and fuck the UK goverment
The world and the internet are so low on trust, I kind of wish there was some entity we trusted.
Some website where you could upload a photo, and people would actually know for sure that all the site is going to do is compare the photo to an ID, verify you’re over a certain age, and send a simple boolean “Yes” to the website that wanted to know if you were over-age. Or, to somehow know that your account is human and not a duplicate.
We could do a lot with that, but as it stands, no person or entity can ever really be trusted with that kind of data; I think most wouldn’t even trust the same governments that issue those IDs.
It’s simple, librarians or even gas station clerks look at your license and they give you a code that you can use idk 10 times for account signups.
No scanning or tracking of who is requesting. Just make it an ID check like buying cigarettes
deleted by creator
This is why we can’t have nice things.
deleted by creator
The government already knows who you are! No need for a third party
Just give you a fucking oauth login and have websites use that for age checks.
I wonder if they pay per verification. If so, I wonder how hard it would be to set up a script to just keep submitting new requests a few hundred or thousands of times a day with random photos…
Random AI photos. That would be funny in theory, but they’re just using AI to check the ages anyway.
Sure, it’s not about wasting their time; this says they’re using a 3rd party service to verify, so theoretically they’re paying for that service. It’s about wasting their money.
Good point. I just think that if reddit would see an uptick in POC and old people with these random AI photos, it would be a weird and hilarious thing to happen to them. Spez is in awe of a nazi (musk) and old people would send their advertising into a tailspin.
That is, I believe, a British law that they’re following for users that appear to be in the UK. Not like they’re going to just disregard the law.
searches
Yeah, the Online Safety Act 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023
Probably should be mostly irritated with Parliament.
I expect that using a VPN that terminates in another country will avoid it, though I bet that then you can’t do things like buy Reddit Gold, if that’s still a thing.
If you don’t mind my hijacking, I’ve seen the term “kagis” used a number of times on Lemmy, possibly only by you but I think also others. Based on the usage, I assumed it was a Latin word to indicate some sort of transition or side-bar, but it seems to just translate to “you are”, which doesn’t make sense in context. Can I ask what it means?
Kati is a new-ish search engine that is popular among Lemmy users. Those users are trying to get it to catch on, and have started using kagi as a verb, the same way people say “let me google that really quick.”
It honestly feels a lot like when Microsoft was trying to get Bing and their phone OS to take off, and started slipping product placement into popular TV shows. There was a brief time period in American TV, where characters had the disgusting line of “Bing it!” Usually while showing the Bing home page on a Microsoft Phone. It was just blatant ham-fisted cringey product placement.
Yeah I’ve noticed this user basically inserts a “kagis” into like 2/3 of their comments, it always slightly irks me because it makes me feel like I’m getting advertised at. I’ve never felt the need to proclaim which search engine(s) I’ve used to research any particular comment on Lemmy, and I find it odd that the one person who does so regularly is doing it for a paid service.
Apart from that, their comments are usually pretty good, so I’m not accusing them of shilling or anything, but I find it super peculiar.
It makes me sad when I see the name because Kagi used to be a payments processor for shareware and essentially a predecessor to modern app stores…but before enshittification.
Does “googled” make you feel advertised at?
Not particularly, and while I admit this can seem hypocritical, the verb “to google” has just become a generic trademark.
When someone says band-aid, or kleenex, or jello, I think of bandages, tissues, or gelatin desserts, not of a specific brand of these products. Same goes with “googled”, it just means “searched the web” now rather than specifically using Google.
What about ye olde “googles on ddg”?
There’s a search engine named Kagi. It’s basically the equivalent of “googles” but for a different search engine.
Thanks. The usage now makes sense, albeit superfluous.
I’d add that if you pick Ireland as the VPN exit country, it will have notable benefits:
-
Sites that pick language based on IP will probably do English.
-
It probably won’t add much latency.
-
Ireland isn’t too bonkers and hopefully won’t have any large collection of online laws of their own that become an irritant.
-
Because Ireland has a considerably smaller population than the UK, if people in the UK do this at scale for pornography, it will make the Irish statistically look like absolutely indefatigable horndogs, which I think will be pretty funny on visualizations.
Pornhub stats: Irish +28572%
Indefatigable horndogs best band name calling dibs now
Please make the music ska. A band with that name, playing literal horns, creating a fast, upbeat tempo? It would be beautiful.
the Irish statistically look like absolutely indefatigable horndogs
What did you think that “wild rover” they keep singing about was? 😉
-
In this one instance I’ll give Reddit a pass. This is 100% a fuck the UK government moment
Wear King Charles mask and take a selfie.
What’s preventing you from uploading a random photo for that estimate age from selfie button?
You can’t upload, only use the camera
Nobody has created some sort of fake virtual camera thing? Like it appears in device manager as a real webcam, but the output is altered?
I’d assume that this is something that can be most-easily bypassed at the browser level if a site can request access to a camera.
I don’t think that any trusted-to-the-camera hardware stack exists today.
But at an OS level…
I dunno about Windows, but Linux can do virtual video-4-linux devices, which is probably how the OS exposes a camera to a browser on Linux.
https://github.com/v4l2loopback/v4l2loopback
This module allows you to create “virtual video devices”. Normal (v4l2) applications will read these devices as if they were ordinary video devices, but the video will not be read from e.g. a capture card but instead it is generated by another application.
Yes of course they have like sparkocam or manycam and of course the mentioned below v4l devices on linux
What if your PC has no camera?
Hold up a photo of any random schmoe?
Have you never done one of these for an ID check? Doesn’t work like that, it will likely ask you to turn your head so it can take a “3D” scan.
I never have had to do one of these, and I promise I’m not deliberately trying to ask stupid questions. Would this system be fooled by holding up a mannequin head?
Reads like more material for the Palantir machine.
Lol yeah I’m not doing that. VPN all the way.
Today I’m french.
Tomorrow, who knows?
The possibilities are endless.
Too bad VPN server addresses are on-sight to reddit’s IP blocking strategy for years now. For whatever good internet choice you make, reddit reciprocates with an equally bad one
Blocking VPNs from posting or vviewing content too?
Remember when you didn’t even need an email address to sign up for reddit?
If I need to look at that site, my LibRedirect extension sends me to a privacy focused mirror
Mullvad has couple of USA exits that don’t get blocked by Reddit. Texas and D.C., I think.
so does nord but to me the point of using a VPN is to get my traffic exit point out of the US and the other eyes countries
I usually use US because I like the localization of websites more that way.
What’s funny about that is the VPN I use I saw advertised on Reddit. I wonder if these companies know that they ban users for using their products? Well I guess they don’t really don’t care.
Other companies: Thank you for buying from our sponsors! Here’s a code for 15% off!
Reddit: You bought from our sponsors? Lol, you’re banned.
Damn, the website seems to be “with persona dot com” and holy fucking corpo.
I say we all stay off the corporate internet and just come to places like this. Usenet is still a thing, but it’s all us binary kids now. Maybe we could go back to how it was in the '90s and actually chat on the platform. There’s IRC instead of Discord, message boards instead of Facebook.
I’m pretty sure Gen Z and Gen Alpha are not going to be using Facebook, Message boards or anything else from a previous era.
Chances are they will find simple and effective ways to bypass censorship.
but it’s all us binary kids now.
It took me a second to realize what you meant. My first thought was, “Wait, like, binary genders? Cis-gendered people?” Then I remembered binary code exists and I laughed at myself.
haha, yeah. Like that other poster said spam was running wild but all the old heads were blaming us “binary kids” for “killing usenet” with our large files.
Usenet is still a thing, but it’s all us binary kids now. Maybe we could go back to how it was in the '90s and actually chat on the platform.
People stopped using Usenet for discussion in large part because of overwhelming spam problems and a lack of infrastructure to mitigate it.
You could maybe build some sort of system to mitigate that.
-
Maybe automated text classification is good enough to do on a distributed level, on client machines, now. Problem is that automated text generation to try to defeat it has also probably improved, and I’d tend to bet on the spammers having the advantage.
-
Maybe an out-of-band mechanism to generate information about posts would work. Have Usenet clients support pulling a database of scores for current posts in a group. Like, have some server(s) that generates various types of scores (advertising, flameware, etc) text scores for posts. Can incorporate various human moderation in that scoring, maybe let an end user subscribe to one or more “moderators”, which I understand BlueSky does something like.
Honestly, though, the Threadiverse mostly does what I want as a distributed discussion forum. I’m not sure what large benefits Usenet brings to the table relative to it.
There’s infrastructure for posting large binaries, which the Threadiverse doesn’t really have short of (relatively small) image posting, but servers propagating the (large)
alt.binarieshierarchy plus Usenet’s bandwidth-heavy “broadcast” style of post propagation is also what drove up the cost of running Usenet servers and forced them to generally go commercial. Eternal-september.org is one of the very few remaining free-as-in-gratis Usenet servers, and they don’t propagatealt.binaries. And I’d expect that Parliament would crack down on commercial Usenet operators if the Act doesn’t already do so and Usenet sees a major surge in popularity in the UK for the pornography that this is trying to block; payment processors are necessary for commercial service, and easy for countries to lean on as leverage. If you want the ability to post large binaries in a state-censorship-resistant way, I’d probably…hmm. If a state wants to leverage its control of the network infrastructure to block access, it can make access pretty difficult. Maybe use Hyphanet (previously known as Freenet) for the files, then use magnet-style links on a more latency-friendly forum for discussion.-
Message boards are closing or blocking the UK because of this. We even lost lemmy.zip in the UK. But the way lemmy works means you could access it from other instances. Probably illegal in the UK but as long as people are ok with spinning up instances and telling the UK to get fucked it will probably be fine.
Unpopular opinion: this is a good thing - there should be more barriers to porn. I know some teens will find a way around it, but it has been proven to affect the developing brain negatively and normalizes some really harmful behaviour.
Respect for sharing your opinions and backing it up.
That said, it’s not a question about whether porn is bad; it’s a question of whether we should normalize providing your ID online. I don’t think the risks involved with deanonymization and ID fraud are worth it.
This is the most convincing argument for me. Despite the risks, I know these sorts of anonymous confirmation systems already exist.
Most VPN services tout “zero logs”, and many back it up with audits. We can demand the same from our government.
I’m sure drivers licenses and social security numbers made people uncomfortable too when they were rolled out, but they certainly improved our lives.
A slippery slope is a logical fallacy - we can impose just enough oversight to be helpful AND curtail overreach.
Then the parent(s) need to be parent(s) by monitoring their childrens online activity if they feel theyll have access to content they shouldnt. They should also explain what porn is, why they shouldnt view it, and what about it is harmful to prepare them for when they will, not might, but will encounter it so they have the tools and understanding necessary to handle and process what they are seeing. Porn exist. Its not going anywhere anytime soon. Making it harder to access for everyone isnt going to make it go away, stop witty teens from finding it, or stop content that slips through the moderation cracks in spaces that dont allow pornagraphic content.
Im not advocating for more porn or easier access to porn, but rather recognition that the parent(s) are responsible for their childrens wellbeing, education, and preparedness for adulthood where they will absolutely encounter adult content, online and off, regardless of if they voluntarily sought it out. Hiding it, pretending it doesnt exist, or avoiding the topic with them doesn’t prepare them for reality in adulthood where they are expected to be able to handle uncensored life.
Not to mention, as it was pointed out several times in the comments, an ID mandate for a website is extremely easy to circumvent with a vpn, something that is incredible easy to obtain and set up. The only way, in my opinion at least, to effectively stop children from accessing porn is for the parent(s) to monitor their online activity and educate them on what and why this content is not okay for them to view as a child.
The problem is that porn and self pleasure are taboo topics. Parents seem to want to make their kids stay kids when in reality they need guidance on how to be an adult.
Parents should monitor their children’s behaviour AND society should also impose barriers. The “everything is on parents” is the same personal responsibility myth that conservatives use to justify removing government assistance and cutting things such as healthcare and schooling.
On their way home from school children cannot enter a bar and be served alcohol - or at least this is exceedingly difficult. This has undoubtedly saved people from substance abuse. The same can be said here.
Of course parents should discuss porn and its problems, just as they would with alcohol and other vices.
Also, I have taught young people technology. VPNs are not as intuitive for the mobile generation. Many will not bother, or when they figure it out they will be much closer to a reasonable age.
The barriers do not have to be perfect, but they will help.
Society does impose those barriers in the form of dedicated spaces for adult, dedicated spaces for children, and content moderation in spaces where both audiences are welcomed. I also didnt and am not claiming “everything is on the parents” because i think thats a ridiculous and unrealistic stance. I fully support government assistance programs. What Im claiming is theres a level of responsibility on the parent(s) to monitor their children, regulate the content they consume, and educate them about the things they may encounter outside of their ability to process as children and im making this claim specifically about online porn/adult content, the topic of the main post and conversation.
Alcohol is a different topic despite the overlap in it being considered for adults. Correct, children cant just walk into a bar and order a drink, but they can walk in with their parent and that parent can order it on their behalf and give it to them. The law obviously varries from place to place, but in general in the U.S., its that a bar cant serve children, not that they cant let them enter. Ultimately, its up to the parent to decide if its something they feel their child is allowed to consume and the bar owner if they want to allow that child to enter.
I think at this point it’s clear to everyone that content moderation done by humans is not viable at scale. In this sense the web is unique, and would require a more dragnet solution, like ID verification. This is done in China already to much success to limit game time for youths.
A child would be turned away at a strip club, so perhaps this is a better analogy than a bar.
Still, if a parent wanted their children to browse an unfiltered Reddit they could provide their ID, and in this way we have a similar analogy.
A strip club isnt really a better analogy since there are no laws in the U.S. barring children from entering, but again, this cam varry depending on location. A parent can still take their child there if the establishment owner allows it.
Except we’re not talking about the physical world, we’re talking about the digital where a simple ID verification is a piss poor effort of a barrier. Which then leaves us with, what, exactly? The mass surveilance, a.i. facial recognition, and deep privacy invasion used in china? Because, im never going to agree with you on this, period. If a parent has a problem with their kid visiting spaces clearly labeled and marked as for adults, then that parent needs to be a parent and kick their kid off the internet.
Man kids should not be able to enter strip clubs, that’s insane to me.
The law doesn’t exist to raise your kids to do the right thing. This is a massive privacy violation.
Advertisers have already been mining porn habits on Reddit to sell to third parties. Browser fingerprinting and the Reddit app identify you. If you were concerned about privacy you would not be using Reddit.
But a lot of children and teens do use Reddit, and we should do our best to limit their access to pornography, especially when this data is indiscriminately collected about them too.
I seriously doubt this will do anything
The youth tend to be pretty good at pushing though boundaries and restrictions
There is no meaningful barrier to porn without changing what makes the internet the internet. There are only old tech illiterate law makers virtue signaling about their children while those children run circles around arbitrary shit like this
We can change anything, and if it makes society a better place then we actually have a moral obligation to try.
Im also not asking for perfectly monitored total surveillance. Just some barriers for surface level use.
A kid can camp outside a liquor store, offering strangers money to buy them alcohol. But this is difficult, and has a chance of having them turned in.
In the same way an ID pop-up can be circumvented with savvy use of VPNs etc., but it will easily block many of the youngest and most vulnerable. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective.
Making the internet a walled garden will NOT make society a better place.
This is just a lack of imagination on your part.
You could theoretically come up with a system that is both decentralized and able verify age using dedicated protocols/API. Just like how most Lemmy sites scan for and report CSAM.
Realistically, a kid that wants to see some funky stuff is going to find a way. Not every website cares about these stupid laws.
Instead of policing everyone, risking security leaks, and deanonymizing users, the parents who want to stop their children from viewing naked humans should just put up block lists on their network. It would filter a lot more than just adding age verification to reddit.
Also, most students have phones. The first time I saw someone I knew naked was some other kid showing me the photos she sent him. He and I weren’t even friends, we just, sat next to each other in class.
Sure, we all have anecdotes of finding porn on the internet before it was reasonable. And everyone can eventually find ways around barriers. I also remember someone young googling terms and not realizing there was a setting blocking content. They had given up.
Barriers can meaningfully delay, giving young people more time to mature before they are exposed to this content. If every social media platform implemented this, it would have a significant impact. That’s why the porn industry lobbies so hard against these sorts of laws.
I think many underestimate how damaging porn use actually is, how toxic the industry is, and how much of the traffic is generated by the underaged.
I found porn in the woods my dude - friend’s houses, parent’s stashes. It’s always been available, although not so readily.
While I tried to prevent access for my own kids also, I accepted that after a certain age they’re going to be interested and be able to find it. Their mother and I had some tangential talks about it with them and let them know it’s not realistic at all. As far as I know, everyone turned out okay. Normal lives and relationships and all.
I’m not convinced that whatever they found as they were growing up was as harmful as you’re making it sound. You’re making a lot of bold, unsourced claims. Although now that I think about it, I don’t know how you can ethically do a lot of research on the topic.
I believe a bigger topic, and one that plays into what you’re concerned about, is early use (especially unmonitored) of any networked computing devices. Maybe make smart phones or PCs adult only like alcohol, tobacco, or guns. If the family chooses to have one in the home it’s up to the parents to make it safe.
Instead of policing everyone, risking security leaks, and deanonymizing users, the parents who want to stop their children from viewing naked humans should just put up block lists on their network. It would filter a lot more than just adding age verification to reddit.
Or even better, parents could have conversations about sex instead of letting the kids get sex ed from porn.
Have you met some of these youth? They are never really stopped by restrictions. One person finds a way to bypass it and word spreads like wildfire.
What is worse is that the politicians have totally forgotten the typical behavior of youth. The are going to end up making porn seem really cool and rebellious which will increase porn addiction.
the law isn’t about access to porn it’s about stopping access to lgbtq spaces (and anything else the government doesn’t like)
If this is true, then this censorship is a terrible tragedy. I still would like government imposed ID age verification for porn though.
You can just use a different porn site, there are millions of them and someone who wants to find them (horny teenagers) will find them. I will let you figure out yourself if the content on those sites is less harmful. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
Yes, you probably could make access to those mutually exclusive, but why would they want to when the point IS blocking access to both? They might not say it outright, but there’s a reason they call it TERF Island and it ain’t because they love the LGBT community. This regressive view also goes hand in hand with villifying sex ed in general and it’s easy for them to correlate it without saying the quiet part out loud.
All this to say I and many, many people don’t trust the government to not abuse this and limit legitimate, lifesaving resources from being found by those that need them most.
Your intentions are good faith. The reality is that the government rarely does us the same favor nowadays.
Fuck off. Like, all the way off.
Does this get enforces with old.reddit.com?
Probably, if not the UK could sue them for tens of dollars.
What happens if everyone just uploads the same 1 photo/ID?
They’re compromised.
try redlib
I hadn’t heard of this before, so I tried a few public instances listed on their GitHub repo. They’re all throwing a json error. Do you have a link that works for you?
https://redlib.perennialte.ch/ this seems to be working.
I’d say reddit changed something and broke it.That one works. Thanks!
privacyredirect.com works well too
Hosting is so easy I even run it on Termux 24/7
Anyone try a McLovin ID?
