Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told

Comments

• DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Stop ministers from using children.

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• HalfSalesman@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I know that this is all just theater to just destroy any semblance of free speech and privacy on the internet but if I’m completely honest I also don’t even understand people who freak out about kids looking at porn. Like, I get protecting children obviously from predators (fucking Roblox), but also I saw hardcore porn on the internet super early when I was like 8 and the only trauma I ever felt was the fear of being caught looking at it by my parents, who were otherwise pretty chill about me seeing really violent media.

  And before me and the internet, kids were looking at their grampa’s/dad’s porn magazines or finding it in the woods or getting some 18 year old to buy it for them. It was harder but I’m telling you they found it.

  I feel like a bigger concern for kids right now is microplastics, lead poisoning, and climate change and you don’t see nearly the same hysteria about that shit in mainstream politics.

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• ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Next up is “Stop children using custom linux distros and unique radio setups to connect to access points outside the nation”

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• Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You know, I’m just going to buy them a VPN so they can watch porn even more

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• lengau@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I initially read that as “stop using VPNs to watch child porn, ministers told” and was expecting a very different article.

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• ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Children aren’t using VPNs. Also I am going to say this: it doesn’t matter that fucking much. I watched porn before I was 18. It didn’t really do much to me. It did not give me unrealistic expectations of women. What did affect me were entirely unrelated stuff. Which is why I do need therapy and sexual therapy, but it wasnt the porn. It was people like that fucker.

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• terminhell@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Ministers, stop watching them watch porn…

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• bluecat_OwO@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  we could have arrived at this argument before this whole data stealing conundrum

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• arararagi@ani.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Are these children in the room with him?

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• Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I remember when my step-son was a teenager. I didn’t care that he watched porn. I cared that he infected the family PC with viruses and malware trying to watch porn.

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• Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  How about parent your children?

  What about the crappy late night TV channels with the women waving a cordless house phone like it’s 1996?

  I’m perfectly able to watch porn because I’m 45, but I refuse to interact with any of this prove your age bollocks because I know full well that “we won’t store your details” and “we will share your details with 1284 trusted data partners” are the same picture.

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  • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Also “Data breach of 500K users IDs discovered on dark web”

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    • tarknassus@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And nothing will be done about that until it affects the power brokers in charge*.

      * - hopefully, I mean we’ve had a series of ministers embroiled in scandals that would have caused immediate resignations in the past whereas now it’s “Fuck off, I’m working here. I’M IMPORTANT!”

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    • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Kids watching porn is a much smaller problem than data breaches. Those can fucking ruin people.

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• theacharnian@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Streisand effect: the BBC is telling every last kid that VPN is exactly is the way to circumvent the prohibition.

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  • plyth@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because the goal is to outlaw VPNs. To do that they need enough children to use VPNs to make it credible enough.

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    • BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Is there a plausible way they actually ban the use of VPNs? Like, they can make it illegal on paper, but even in China, which has long had strict restrictions on internet use, I’ve heard that VPN use is widespread.

      It just all seems like performative whack-a-mole to me. The only people who can control what a kid sees online are their parents or guardians. A child is not buying themselves a laptop or an iPad.

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    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      As if something being credible has ever stopped a politician from acting.

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• DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  FYI, with Mullvad VPN set to UK, sites that require age verification:

  • pornhub.com
  • youporn.com
  • redtube.com
  • porn.com
  • bellesa.co
  • tube8.com
  • thisvid.com
  • quorno.com

  Sites tha do NOT require age verification:

  • hqporner.com
  • xhamster.com
  • youjizz.com
  • alohatube.com
  • qqqporn.com
  • xnxx.com
  • xcafe.com
  • helloporn.co
  • go.porn
  • cartoonporn.pro

  And xvideos.com is a bit special since it shows you the thumbnails of porn videos but won’t let you play them.

  But we need to stop VPNs! Think of the whole two children that have VPNs! What if instead of just going to the half of sites that don’t verify age, they figure out how to use a VPN?! Oh the humanity!

  Yeah, UK wants to de-anonymize VPN users. It is laughable to think this is about anything else.

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  • mechoman444@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Very interesting. I’ll have to inspect and research each of these sites, many I never knew about, in very close detail for the sake of science.

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    • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I mostly picked top results for “porn” on duckduckgo, but I do find hqporner.com scientifically interesting ;)

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• Eternal192@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s funny how all the bigwigs are suddenly interested in “child safety” now that ol Eppie is gone, funny that. Also at least kids are learning how stick it to those old sacks for trying to take away their freedom.

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• queueBenSis@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  if the strategy is to tell children to stop circumventing the rules with a workaround, couldn’t the original messaging just have been “talk to your children about not watching porn”

  it’s so obvious the identification laws have nothing to do with protecting children from porn and everything to do with Big Brother surveillance

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  • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Who cares if kids porn anyways? Like they’re going to find a way if they want to. I was cooking into my own around the time the Internet just started hitting households, and therefore wasn’t the vehicle for porn it is today. There was a full on underground economy with all the prepubescent boys. Kids are going to do what they want regardless of legality.

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    • Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And before that, kids were passing dirty magazines they found in a tree.

      You can’t stop teenagers from being horny. And I rather they watch porn than have sex at that age.

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• isekaihero@ani.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is fascists using “think of the children” to violate everyone’s online privacy and spy on everyone worldwide.

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• UltraBlack@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Ok one question: Why do we have to protect children from porn if they’ve already gotten exposed to it?

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  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why do we have to protect children from porn if they’ve already gotten exposed to it?

    … did you know that in maternity wards, more children are born every year?

    I hate what is fucking going on, but you know, logic.

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  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    To add to it: Why do we need to protect children that arent ours from things their parents are supposed to protect them from?

    Weird way to shift job tasks around.

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    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s praying on the tech illiteracy of idiots. There are several pieces of software that can be used to locally censor the internet for minors, and they’re very affordable, and I bet free versions (open source?) probably also exist.

      When I was a wee lad, there were “internet safety guides” being shown to kids and parents including :

      • Don’t post personal information online
      • Do not use your real name on the internet
      • Do not give images of your ID to anyone online

      But then, facebook asked for people’s fucking IDs and real names, and people just fucking forked it over. GOOD JOB DICKHEADS.

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  • bier@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So they have more time to watch people shooting each other.

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• greatwhitepapertiger@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This has nothing to do with porn or protecting children. It’s a backdoor way to attach names and faces to VPN usage so movie and music studios can sue specific people for torrenting. They failed in bringing lawsuits previously because they couldn’t pin point the piracy to specific individuals. I would bet money that the ministers leading this charge have ties to groups in the movie and music industry. The UK will be the testbed before the full rollout in the EU and then worldwide.

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  • phutatorius@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Even with an association of an identity to a VPN provider, there is no one-to-one correspondence between a person and an IP address.

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    • greatwhitepapertiger@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      True but that at least gives them a start point to try a prosecution that they didn’t have before. It also depends on if the VPN provider responds to a subpeona request or national/international jurisdictions.

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  • Jason2357@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is a lot bigger than the entertainment industry now. Creeping fascism and the trillion dollar surveillance capitalism industry are hellish bed buddies.

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• subarctictundra@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hmmmmm, let me play devils advocate and say that kids should have access to porn.

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  • dyc3@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you want to actually play devil’s advocate, you gotta give an argument. Otherwise, you’re just being contrarian.

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    • Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can’t stop teenagers from being horny. And I rather they watch porn than have sex.

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    • Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Would you rather your teenage son :

      • Break his fucking head intruding on some poor adult woman’s privacy to see a naked woman
      • See hardcore violent BDSM from questionable sources as his example of what sex is meant to be like
      • Access tame softcore porn or naked ladies to fulfill his natural curioscity/blossoming adolescence

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    • bier@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Let me give you one, kids try to explore topics out of curiosity. They are probably not going to look up someone torturing animals, because they don’t want to see that. Kids usually look up and explore things they are ready for. Also “kids” is a pretty diverse group, a 5 year old and a 15 year old kid are very different.

      For real young kids parents should monitor online behavior anyway. For teens, how is life this different than looking at a playboy or a porn tape. Teens have been doing that forever, the people creating these laws probably did that when they where kids.

      It’s probably a lot better to let kids (teens) explore nudity and sex in a safe environment, instead of letting them go unsupervised in places that ignore the law.

      It’s basically the same argument with drugs, offering legal options vs. going to a dealer and possibly getting much more dangerous drugs mixed in.

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• toad31@lemmy.cif.su ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If I had to guess, I’d say the government pushback against porn is a result of members of the ruling class catching their offspring with porn.

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  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’d say it has more to do with pandering to religious conservatives to keep them in their pocket.

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    • ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My vote is smoke screen, lots of nasty stuff can fly under the radar with all this talk on porn, vpn and privacy rights

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  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If I had to guess, they don’t care at all about porn and are using this as a pretext to censor sites that talk about LGBTQIA+ people.

    And also to block access to any sex ed content that talks about how to protect yourself from predators.

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    • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If I had to guess, they don’t care at all about porn and are using this as a pretext to censor sites that talk about LGBTQIA+ people.

      Transgender people are in the crosshairs and have been for a couple of years for now.

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    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Actually it was pushed by some AI corp, to sell AI for verification purposes, alongside other bad faith actors.

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• wabafee@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think the best way to solve this is to not have kids in the first place.

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  • Rooty@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And deprive capital of all that cheap labor? Have you no heart sir/madam?

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• vane@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Stop fucking but make children.

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  • Opisek@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Religious fundamentalists famously love being the only source of sexual “education”.

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    • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The irony is that despite being a confessional state, the UK is 100x more secular than the USA.

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• sunbeam60@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Do the government ministers understand that setting up your own VPN is literally a 5 minute operation.

  Hire a droplet VM, pre-installed with a server OS. Log in with provided credentials. sudo apt install docker Copy/paste a docker compose file that sets up a wg-easy container. Create a peer. Take a picture of the provided QR code. Connect to the server via a wireguard app. Done.

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  • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The VM is associated with your name and payment method. It is about removing privacy so they can remove free speech and other rights. Not about porn. You don’t need a VPN to access porn in the UK Half the sites don’t verify age.

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  • phutatorius@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Docker’s an unnecessary extra step. Just install wireguard server on the VM.

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    • sunbeam60@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Myeah sort of agree if you compare wireguard vs wireguard docker.

      But wg-easy has a management interface for creating peers and seeing who’s active so it’s somewhat easier to get set up.

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  • deepus@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Don’t give them ideas!

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  • bilb@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They could require age verification or even special licensing to use any sort of internet server architecture. That’s what I would do if that was my goal.

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  • serenissi@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    setting up vps requires money which ideally children do not have access to (not even crypto)

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  • toad31@lemmy.cif.su ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What a VM? What’s a server OS? How do I log in? What the fuck does sudo apt mean? What is docker? Now I’m editing files? A peer? What’s wireguard?

    So many of you are disconnected from regular people because you’re chronically online.

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    • phutatorius@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There are instructions that are completely “type this” monkey see, monkey do. The majority of people who cannot follow such instructions should be wards of the state.

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    • LinyosT@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You say this as if people are utterly incapable of learning.

      Anyone can learn anything of they’re given a good enough reason to want to learn.

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    • LiamMayfair@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If kids have learned to run their own Minecraft private servers, hosting a VPN should be child’s play… Pun maybe intended.

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    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      what’s a VPN? what’s a VPN app? how do I log in? what the fuck does a tunnel mean?

      kids somehow figured these out. they’ll be able to figure out their selfhosted VPN too.

      sunbeam didn’t describe it very clearly but it can be described in a way that its just following instructions without even having to understand it. like something like this: “register here. click this to get a free cloud server. log in to the server like this. paste this command and hit enter. install this app on your phone. tap import and scan. point your phone to the qr code on the screen.”

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    • jabjoe@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes plan law makers needs to have a clue on what they are making laws about. Teenagers looking for porn are going to learn.

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  • GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If someone tells them to, they might try until a few business interests remind them that these are also fundamental components of business networks. Once money tells them to stop it, they will.

    VPN companies should just hire a lobbyist for a week and this will all go away.

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  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Do the government ministers understand that setting up your own VPN is literally a 5 minute operation.

    Of course they don’t. Most of them type with their index fingers and don’t even understand what a VPN is.

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    • GreenShimada@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Exactly this. There’s maybe 8 politicians in the whole world that understand what a VPN is. They’re told by a lobbyist and donor that it’s a thing that is bad, now they’re out to figure out how to make it go away.

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  • TwitchingCheese@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They’ll ban encrypted Internet traffic that they don’t have a backdoor to steal inspect the contents.

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  • buddascrayon@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Are they going to ban VMs?

    They will keep banning things until they feel they have absolute control over the internet.

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• BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Dame Rachel de Souza told BBC Newsnight it was “absolutely a loophole that needs closing” and called for age verification on VPNs.

  Saw that coming. Can’t have the populace living their lives without constant, repressive government scrutiny.

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  • SoloCritical@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But it’s for the kids what kind of psychopath could be against that???

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• laz@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Moronic bit is atlast asking parents to be responsible

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• pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  How much you wanna bet the ministers use VPN to watch porn as well?

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  • zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Who needs to watch it when you can live it

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    • RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You joke but people who live porn still watch porn.

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• Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Almost like you didn’t think this fucker through.

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• IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If they were really after kids watching porn (or even porn in general) it would be technically somewhat simple to force ISPs to provide filters on their end as a subscription service. I’m pretty sure I’ve even heard that kind of services in the past. Make it even opt-out if you really want to.

  That way ISPs would just ban everything from pornhub and others unless you spesifically want it allowed or even provide a portal where you could block reddit, twitter, tumblr or whatever you wish on your account. That kind of technology already exists and it’s used on many corporate setups.

  There’s obviously ways around that, but there’s no technical way to block every possible way to move bits between computers. Even if they would shut down the whole internet there’s still ways to build mesh-networks or even buy USB-drives from a shady alley.

  But as we all know, it’s not about porn and not about children.

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  • MrRazamataz@lemmy.razbot.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Before the Online Saftey Act I believe ISP routers default behaviour was to block adult sites (maybe depending on time of day). From what I can find tho, it wasn’t required by law. The OSA now places the responsibility on the websites.

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  • x00z@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You can’t block porn completely without blocking VPNs. If you connect to a VPN that’s all they can see. They can not see what you use the VPN for.

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    • jjlinux@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Depends on the VPN

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    • jim3692@discuss.online ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can’t block VPNs without blocking the entire internet. You can block known VPN services, but you can’t prevent people from hosting their own.

      Some known VPN protocols could be blocked, using introspection tools. However, this would just render corporate VPNs useless. VPN traffic is just bytes, and so is WebSockets. Good luck figuring out whether my HTTPS traffic is legitimate internet traffic, or masked VPN traffic.

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    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      VPN, Tor (and similar, like I2P), every imaginable P2P network, proxies, all non-http protocols (smtp, ftp, nntp, xmpp and other instant messengers and so on) can all transfer any kind of data, porn included. And a ton of other things. Heck, I’m quite sure there’s a minecraft mod where you can assemble JPG-images out of the blocks and view them that way. And then you can use stuff like uuendoce where you can use anything that can move plain text to transfer binary data.

      There’s no way to block all of that unless you shut the whole internet down. And even then you can still trade good old playboy-magazines with your friends. VPN in itself has very little to do with the actual problem, beyond that someone apparently noticed that their current “save-the-children” iteration had pretty large holes in it.

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    • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can’t block porn completely without blocking VPNs. If you connect to a VPN that’s all they can see.

      This makes it sound like VPNs can ONLY access porn. lol

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• Baggie@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why are the kids technologically illiterate and undersexed until it comes to matters of government control? I’m not usually into tin foil hats, but this doesn’t feel like the kids are the primary concern here.

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  • bampop@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But Dame Wontsomeonethinkof de Children saw a government report which says 65% of children under 5 have seen explicit videos of kittens being raped to death using power tools! Surely this constitutes an emergency which requires us to abandon online anonimity

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  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory if everybody already knows it.

    What you said there, that was just a fact.

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    • Baggie@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I know, it just bothers me how little they’re trying to hide it.

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  • Pure_Psykosis@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They aren’t.

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• NGC2346@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  When they effectively make the internet a dangerous place, Usenet will rise from the darkness. P2P will also always exist and these politicians dont understand computer math, so a lot of what they’re trying to accomplish is bound to fail.

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