[delusional]

That wasn't the point i was asking for an argument for. What I wanted to know is how age verification is worse then allowing children to watch porn. To make that argument.

> Source: I’m a parent. My kids haven’t seen porn and can’t access the internet.

Are they above the age of 16? Because then you're either Amish or out of touch.

[roenxi]

If you want the logical approach; the premise you're suggesting you want people to argue from is faulty.

The argument kicks in at a slightly deep level. Age verification is unrelated to allowing children to watch porn. Someone needs to make an argument showing that age verification would lead to blocking porn, and that argument seems to be impossible to make (age verification is a much lighter standard than the bans on torrent websites, for example, and torrenting is still as easy as it ever was). To block kids viewing porn there'd need to be a - probably global - system of censorship that exerts total control over what people can POST and GET on the internet. The likes of which we have not yet seen and would likely have catastrophically negative political consequences.

[carlosjobim]

Age verification isn't the problem. It is just a tool for censorship. It's censorship which is the problem.

[delusional]

So to put the bricks together: Age verification is worse than allowing children to watch pornography, because age verification is censorship.

I hope you can see how that argument is not compelling.

[afpx]

It’s not only compelling to a lot of Americans, it’s foundational.

[kbelder]

That argument is hugely compelling.

[carlosjobim]

Age verification will be implemented as identity identification. And that means anything you read or write or watch or say will be tied to your identity, registered by the government and other organizations, and used against you as an individual.

Do you understand now? Or will you only understand when you get fired from your job and they won't tell you the reason?

[delusional]

> Age verification will be implemented as identity identification.

Thank you for bringing an argument.

I want to start by tackling your argument head on. What if it's not though. What if it's implemented by attestation and signatures rooted at your local national government? Nobody will be able to tie whatever you watch or write to your identity, because they won't have it. To my understanding, that's what's proposed here, and that won't feasibly lead to any of the spooky consequences you're predicting.

There's another leg to it also. "anything you read or write or watch or say will be tied to your identity" is already true right now. Google is already, at this second, tracking my every move online and using it against me in a targeted advertisement campaign to change my spending habits, but my political affiliations too. If you're truly afraid of that outcome, I believe there are much more prescient and immediate things you should oppose than this.

[bigbadfeline]

> signatures rooted at your local national government? > Google is already, at this second, tracking my every move online

Apparently you haven't figured out yet that these two are partners. The government restrictions are needed in order to allow other players to perform correlation tracking and deducing your identity.

> Nobody will be able to tie whatever you watch or write to your identity, because they won't have it.

This is untrue in the light of what I said above. The proposed scheme lacks any proof of immunity against tracking and deducing identity. I haven't seen anything like a proof being discussed, while an honestly implemented scheme would require a long and well publicized discussion of the means of protection - to make sure it cannot be abused for political reasons.

The lack of such a discussion is actually a proof that the purpose of the proposed scheme is precisely abuse.

[antonvs]

> there are much more prescient and immediate things you should oppose than this.

We can oppose more than one thing at a time. All of these privacy invading measures should be opposed as strongly as possible. Companies like Google should be broken up by the government, the parts should not be allowed to collude with each other, and there should be laws preventing the kind of data collection they do without full transparency, user control, and ownership.

[galangalalgol]

I realize this thread is a half day old, but porn is like the least concerning thing I prohibit my child from consuming off the internet. I grew up on a farm, animals work just like we do. There is obviously some messed up stuff some people find enticing, but youtube kids is way more damaging than even the weird stuff. Kids mostly have standard adult disgust filters. Ytk and similar addictive feeds bypass that with things that are far more subtle.

[mcv]

There are ways to do age verification without tying your identity to the content. A site could direct you through a proxy to the government's eID server with simply the request whether you're over 18. Because it's going through an anonymising proxy, the government has no idea what site you're visiting. You login to your eID, which confirms or denies that you're over 18. The porn site only knows what porn was watched and that the person watching is over 18. The proxy only knows someone was visiting the porn site at that particular time. The government knows who you are and that you were visiting a site at that time, but not which site.

[autoexec]

> There are ways to do age verification without tying your identity to the content.

That's wishful thinking. The site would log that they sent you to verify your ID with your IP and a timestamp. The proxy server would get your identity with your IP and timestamp. Those two can can be linked. The government would know exactly who you are while also knowing where you came from and when.

Either the government would monitor the proxy or they'd just be running the proxy themselves or forcibly taking it over Room 641A style to log everything going in and out.

There is zero way to verify your identity to a website without trusting some third party with that information. There's no one in the US who is trustworthy enough or immune from being controlled by the US government so you'll always be vulnerable to having your identify exposed and it being used against you.

The best suggestion I've heard so far was scratch off cards that could be purchased anywhere in person, with cash, after presenting ID. The ID isn't logged or scanned, just manually checked by the wage slave at the counter. Even that isn't without challenges though since the cards would have codes that would likely be traceable to batches and where they were distributed to/purchased from which means that information can be checked against surveillance/facial ID/flock cameras to find out who bought them, and they can also be resold/shared online/exchanged/stolen/generated/given to others which means they won't be very effective at identifying individuals or keeping kids from seeing adult content.

The truth is that the entire point of these age verification laws is deanonymization, censorship, and control. Any theoretical scheme we might come up with that wouldn't allow for abuses will never be implemented for that reason.

[mcv]

Obviously there needs to be a desire to set this up responsibly. A government that doesn't care about privacy at all can force whatever they want. But the EU care a lot about privacy. They're got strong data protection regulation. Having sensible barriers in place can protect them from overstepping. The proxy obviously needs to be independent.