Tories plan credit card checks for porn websites from next year

I thought pornography was quite well moderated on YouTube? it is more the infeasibility of human checks on every single thing ever uploaded to the platform with easily falsified details such as content description etc, although machine learning etc. has helped. That is restricting freedom of information sharing and implementing gigantic costs if a public body is expected to regulate it instead of the private sector, who will always - always - put profit first, irrespective of mediocre fines and other action the state can take. You can block YouTube for example for children if you choose, unless you value its educational content more - in which case replace it with a subscribed series or content on something like Apple TV or Netflix, or download, screen and manage content locally on a service such as Plex. No child needs unfettered access to limitless media. If your child cries because they cannot access YouTube, tough gooseberry fool. If they then try to access YouTube anywhere, you arrive at the chicken and egg problem where regulation is ultimately a fallacy anyway as any moderately intelligent child can get what they want regardless of what any parent or their friends' parents' do about it.

The other aspect is how harmful exactly is seeing fleeting images of naked people having sexual intercourse to chidlren? Do they understand the imagery? Are they unaware of the fact that sexual organs and copulation between opposite (or same sex) genders of mammals exists and such displays can be intimate or graphic in nature (which isn't even exclusive to human beings).

I genuinely don't understand this concern. If a child finds rape porn - which actively searching for pornography in my lifetime I have literally never found - that is extremely unfortunate. A parent can monitor internet history and confront the child and implement parental controls on platforms where they may have discovered it, but I can't honestly imagine it coming to this point if they are not already trying to monitor internet use, restrict use to certain times during the day where it can be monitored, etc. So many children access the internet via smart devices with very comprehensive parental controls on them and they typically do this in a social manner in the living room et - does a child need private access to a device like this? I don't think so. Maybe part of the problem is parents equipping their children with iPhones at ages below 10 etc. that now function in the same way jewellery and non-uniform items do as status symbols in schools, which is a frankly stupid thing to give in to. I find many parents are much more willing to satiate their child for their own convenience, to get them off their back, than practice parenting. This much has been obvious since the days of parents providing unsuitable video games to children and a general lack of awareness about what their children consume. Then suddenly it comes as a giant shock to remember porn exists and children can find it with a keyword search. In which case remove or restrict the access, don't remove or restrict the access for the whole of society. It's absurdly heavy handed.

If a parent contacts some kind of third sector or government advice outlet because they discovered their child was looking at pornography they should be referred to educational resources or provided with appropriate software solutions to make an informed decisive action themselves. The origin of their concern is not the child or the government or even (I believe) wider society, and so they should take ownership of their concerns and act upon them. Not rely on the state to do it for them. I find that pathetic, honestly.

They can't even begin to justify this given that you already have to opt in to not have Cameron's shitty childblock

Irene Demova wrote:They can't even begin to justify this given that you already have to opt in to not have Cameron's shitty childblock

They don't really care who watches porn, this is just one step towards their goal of being able to control the news/media on the internet as they already do with TV and newspapers.

Starting with porn let's them get some of the controls in place under the illusion of protecting children, but then these controls will continue to expand until they are able to control the news that most people view.

I doubt they will be successful but that is what they are aiming for.

Jenuall, you seem to support the idea of credit card verification on porn websites because your daughter came across inappropriate content on YouTube and the soft play centre played inappropriate music? Neither of those things will be solved by making adults put in credit card details on porn sites.

Things like YouTube and the soft play centre should be more moderated, but those take internal company moderation and/or parental supervision, not government backed age verification for adult sites.

That YouTube don't really do anything about those dodgy versions of Peppa Pig and whatever else means that as per usual the Government are targeting the wrong thing...

Moggy wrote:Jenuall, you seem to support the idea of credit card verification on porn websites because your daughter came across inappropriate content on YouTube and the soft play centre played inappropriate music? Neither of those things will be solved by making adults put in credit card details on porn sites.

Things like YouTube and the soft play centre should be more moderated, but those take internal company moderation and/or parental supervision, not government backed age verification for adult sites.

He explicitly states that he doesn't support this idea, just that measures of some sort need to be taken.

Rocsteady wrote:

Moggy wrote:Jenuall, you seem to support the idea of credit card verification on porn websites because your daughter came across inappropriate content on YouTube and the soft play centre played inappropriate music? Neither of those things will be solved by making adults put in credit card details on porn sites.

Things like YouTube and the soft play centre should be more moderated, but those take internal company moderation and/or parental supervision, not government backed age verification for adult sites.

He explicitly states that he doesn't support this idea, just that measures of some sort need to be taken.

He hardly explicitly states that:

This is not necessarily the best solution but to do nothing would be to betray those coming after us ...

He's saying there is probably a better solution but doesn't say what that is. But something has to be done! Which sounds like he's broadly supporting this until a better idea comes along.

Fair enough, I was just going off his post on the previous page - "As I said in my previous post - I don't think this is the right solution."

Moggy wrote:

Rocsteady wrote:

Moggy wrote:Jenuall, you seem to support the idea of credit card verification on porn websites because your daughter came across inappropriate content on YouTube and the soft play centre played inappropriate music? Neither of those things will be solved by making adults put in credit card details on porn sites.

Things like YouTube and the soft play centre should be more moderated, but those take internal company moderation and/or parental supervision, not government backed age verification for adult sites.

He explicitly states that he doesn't support this idea, just that measures of some sort need to be taken.

He hardly explicitly states that:

This is not necessarily the best solution but to do nothing would be to betray those coming after us ...

He's saying there is probably a better solution but doesn't say what that is. But something has to be done! Which sounds like he's broadly supporting this until a better idea comes along.

Yeah - I thought I'd made it clear in both my posts that I don't think this is the right thing to do, apologies if that didn't come across. For clarity I think that this is neither a good solution, nor one that is even remotely achievable/ enforceable.

Lagamorph wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I have implemented as many controls and restrictions as possible at home - it simply is not possible to stop access to harmful content. My daughter should be able to watch videos on the YouTube kids app without accidentally stumbling onto videos of Anna and Elsa from Frozen taking it in turns to do each other with a strap on.

It's entirely possible though by simply supervising your childrens internet activity.

And this is something I absolutely do, but it's a difficult situation to manage. It takes less than a second to tap on the wrong thumbnail and for your child to be exposed to something inappropriate, which is what happened in the instance I described. Obviously I turned it off almost instantly but that doesn't stop the fact that my child has now seen something I would rather they hadn't, and should arguably not have been made available to them through that service.

Karl wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I have implemented as many controls and restrictions as possible at home - it simply is not possible to stop access to harmful content. My daughter should be able to watch videos on the YouTube kids app without accidentally stumbling onto videos of Anna and Elsa from Frozen taking it in turns to do each other with a strap on.

I might suggest your real problem appears to be with online broadcasters who advertise themselves as 'for kids' showing explicit content. If so, sure: it would seem to me reasonable that there could be a legal responsibility on those content providers to curate the media stored and ensure no inappropriate content is shown. By contrast, actual porn sites aren't for kids, are easier to block automatically (I hear most of the large ones enter themselves voluntarily into parental controls databases), and are IMO far more difficult to 'stumble across accidentally', so they aren't relevant to this problem.

I'm sorry you've had negative experiences online with your daughter. I don't think placing additional legal burdens on the interaction between adults and porn websites actually helps in the scenario you outlined. I have no problems with more red tape and responsibilities for websites which explicitly advertise themselves as being 'for kids', but the responsibility to ensure a young child is only using those 'for kids' websites still rests with the parent, as they are the one providing access to the Internet in the first place.

Yep - you're right, I guess my point is more to do with content regulation on sites like YouTube rather than a direct complaint about internet pornography. I guess my response was prompted as I see a tendency for some people to instantly, and almost dogmatically reject any attempt to regulate or in some way police the internet and I think this harms the ability to have any reasonable discussion about these things.

Like I said in my previous posts it feels like a kind of frontier mentality, the internet is still a relatively new medium and much like other new frontiers there are those who want to see it remain free from oversight because it is beneficial to them personally. A slightly tangetial example, but take things like Deliveroo and Uber, the operators of these services were benefiting hugely from the lack of control over employment law, proper screening of employees etc. but that rightly that situation is now being brought under control. Similarly with things like airbnb, because this is a new cul-de-sac in the world of hospitality it is free from many of the restrictions placed on bricks and mortar institutions like hotels and b&b's, but from a consumer perspective it doesn't feel unreasonable that questions be asked as to whether this is right.

Jenuall wrote:Yep - you're right, I guess my point is more to do with content regulation on sites like YouTube rather than a direct complaint about internet pornography. I guess my response was prompted as I see a tendency for some people to instantly, and almost dogmatically reject any attempt to regulate or in some way police the internet and I think this harms the ability to have any reasonable discussion about these things.

Like I said in my previous posts it feels like a kind of frontier mentality, the internet is still a relatively new medium and much like other new frontiers there are those who want to see it remain free from oversight because it is beneficial to them personally. A slightly tangetial example, but take things like Deliveroo and Uber, the operators of these services were benefiting hugely from the lack of control over employment law, proper screening of employees etc. but that rightly that situation is now being brought under control. Similarly with things like airbnb, because this is a new cul-de-sac in the world of hospitality it is free from many of the restrictions placed on bricks and mortar institutions like hotels and b&b's, but from a consumer perspective it doesn't feel unreasonable that questions be asked as to whether this is right.

I agree with you there Jenuall, the Internet shouldn't be immune from sensible, proportionate legislation. I'm not against regulations involving the Internet in principle, I just want them to make practical sense and solve the problems they set out to solve. Our problem at the moment is that legislators don't understand the net well enough to make reasonable laws. I think this will change in time as a new generation of politicians who are more familiar with the web move up the ranks.

True, as this latest attempt reasserts there is little understanding of the fundamental workings of the internet from those responsible for drawing up legislation. Like anything I guess there is a tendency to try and copy and paste existing solutions onto new problems, or to rush into implementing something before appropriate analysis of the situation has been performed.

Apologies to all for somewhat hijacking the thread from its original purpose!

My main concern is sheer cost, and whether that outweighs any benefit to child safety that, in my obvious liberal perspective, is not as perverted as the tabloids would make out. As to whether or not a parent decides to allow their child liberal access to media of whatever kind, or raise them in a black box, that is their pejorative and not governments'.

Well ISP's know absolutely everything you're doing anyway, so I don't see why it wouldn't be a much better idea to confirm your age to them. Having to confirm your credit card amongst other things to some seriously dodgy porn sites is a disaster waiting to happen. They're not all semi-legit like BangBros (who of course were hacked relatively recently).

Personally I think the government should take responsibility for this and create their own citizen validation system and agree to pay compensation when it gets hacked.