[bbor]

  Parents can easily control which parts of the internet their kids have access to

Citation needed - I think most American kids (sorry Ireland) are pretty much unrestricted on the internet by their tweens, since most parents buy them smartphones but don’t know how to do meaningful browser lockdowns.

Re:”naked people”, I think that’s doing disservice to the proponents of these controls (who I vehemently disagree with, ofc); the modern porn landscape has problems with non-consensual videos (see: Pornhub & GDP), extreme content (violence, CNC), and really harmful stereotypes about gender roles. It’s much more than just “healthy human sexuality” as many people on here seem to assume.

I think the only workable solution is a) better parental controls by default on the client level, and b) better educated and supported children. Children are smart, they know sex exists, and they know it’s something they don’t care at all about - they can be our allies in this fight.

If this move is to prevent teenagers with a motive from accessing porn, then: HA

[James_K]

> the modern porn landscape has problems with non-consensual videos (see: Pornhub & GDP), extreme content (violence, CNC), and really harmful stereotypes about gender roles. It’s much more than just “healthy human sexuality” as many people on here seem to assume.

I suppose children should have access to a better quality of porn. The stuff we have now is probably harmful to watchers of all ages in varying degrees. That said, I don't think society will ever be liberal enough to have a kids section on porn sites.

> better parental controls by default on the client level

Having parental controls on by default would be a reasonable solution to this issue.

> they know it’s something they don’t care at all about

Is this a typo? Children go on porn sites because they want to watch porn. That's why I did it. If children didn't want to watch porn, they wouldn't. I don't think the sex itself is something they need protecting from. Just the addictive qualities that are present in both porn sites and the wider internet.

> better educated and supported children

Better educated and supported parents would also help.

[bbor]

Very well said on all points. Re:”children don’t care”, I was mostly referencing adolescents when I said children —- during and after puberty is a totally different matter. At that point, I agree they need to be protected just like everyone else is protected - against general harmful patterns, and with very little direct government intervention. There’s no way the government can realistically stop teenagers from accessing porn, unless this guy gets his Porn Selfie initiative passed, I guess…

Scary times in Europe! Of course American conservatives could easily pick up this issue at random any midterm cycle now, assuming we continue having midterm elections.

[MSFT_Edging]

What do you think about the constant surveillance on children/teens by their own parents and the long term psychological trauma it may leave behind from knowingly being monitored 24/7?

Children used to go out, do things, come home. Now children have zero privacy. Into the teen years, they can't get into trouble, learn, socialize, etc. They just sit at home because their parents are constantly watching their GPS location and reading their texts.

Is porn worse than the damage done by the mistrust?

[Dma54rhs]

I wasn't supervised 24/7 but didn't have access to porn 24/7 in a second either, lads shared some old magazines someone nicked from a father most likely. It sure did need a bit more effort to get a playboy from your corner store.

My daughter came home from the playground where 10 year old guys showed her hardcore anal porn from mobile because it's funny.

[acdha]

> I think most American kids (sorry Ireland) are pretty much unrestricted on the internet by their tweens, since most parents buy them smartphones but don’t know how to do meaningful browser lockdowns.

It’s actually pretty hard to do lockdowns because there’s been so much consolidation. Many parents can turn on the built in controls, but then they face problems like “do you block YouTube entirely, even though their homework will include links to things like videos from NIH hosted there?”

The big problem isn’t that kids could innocently find sexual content but also that grownups will try to trick them into engaging with things for a variety of reasons. This is different from letting your kid have free rein of the public library because the library didn’t have some guy recruiting for a political movement putting books in the children’s section and the librarians wouldn’t let that creepy dude hang out there.

This came up at a school party recently where multiple parents of first graders were talking about how quickly YouTube will go from auto playing LEGO and Minecraft videos to some pretty unhinged stuff.

[lifestyleguru]

> but then they face problems like “do you block YouTube entirely, even though their homework will include links to things like videos from NIH hosted there?”

Tell kids to create list of URLs. Download the videos. They've just learned copy/paste, about existence of URLs, and concept of remote and local. Now they're hackers!

[acdha]

Sure, but then you’re in the business of having to add many exceptions on an ongoing basis. That’s why I wish we had more decentralization - it’d be trivial for parents to, say, whitelist *.gov with the knowledge that they’re not going to find porn there. Doing the same on YouTube is a much harder problem.

[Brybry]

One time I ran into a subdomain of cjcc.ga.gov, via google results, that was hosting porn (it's on the internet archive too - vicspublic).

At the time I couldn't even find abuse/webmaster contact info to report it to get it fixed. They were serving porn for months.

[philwelch]

> The big problem isn’t that kids could innocently find sexual content but also that grownups will try to trick them into engaging with things for a variety of reasons. This is different from letting your kid have free rein of the public library because the library didn’t have some guy recruiting for a political movement putting books in the children’s section and the librarians wouldn’t let that creepy dude hang out there.

You’d be surprised.

[acdha]

I would in the library field so, no. I know public librarians have to deal with weirdos but they’re a LOT more willing to do so than YouTube. It probably has something to do with how much better funded they are than Google…