Porn sites Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat face stricter requirements to verify the ages of their users after being officially designated as “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs) under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
I personally have mixed feelings, as the information collection could be used to link individuals and profile them. Possibly leading to discrimination if abused.
But I also feel that any random kid shouldn’t be able to just go to these sites and see porn freely.
Ofc, there’s always going to be those who mange to circumvent any protection put in place but it’d be much harder then just clicking a link or typing in the address.
I also feel that parents should actively monitor their kids online activities and step up a Blocklist to pro-actively prevent kids from reaching these sites to begin with.
What are your thoughts on this?
Kids being able to openly participate on porn sites would be a feast for pedophiles and groomers. We already have enough trouble with that on social media and dating sites/apps. And while in an ideal situation there just wouldn’t be bad people, sometimes we need to protect people from themselves because of others.
So while I am open for a discussion about lowering the age requirement, I still firmly believe a minimum age is required. But whether that’s 14, 16, or 18 I don’t know.
That’s a fair comment, and represents the core tradeoff of balancing protecting vulnerable members of society against privacy or liberty concerns.
My preference would be to - in a massively reductive statement - teach the paedos that their urges are less-than-healthy and treat them as medical cases, in order to reduce the need for such content.
The other element is that it’s rarely a great idea to make sweeping reforms of a system that is failing because silly cunts are doing illegal things. I’m pulling a stat out of my arse here but why are we implementing legal interventions to prevent 5-10% of the population from downloading or producing illegal content, when surely it would be more effective to target those involved in the criminal practise rather than the other 90-95% of happy carefree legal chuggers?
I do see your point though, and it’s refreshing to see you’ve not gone straight for the “much chuldrun” trope.