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Comment on The age verification effect: adult site traffic plummets, VPN use soars

There exists e.g. religious people who think porn is a sin. Saying you’d want to ban porn because it’s a sin would alienate potential voters. Therefore, they can simply take the “think of the children!” position which is a classic approach and that sounds much more appealing while still restricting access for everyone (who wants their identity associated with their porn history? Data leaks happen all the time).

Similarly, (depending on political climate) far right politicians can’t openly spout hate about foreigners since it would alienate some voters. Yet, time after time they’re revealed to have been doing it e.g. when they thought they were anonymous.

Of course you can’t know someone’s true intention, but assuming that people won’t lie and anything said by them is undoubtedly true unless somehow proven false is a bit naive.

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FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Those people do exist, but almost none of them exist in the UK. So what reason do we have to believe that this applies to UK politicians?

Look at it this way: you yourself understand that “think of the children” is a popular (summary of a) position among the public. And you agree that “porn is a sin that must be banned” is an unpopular opinion.

So what reason do you have to think that MPs believe the unpopular opinion more than the popular one? MPs are people too. Unless you can find some mechanism by which MPs specifically are chosen for this highly unusual belief, or manipulated into believing it, this makes absolutely no sense.

Of course you can’t know someone’s true intention, but assuming that people won’t lie and anything said by them is undoubtedly true unless somehow proven false is a bit naive.

Luckily no-one here is doing that. Do you understand the difference between “nobody ever lies” and “you need a reason to think that someone is lying”?

The idea that we should discard the perfectly plausible explanation of “MPs want to introduce age limits because of the reason that they state, which is a common opinion that many people agree with” and come up with some other, secret reason that they’re lying about is conspiracy-theory thinking.

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- mang0@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Russia says they’re invading Ukraine to de-nazify them. With your logic, this reason is valid because they said so and being sceptical would be beliving in conspiary theories. Go on and continue to be an useful idiot for politicians.
  
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  - FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You’re not actually paying attention to what I’m writing. What part of “you need a reason to think that someone is lying” do you not understand, or not agree with? (I mean, if you did agree with it, you would describe your reasons for believing that UK MPs are lying in this case, right?)
    
    With the invasion of Ukraine, you are trying to cheat, because the question there is not really about motivation but about the facts. The fact of the matter is that there aren’t significant numbers of Nazis in Ukraine to “de-nazify” so whatever Russia’s true motivation, its invasion is unjustified.
    
    But I’m not disagreeing with you that the OSA is unjustified; I’m saying that the motivation isn’t some insane religious conspiracy to ban porn. In comparison, Russia’s motivation in Ukraine is to create a buffer zone with a puppet regime. We can see that this is the motivation, because that’s what is consistent with their actions. Zelenskyy has offered to step down as part of a fair negotiated peace, so regime change cannot be Russia’s motivation. Russia has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, so the protection of Russian-speakers cannot be Russia’s motivation.
    
    So we have ample reason to believe that Russia has a motivation other than what it states. Do you see how this works?
    
    What reason is there to believe British MPs’ motivations are what you say they are?
    
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