Porn sites go dark in France over new age verification rules

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20250604-porn-sites-go-dark-in-france-over-new-age-verification-rules

by _p2zi • 1 year ago

49 137 1 year ago

tyleo3• 1 year ago

This is a hard situation. I don’t think minors should be exposed to porn. Hell, I think even social media has a drug-like effect best kept from minors.

Age verification is the most obvious solution but comes with the downside of potentially leaking private adult activity or information.

I suppose my POV is that the benefit here outweighs the good even if imperfect. Porn just isn’t a necessity even if some folks really enjoy it.

I don’t hold that POV strongly, I pretty much formed it while writing this comment. I’m be interested in hearing other perspectives.

CalRobert2• 1 year ago

I generally agree, except that I don’t like how this removes anonymity. (I also think fifteen year olds seeing genitalia isn’t a big deal but it does seem some porn can have negative impacts) The government shouldn’t need to know if I read hustler magazine but online I don’t know how to separate proof of age from identity.

resource_waste• 1 year ago

While I don't think there is much harm, 'If you stare into the abyss, the abyss will stare back at you.'

You cannot be unaffected by events.

(I know the quote is paraphrased, and specifically talking about philosophy)

orwin• 1 year ago

All the code produced by this government agency it required to be open source, so unless you see a token tracker on GitHub, anonymity should be fine.

jeroenhd• 1 year ago

I don’t think minors should be exposed to porn.

The problem with that is that minors will be looking at porn. You're not going to stop a horny 16 year old.

These laws will certainly take care of age gating the decent, well-willing websites. The shady, probably unmonitored, or even niche websites outside of the mainstream, won't.

Aside from the obvious VPN workaround, this will only push curious teenagers towards worse websites.

As for privacy risks, privacy-friendly methods do exist. Yivi (previously dubbed IRMA) is a proof-of-concept that has been running for a while for privacy-friendly verification and data exchange using signed attributes (https://irma.app/docs/what-is-irma/). A signed "user-is-over-18" attribute is all a website would need to verify a user's age, without any other details.

Privacy-friendly age verification won't stop the other risks and problems these law may impose, though.

ty68535• 1 year ago

These laws will certainly take care of age gating the decent, well-willing websites

Lol they won't. dark IDs or just AI altering their IDs, the second france enforces such law there will be some entrepreneur that makes an AI bot that accepts your ID and then changes the DOB and then spits out the video/images for KYC.

vbezhenar• 1 year ago

I'd also add that Google is pretty good at filtering out unavailable websites. My country fights windmills by blocking anythink porn-related. And Google with simple "porn" search will remove those blocked websites, but would add millions of yet unblocked mirrors and whatnot, so this block is laughably easy to avoid. It's not like porn is scarce resource available on the selected websites, quite the opposite. I'd guess that French teenagers would just do the same: search "porn", open 100 new tabs, find one that works and close the rest.

tyleo3• 1 year ago

I’m not convinced by the argument. I believe porn use by minors is going up. That means they were impeded in the past more than they are impeded now. I believe age verification was a big part of that: folks were carded to buy Playboys. Sure you could get a fake card, but the barrier to entry was higher and that had an impact.

I also don’t take it as a good argument that, “some people will break the law and therefore there should be no law.” E.g., “decent, well-willing” people pay taxes but, “shady, probably unmonitored,” people don’t. Yet we don’t say, “there shouldn’t be taxes,” on this basis.

hollerith• 1 year ago

minors will be looking at porn. You're not going to stop a horny 16 year old.

Sure, but this law will drastically reduce the amount of time the average 16-yo looks at porn. Also, if you are going to engage in a vice, then it is healthier if you have to exert some effort or run some risk (if only the risk of trying to access porn and failing) to do it rather than being able to do it perfectly safely from the convenience of your home -- and it is healthier if there is a delay between the impulse to look at porn and when you actually start looking.

diggan8• 1 year ago

I don’t think minors should be exposed to porn

I guess the devil is in the details. I think you're talking about this from the context of USA, where I think a minor is up to 18, while a minor is up to 15. Then what constitutes of "porn" is also very different, I'm sure pictures of topless women could be considered porn in some places, while not in others.

So by some folks definition, a lot of content on current social media would be considered porn, and by others, a lot of content on porn sites wouldn't be considered porn.

What's lacking in these discussions are almost always: Not being specific enough about used terms and also providing enough context to understand the specifics and where those come from.

badmintonbaseba• 1 year ago

I wonder how effectively the regulation achieves its desired outcome of fewer minors being exposed to porn.

Retric5• 1 year ago

I think porn has ~net neural effects on kids. One of the upsides is it’s a time sink replacing activities that can result in direct physical harm, just as video games do etc.

Without hormones driving people to it it’s uninteresting. After hormones kick in there’s upsides and downsides to porn, but those hormones are pushing a drug like effect and thus addiction either way.

closewith9• 1 year ago

One of the upsides is it’s a time sink replacing activities that can result in direct physical harm, just as video games do etc.

This is a delusional worldview.

mediumrhino• 1 year ago

Counter argument: While I agree with your general sentiment, this will only take effect on larger sites and will lead to minors shifting to smaller, less moderated, and potentially more extreme content.

robertlagrant3• 1 year ago

Age verification is the most obvious solution but comes with the downside of potentially leaking private adult activity or information.

The system they have seems reasonable, though? Verifier doesn't know site; site doesn't know user. Not going to be perfect, but is quite good.

UnreachableCode2• 1 year ago

Instead, users must verify their age using a credit card or a government-issued ID. This check must be carried out by an external service, not the porn site itself.
This system, referred to as “double anonymity”, means the porn site receives only a yes-or-no confirmation that the user is of legal age. The age-check provider knows who the user is, but not which sites they visit.

So is there an issue here if the external service disposes of the card details immediately following confirmation? I'm not exactly sure how this would/could work though.

TheChaplain• 1 year ago

IMHO it's not porn that is the problem, it's parents.

What minors are exposed to, and educated about, is the parents primary responsibility to deal with.

Minors will somehow get access to porn and nudies, age verification will not stop them.

ty68535• 1 year ago

I don't disagree but let me go one step further and say perhaps it is no one's responsibility. A parent cannot possibly monitor what teens are getting into at all times. When teens do 'bad' things it doesn't mean the parent or society is somehow at fault.

wkat42423• 1 year ago

I'm sure teens of all times have had access to porn. I got it from a home built pay TV decoder in the 90s (sound didn't work but I didn't care so much lol)

And yes extreme types were already thing then too. Bukkake, gangbangs, all my friends in school saw these things. I'm pretty sure most of them have never done those practices in their lives. They're all pretty boring family men now. And they are respectful to women. Society is doing fine.

TeMPOraL• 1 year ago

What minors are exposed to, and educated about, is the parents primary responsibility to deal with.

Yes and no. We're sharing this responsibility in half with the government, due to public education requirement.

The moment a kid starts attending an educational institution - which can be as early as 1yo (daycare) or 3 yo(kindergarten), and usually no later than 7yo (where mandatory education usually kicks in), the parents lose control over what their kids "are exposed to, and educated about". But the problem isn't the educational institutions either (though they sometimes contribute).

The problem is other kids.

Minors will get access to porn and nudes in their teenage years, and there's fuck parents and teachers can do about it. There's always going to be a kid that somehow gets their hand on this stuff and bring it to the school. It takes just one for it to spread like wildfire.

To those who think a good parent should be able to protect their teens from exposure to porn: first demonstrate how one can stop a preschooler from contracting acute Paw Patrol or Frozen infection within first two weeks of kindergarten, and then we can talk.

tyleo3• 1 year ago

I’m not convinced. Illicit content is more accessible to everyone than ever before. I question the efficacy of mounting ever increasing pressure on parents to police their kids. At some points we need to help shoulder the burden as a society and I think this is one of those points.

I see similar arguments for food, drugs, safety, social media, etc. Patents aren’t super heros with infinite time to purify across all these dimensions.

slumberlust• 1 year ago

Do you feel the same about other guardrails typically aimed at protecting children? Tobacco control, driving licenses, gambling restrictions?

Good parenting combined with societal guardrails lead to the best chance outcomes.

MangoToupe• 1 year ago

Age verification is the most obvious solution but comes with the downside of potentially leaking private adult activity or information.

Honestly the older I get, the less I can strongly care about this. For better or worse, porn is a relatively mainstream topic. If we can't have discussions about why porn taste is so potentially devastating to leak, we don't deserve privacy.

Besides, it's not like "leaking" of this information would lead to a public index of who is watching what. And maybe it should, I'm no longer sure.

wkat42423• 1 year ago

I love the way you use the term POV so much. I see what you're doing there ;)

SecretDreams• 1 year ago

Hell, I think even social media has a drug-like effect best kept from minors.

I'd venture to guess the exposure to social media is far more harmful than porn, but I could be out to lunch as to how much kids are looking at porn??

williamdclt• 1 year ago

Fleeting, largely-unconsidered thought: given teenagers _will_ look for porn, that I can’t reliably be prevented and that some porn is worse than other, could/should we have a category of porn that can be accessed _for teenagers_ (>15yo for example)?

A category where there has to be no violence, no degradation, decent representation of sexualities/races/body types, no incest etc etc…

Basically give enough to teenagers that they’re satisfied enough with it without having to look elsewhere and be exposed to the worse stuff.

Doesn’t sound entirely like a bad idea

oersted2• 1 year ago

This is a reasonable take, and there is strong precedent that it can work.

In Germany, the drinking age for beer and similar lower alcohol drinks is 16 instead of 18, and it has a big impact in preventing teenagers from binge drinking vodka and such.

In the Netherlands, beer and wine are readily available in every supermarket, but you really need to get out of your way to get harder alcohol at designated dispensaries or liquor stores manned by a clerk.

Similarly, the laws on drugs make a significant distinction between softer drugs like weed (not legalised despite stereotypes, but tolerated) and harder drugs like heroin. There was a massive heroin addiction epidemic in the 70s, and such methods were remarkably effective in combating that.

oersted2• 1 year ago

I don't disagree, but let's not forget that there is a significant difference with main things that are age-gated right now: alcohol, tobacco, driving...

It's not just about addiction or mental health, it's a whole different ballgame. These things carry big real-world physical risks, potentially deadly. Minors literally have different brain chemistries as they develop, and drugs can cause long-lasting effects unlike in adults.

Even gambling is not age-gated as strictly, with massive potential negative impacts to your livelyhood.

For the rest of things that might cause some psychological harm (maybe, hard to verify), like movies or videogames, we just have recommendations and some light barriers. Elevating porn to the top category is therefore quite a significant move, it is not the same.

numpad0• 1 year ago

Porn just isn’t a necessity even if some folks really enjoy it.

So isn't speech! Not everyone need privileges to talk about human rights or democracy. China's doing fine with neither(officially).

By the way, unofficially and anecdotally, coastal Chinese prostitution as well as porn seem to be getting bigger and more wicked faster. I wonder which comes first: puritanism, or erosion of industrial base. This whole slow movement could be just a symptom than culprit.

const_cast4• 1 year ago

Minors already aren't allowed to look at porn, and in fact they're not even allowed to access the internet.

I mean, when you go to an ISP to purchase an internet plan, they're going to ask you for ID and they're going to verify your age. It is then the parents responsibility to monitor that. If parents choose to turn around and grant their kids free access, then fair's fair.

Just think about alcohol and tobacco. The clerk is going to ask for your ID in the store, sure. But they're not gonna follow you home and make sure you don't slip your kid a cig or a bottle. That's not their responsibility, their transaction is done. And, actually, in a lot of places this is explicitly allowed. I think in most US states minors can drink under adult supervision.

So, if we want to solve this, we need to aim at the parents and convincing them (as well as giving them more tools) to do this reasonably. These identity solutions are a tool, but IMO, a rather blunt and unnecessary tool.

theshrike79• 1 year ago

The problem is that the legit sites will implement this. These sites have actual takedown processes and they verify uploaders (to a degree) etc.

The ones that don't ... will have the nasty stuff.

tossandthrow6• 1 year ago

Just make it illegal to serve the stuff to minors, and start supplying heavy fines when done so.

Let the industry be innovative and find solutions themselves to stay compliant.

It is not regulators responsibility to solve problems.

iknowstuff3• 1 year ago

Idk dude haven’t we all watched it since age 13 ish and turned out fine?

tossandthrow6• 1 year ago

Given the massive levels of low libido, erectile dysfunction, reduced birth rates, anxiety, depression etc. I don't think it is fair to says that people turns out fine.

The question is what role porn has.

Regardless, my comment was more aimed at how we regulate than the effects of porn.

theoreticalmal• 1 year ago

No. No we have not turned out fine

meepmorp• 1 year ago

not a comment on you specifically but - ime - when someone says they turned out fine, it's a strong signal that they didn't

throwaway3663632• 1 year ago

distribution mechanisms and the style of porn available has significantly changed in the past 20 or so years (when i was 13). so its not fair to compare then and now. the current situation has some noteable differences.

no phones back then to stream full videos in the playground or on the school bus or in lessons or at work in the toilets or on a bus to work etc etc. needed a laptop or a porn mag or your parents being out to use the computer.

there was been a significant shift towards SEO based production as well around 10/15 years ago. which meant more “stepdad and stepdaughter” [0] or “stepbrother and stepsister” videos. there’s the more hardcore stuff i.e. where a woman is being slapped, thrown around, choked and generally treated pretty nastily. that used to be “niche” stuff, now it’s fairly mainstream [1]

i don’t remember seeing either of those ^ classes of porn when i was 13.

[0]: there was a brief period where it was “dad and daughter” filling up all the feeds on every site and the sites quickly noped the fuck outta that and forced video name changes (whether it was regulatory or not i dunno)

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56640178

—

A veteran porn star said in a recent documentary about porn that, in the 1990s, it constituted “making love on a bed,” and having “lovey dovey sex”. But in 2010, researchers analysed more than 300 porn scenes and found that 88% contained physical aggression. Most of the perpetrators were male, and their targets female, and the latter’s most common response to aggression was to show pleasure or respond neutrally.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20170926-is-porn-harmfu...

rvnx6• 1 year ago

More simple (because not on a case-by-case basis): put a blanket ban on porn online, and create rooms where you can watch porn (like in Japan: ビデオボックス), and these rooms should verify identity and age. This will also prevent people from watching porn at work, while strolling at the park, in the queue at the supermarket or while driving a Tesla.

Basically a cleaner society.

ShrootBuck• 1 year ago

I actually really like this idea of letting regulators dictate the "what" instead of the "how"

tsimionescu• 1 year ago

That is very much the opposite of good governance. Instituting mandates with no rules for how to comply with them leaves the door open to abuse on all sides.

For example, a malicious inspector could open the site and pass any verifications in place while a minor is in the room, notice that the site did not prevent the minor from seeing the content, and fine the site.

Conversely, the site could claim they have found some fancy data analysis method to prevent access to minors in the wild while simply implementing some "we believe you are minor" page to be randomly generated once in a while, and claim in court that they have done their best and at most a small handful of children are getting around their complex protections.

tossandthrow6• 1 year ago

That is not correct.

In law making the is a concept of standards VS. Rules - look it up.

"you can not serve explicit erotica material to people under the age of 18" is very much a rule. It is super easy to asses whether you do it.

The law should not mandate how to comply.

Law makers do not care if you refrain from pressing the speeder or drive an under powered car.

brookst2• 1 year ago

Not a fan of selective enforcement. We all know there is no way to prevent a technically savvy 17 year old from accessing porn. And “everyone’s breaking the law, we’ll decide who to prosecute based on who they are” is a terrible way to regulate.

UnreachableCode2• 1 year ago

I'm thinking for many less savvy websites, a VPN will get around this instantly?

rvnx6• 1 year ago

Not so sure, https://www.pcgamesn.com/vpn/sports-site-block

If that ruling worked, they can extend it.

fbn79• 1 year ago

How much time do you think will take for teenagers to discover VPNs? Another impossible to enforce law made by people who don't know what they're doing.

diggan8• 1 year ago

If you give them a reason: Yesterday

If there is no need: Never

rvnx6• 1 year ago

Only if sanctions are too weak.

ty68535• 1 year ago

I wonder if France has 'strict liability' like the US, where it doesn't matter one iota for minor sex crimes that they had a passport, DL and their own mother claiming they are 18 and you did all the due diligence in the world, if they were all lying and the documentation is a perfect fake or even just incorrect it is zero defense and straight to jail.

Zak3• 1 year ago

This is a misunderstanding of US law.

Most criminal laws are state laws, so you'll find at least[0] 50 different versions of any given crime. In some states, there is strict liability for an adult having sex with a minor (usually called something like sexual abuse of a minor; formerly often called statutory rape). In other states, the examples you gave would be valid defenses[1].

Laws requiring age verification have their own intent requirements. The Texas age verification law only applies when sites "knowingly and intentionally" distribute pornography[2] and imposes civil liability for sites that do so and fail to require either "digital identification" or use a commercial age verification service. There doesn't seem to be any specific requirement that they not make mistakes; it would probably default to negligence if it ended up in court.

[0] Some US territory is not inside any state, and there are federal laws that come into play when an act crosses state lines.

[1] Here's a statute from Alaska to that effect: https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#11.41.445

[2] https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/html/HB01181H...

closewith9• 1 year ago

But it will stop many children who don't have the ability to install a VPN on their locked down Android or iOS device. This specific French law is a response to research that showed that 20% of French 10-year-olds access porn monthly, which caused a national scandal.

It can also force pressure on the sites to more carefully filter minors to both avoid other jurisdictions following suite and criminal charges if continuing access to found to be granted French children.

Another impossible to enforce law made by people who don't know what they're doing.

A law doesn't have to be 100% inescapable to be effective. In fact, this is an extremely enforceable law, and it is you who fail to see the application, either through ignorance or arrogance.

miohtama• 1 year ago

You do not need stop VPN or have age verification websites. You can just lock down Android/iOS/Edge against a blacklist of porn sites. Many providers are selling this as a service.

But it would be up to the parents to do this.

robertlagrant3• 1 year ago

Pornhub’s internal data from 2024 shows France is its second-largest market after the United States.

Wow - that is crazy for a country a 5th the population of the US.

intrasight• 1 year ago

Perhaps was a per capita statistic

diggan8• 1 year ago

Luckily for us, Pornhub publishes a report each year, here's the report for 2024: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review#top-20-...

In this section we dive deeper into the Top 20 Countries by order of highest traffic.

With France ranked #2, which makes it seem like it's total traffic, not per capita.

wkat42423• 1 year ago

Here in Europe porn is not really viewed as this deeply shameful thing it is in the US. It's something regular people enjoy and not just men.

robertlagrant3• 1 year ago

Germany has 30% more people than France. Germany is in Europe. It's still surprising, if you believe the "Europe is homogenous" thing you're espousing.

ajuc• 1 year ago

Instead, users must verify their age using a credit card or a government-issued ID. This check must be carried out by an external service, not the porn site itself.
This system, referred to as “double anonymity”, means the porn site receives only a yes-or-no confirmation that the user is of legal age. The age-check provider knows who the user is, but not which sites they visit.

Seems like a reasonable solution.

The only remainig problem (provider knowing that you watch some porn even if not - exactly what kind) could be solved by requiring some other websites to verify age too. For example horror movies or liveleak videos.

Illniyar• 1 year ago

This system, referred to as “double anonymity”, means the porn site receives only a yes-or-no confirmation that the user is of legal age. The age-check provider knows who the user is, but not which sites they visit.

I don't know the specifics, but seems very reasonable if implemented matches the promise. If it's required also for some non porn sites (social media? gambling maybe), there should be no stigma attached either.

goda902• 1 year ago

Not sure if it's just a "trust us" thing, but a way to accomplish this would be anonymous credentials.https://csrc.nist.gov/presentations/2022/stppa4-anonym-cred

Arnt2• 1 year ago

Is it financially viable? Do you happen to know roughly how much these services cost?

Because it's easy to say "just use that third-party service" but if the cost of that service is well above the profit margin of a porn site, the site cannot really do it.

palata11• 1 year ago

I think it could be a government website that gives you an anonymous token. The government checks your age from your identity (some "eID") and gives you a token that is "difficult" for them to track (see e.g. Privacy Pass [1]).

Then you pass this token to your porn website and they can verify that this token means that you have the required age. But the porn website cannot identify you.

Not sure about the price of such a service, but it would be paid by the public.

[1] https://privacypass.github.io

palata11• 1 year ago

I believe that the EFF talks about it here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/age-verification-europ...

They question the quality of the Zero Knowledge Proofs (something like "it's still new") and raise what I find the more interesting question: "who will be left out?". Not only for porn, that is.

ethbr1• 1 year ago

To the "Who will be left out?" question, mandates like these should come with statutory {must issue} requirements.

Much of the Secure Boot crap could have been avoided if all devices had been required to have a user-accessible mode that trusted a must-issue signer of last resort, and that signer was broadly available.

E.g. LetsEncrypt for devices

If on the one hand we want to improve security via encryption/verfication, then on the other hand we must remove the governments' and corporations' abilities to abuse it.

close042• 1 year ago

This check must be carried out by an external service, not the porn site itself
the porn site receives only a yes-or-no confirmation that the user is of legal age

What does the external service receive?

palata11• 1 year ago

There are cryptographic ways to do that (e.g. [1]), making sure (or at least "difficult") that the external website cannot track you.

[1] https://privacypass.github.io

kennu• 1 year ago

At minimum, the government gets a "ping" when identified citizens visit adult sites requiring the age check, so they can keep a record. In worse scenarios, maybe some identifier leaks through that can also identify which site they visited. And of course, the identification apps can be hacked through supply chain attacks etc.

rvnx6• 1 year ago

There is a very possible attack. Open a porn website, buy ad traffic in France, once users are here, claim identity needs to be verified. In the background, start the process to open a bank account in one of these online banks and act as a relay in the verification process.

fulafel• 1 year ago

Without knowing the specifics, this is not necessarily the case. It could be implemented without needing to ping "the government". As a strawman idea, there could be a monthly refreshed distributed database of booleans per citizen identity and accessed through a keyed hash.

Aissen• 1 year ago

No, that would defeat the entire point, and any such system should be fought indeed. It's possible to build systems that explicitly do not have this property.

Zak3• 1 year ago

It seems to me a much better way would be to require porn sites to check for an HTTP header that says the user is underage, and to require major consumer OS vendors to implement it.

There are minimal privacy implications; it could also be applied to privacy laws and the like protecting minors; it would be trivial for sites to comply.

hiatus• 1 year ago

At the very least, wouldn't the age verification site know the API caller requesting verification? How else would it send a callback indicating that the user was or was not of legal age?

agilob• 1 year ago

Do they expect porn sites with revenge porn, pirated content to suddenly be implementing national ID age checks? Or do we expect these websites not implement the ID checks, making them easier to access by the kids?

porridgeraisin• 1 year ago

A credit card, or some money related government ID is what should be used for checking. If you make a separate ID for this, or use something "not risky to hand out", you'll just be creating a business opportunity for adults selling "verification services" using their government ID, for other (potentially) kids to make use of.

If you verify using say, bank credentials, though, then those adults can't do the same since they risk losing money. Minimum balance checks are also necessary so it's not a "nothing to lose" situation.

Important to set incentives right when doing bans like this. Historically, it's been implemented very badly wherever it's been tried.

Of course an outright ban is also not a problem IMO, but many differ on that.

goda902• 1 year ago

A credit card means 0 privacy protection though. The website and the payment processor know exactly who you are and what you are doing.

diggan8• 1 year ago

The website and the payment processor know exactly who you are and what you are doing

As far as I understand, the implementation would let the porn website verify you're above 18, and the payment processor would only know that you interacted with a age verification service to verify your age, but not specifically what website is asking you to verify your age. That would seem good enough in terms of privacy, unless I'm missing something?

zamadatix3• 1 year ago

We recently added a similar law in the US state I'm in. I'm (obviously) an adult who could just do the verification but just go to other sites instead. If that's me now I can't imagine how little of a shit 16 year old me would have given.

I'm not a fan of these types of laws in the first place but, if we're going to have them, punishing distribution but not consumption will do nothing. On the other hand punishing consumption via law is just silly enough to most people (for now at least) that we end up with this law which only makes it inconvenient for adults to access porn.

palata11• 1 year ago

punishing distribution but not consumption will do nothing

I'm not so sure. Say you want to prevent children from accessing social media. Would you fine a child for that? Put them in jail?

On the other hand, it's pretty easy to ask Meta to verify the age. There are not a gazillion social medias out there: force them all to verify the age, and most children won't have access to them anymore.

zamadatix3• 1 year ago

As already stated, fining a child or sending them to jail for viewing porn would be silly. The point was, lacking the willingness to do that, having commercially operated porn sites verify ages does not actually prevent or disincentivize children from accessing porn. A good intent does not itself make a law effective, it has to be something you're willing to incentivise compliance with from those who'd be breaking it and children are not going to stop viewing porn because pornhub.com (or any other website) won't let them without a verification check.

The comparison to social media is a bit rough because the laws and focus there are around preventing children from creating accounts where their data is mined to be sold, the feeds are tailored to them, and their identities are publicly shared. The same laws do not actually attempt to prevent children without an account from viewing vacation photos. What applies in preventing account creation for social media does not necessarily apply to preventing content consumption itself in other cases.

david-gpu2• 1 year ago

I don't understand the logic of preventing minors from watching porn specifically, when they can easily find videos of people being beheaded, blown to bits, burned alive, etc.

I have never had flashbacks from watching porn, but there are things I saw, even on broadcast TV, that still send shivers down my spine.

I am disappointed to see fellow Europeans developing American-style "sex is bad, violence is entertaining" social customs.

closewith9• 1 year ago

I am disappointed to see fellow Europeans developing American-style "sex is bad, violence is entertaining" social customs.

Article 227-24 also covers violent videos of that ilk.

david-gpu2• 1 year ago

Thank you for providing information that I had not seen reported elsewhere. A quick look at the actual law confirms what you said.

I still would not lump pornography with gore and promotion of terrorism, but it is an improvement.

ghm2180• 1 year ago

Double anonymity seems as a great means for enforcing privacy in general for any data you generate taht you don't want other people to see.

Like in a location app on your phone generating (Lat Long) pairs. The app developer could just provide an inference engine running on a 3p trusted server to which an app developer has write only rights, e.g. a retrieval engine based on location — but cannot read. The user's app has read only rights — say get map tiles based on location.

Its just that this is not the universe we live in sadly...(Maybe the EU will become that)

DataDaemon• 1 year ago

No Fap Challenge in France!

Ekaros• 1 year ago

It will probably slow some.

But well distributing material via sneakernet is entirely possible and relatively cheap and easy. So after certain age they will get their hands on it.

And well, most will go to some other place that does not follow regulations. There is plenty of them and more will pop up.

9283409232• 1 year ago

I don't like that we are creating a society that removes accountability from parents. I do think parents are outgunned by tech companies but I also believe that parents have relinquished a lot of their responsibility in making sure their kids are not just doing whatever online.

Bender• 1 year ago

Age verification sites were never required. This is a new artificially created business model. There is no need for age verification on the server side. Parents of small children can handle it assuming minor changes or reverts to devices and some apps to look for the RTA header. The server or CDN need only let the client know it may contain adult and / or user generated content via one simple header. [1]

Not perfect, nothing ever is nor ever will be. Also never try to block teens, that is a foolish losing battle.

[1] https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single

tharmas• 1 year ago

Shouldn't the issue with porn be the people in those films are heavily exploited and most often abused and in some cases even worse. In particular women.

Why the absolute focus on demand side and none on the supply side?

I guess the issue is they just want to stop young people from seeing porn? That's it? That's all society is concerned about, regarding porn?