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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

There are things that are already illegal on the internet. Pirated media is generally illegal, which is meant to protect corporate profits. Most people are okay with such restrictions. But when it's actually about protecting children and forcing these shady companies to enforce their terms of service, it's censorship and control?

The ironic thing is many people who decry forcing these companies to verify age, would be fine with such age verification restrictions on Insta or TikTok.

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They are going to start restricting VPN usage as well [1] and I can't even click on a Reddit profile without getting age verification pop up because they commented on a dating advice subreddit once. At the same time I can go on Google images, type "porn" and click filter off without any problems.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn438z3ejxyo

> They are going to start restricting VPN usage as well [1]

From your own source:

> A government spokesperson said VPNs are legal tools for adults and there are no plans to ban them.

Restrict != ban. "She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs "to implement highly effective age assurances to stop underage users from accessing pornography.""

I don't know, I just can't get fired up about this, I'm sorry. I don't think children have an absolute right to VPNs. There are a ton of things children can't have access to. They don't have full rights as adults, so I feel a bit ambivalent.

As someone with kids I care deeply about the harmful stuff my children will get exposure to. And I'm worried about this as a negative influence, especially to boys, much more than I'm worried about smoking, vaping, drugs, guns, and most other things. This can absolutely wreck your relationships, and it's just not practical to control on a family level. Over 25% of teenagers have ED and it's going up. That can't be good. And for girls it can lead to risky or overall degenerate behavior due to changing expectations and influence.

So many people here pretend like there's no problem.

> So many people here pretend like there's no problem.

Or maybe they think that the proposed solutions are worse than the problem.

My point ultimately is that this is a non-solution (websites that don't have verification) (keep in mind they never solved piracy) that is causing collateral damage (non-pornographic content).

@bko:

Because children are the only ones who use VPNs?

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