the outcome in exchange for the money.

The actual "harm" done by being a sex worker varies based on each person's moral beliefs. Some people don't care about that kind of stuff, so they're fine doing it. And, especially if you do solo work, there's very little real risk. There's only social risk, which again, is a different thing aligned with morality.

In terms of actual, real, tangible harm - what is the harm of sitting in front of a webcam and stroking it? Nothing. The answer is nothing. This is moral plight bullshit. I understand you don't like it and you think it's the downfall of the nuclear family or some other equally stupid bullshit - but the reality is nobody actually cares what you think. We care about outcomes.

And, right now, I'm not seeing the outcomes which align with this being compared to fucking tabacco. And I used to smoke.

First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking.

> People become sex workers because they enjoy it

Ignorant.

> First, you'll have to prove to me that weapons, porn, sex exploitation, and drugs like OxyContin aren't issues in the US, then we can keep talking.

No, I don't actually. Why not? Two major reasons:

1. You cannot naively equate things for free. You cannot claim porn is like narcotics without proving that first. I simply do not need to prove narcotics are good to show porn is fine.

2. When it comes to rights, we never, ever, take an approach of "it's bad until it's proven good". Ever. For example, I need not prove every single potential piece of speech is okay to advocate free speech. We take the inverse approach - all speech is fine, until it's not and we can prove it's not. I don't need to ask permission first. For example, yelling "fire!" in a theater isn't okay, but we reach that conclusion by proving it's bad - NOT by proving everything around it is good. Does that make sense? It's a sort of innocent until proven guilty approach.

We do not restrict rights without first proving doing so will be good. You are, implicitly, granted a right to do whatever - EXCEPT the stuff we've taken the time to blacklist.

So, if something is bad, that's something you need to prove if we want to restrict that right. I don't need to prove it's good, I implicitly have the right. For example, in practice, there's a lot of bad stuff I can do that I have the right to do. I have the right to watch a scary movie that will keep me up at night. I don't need to prove anything is good, and we don't need to write a law like "scary movies are good". YOU would need to prove they're bad, and then write a law like "scary movies are bad, no more scary movies".

You said there are no sex workers or people paying for sex in the US. I said, prove it. You can't because you're just talking nonsense.

> because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them

> You said there are no sex workers or people paying for sex in the US. I said, prove it. You can't because you're just talking nonsense.

Well, that's not what I said, it appears you're trying to be dishonest.

You said there's people who "spend all their money" on porn and that daughters are increasingly becoming sex workers. I said this is rare, which is true.

What you're trying to do is say porn is bad by appealing to a worst case scenario. It's a common argumentative tactic people who don't really know how to argue use.

For example, cars are bad because people fly through windshields and paint the freeway with their brains. This is true, and does happen, but without a qualifier for how often it happens, it's worthless. This statement says absolutely nothing about how good or bad cars are.

But, to be clear, even if it did, that alone would not be enough to sacrifice any and all privacy and security. See, the problem here is you're making multiple levels of arguments, of which you cannot even justify the lowest level.

Making the argument that porn is bad is one argument, making the argument that this means we should sacrifice privacy or security is another argument, and a much more difficult one. You haven't even proved the more fundamental argument, so certainly you're a long way away from proving the more stringent one.

I don't doubt porn addiction is somewhat harmful to some people (I doubt it is nearly up there with alcohol, which afaik is easily in a class of its own).

I've also had a kid in a London school for the last 9 years, so I'm in the parent whatsapp groups etc, and talk to parents about what should be done.

For a politician, getting parents to agree to "Should we protect kids from harmful material on the internet?" is an easy statement to make, and an easy one for parents to answer. The next steps are the hard ones, which is why enforcement of this legislation was delayed over and over again. This was first legally mandated in 2017! Then delayed, abandoned, delayed, reintroduced, etc. Why? Because getting the implementation right is very hard, and I do not think that this current system will be effective at stopping much harm to consumers of pornography, but I do think it will lead to terrible privacy breaches.

I'm a teacher in a private high school which allows students to have smartphones. Kids have unlimited access to porn and they circulate it during school hours, and there's not much we can do about it.

AFAIK, the UK forced the big porn tech giants to hide explicit images and videos from the public unless users verify their age. Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and other companies failed to do that. These US businesses turned a blind eye to porn just to make more money.

I think what the UK is doing is a step in the right direction. It's about holding the billionaires behind these apps accountable for what they show to kids. It won't fix everything, but it will force the big players to change their software. And that's the first step toward making things better.

In my opinion, this should be a universal law: want to gamble, watch porn, smoke or buy alcohol? Show your ID. Simple as that.

> I do not think that this current system will be effective at stopping much harm to consumers of pornography, but I do think it will lead to terrible privacy breaches.

You mean the system that verifies age could get hacked and expose all the IDs people uploaded? Yeah, that's the risk. But we already hand over ID for flights, banks, hotels, etc. The real issue isn't showing ID, it's trusting the people behind these porn sites, which we know cannot be trusted.

> AFAIK, the UK forced the big porn tech giants to hide explicit images and videos from the public unless users verify their age. Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and other companies failed to do that. These US businesses turned a blind eye to porn just to make more money.

Until just now, no, they had not forced them. They had repeatedly delayed and denied, just trying to win electoral points.

I think you underestimate how easy these regulations will be to get around. I was once a teenage boy with some tech-nous. This would have been a walk in the park then, and kids these days know a lot more than I did back then, not to mention all the bad-actors that will happily help them. It isn't as simple as "oh no, so IDs will be leaked".

Also, if you think you can understand the depth of the people behind the porn sites, you're in for a new awakening. Of course, you can't trust them- but if you could, then there would be new porn sites the next day that you could not. Which sites will implement these changes? Which ones will not? The answer to this is half the battle being faced ..

I agree, VPNs make it way too easy to get around age checks.

Maybe the solution is for governments to set up a simple age verification service, an official site where you pay $1 (refundable) to prove you're over 18. Then they could offer APIs that any website can plug into to verify users. Kind of like how barcodes work.

To avoid privacy issues, the verification site should only store a hash of the email, no images, no credit card info, nothing else. Just enough to confirm the person passed the check. A digital proof-of-age system without tracking or storing sensitive data.

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