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.
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.
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.
We shouldn't be discussing how to most effectively infringe upon people's personal liberties before first discussing whether there's one iota of evidence that these liberties are to blame for extremely serious issues you mentioned. The root cause of these problems is almost certainly a lot closer to the general state of economic and social hardship than porn.
Of course it's a lot easier for those in power to divert attention to a moral panic like porn instead of acknowledging that our economic system and core values are making people depressed and hopeless to the point that they're becoming incapable of performing the one thing they've been optimizing for over millions of years of evolution - reproducing.
You sound like you have a lot of complaints about the world and a lot of will for some finger pointing, evidence backed cause&effect and staying on topic be damned
> Watching porn has been linked to a multitude of problems for individuals and wider society – but for every study maligning it, another clears its name. Often, evidence is mixed, and the research methods and sample sizes of studies have their limitations.
> Will the future of ever-more immersive porn may bring with it more risks? It’s too early to say.
> The question of cause and effect comes up a lot with research into porn: does porn attract more people with sexually aggressive tendencies, those who are in unhappy relationships, those with smaller reward systems in their brain and those with sexual addiction – or does it cause these things? It’s a tricky area to research – but until the answers are more definitive, the evidence so far suggests that the likelihood that porn has a negative effect very much depends on the individual consuming it.
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yes, the ideal would be to not infringe on the liberties of anyone who doesn’t suffer from negative effects of it.
but we don’t live in a perfect world where there’s infinite resources :shrugs: so… apparently the trade off is age verification.
that’s the sacrifice we make as a society. we sacrifice some “rights” for the greater good, and the right to watch porn without having to do an age verification check is a bit of a first world privileged one if you ask me.
(i say that as someone who consumes a lot of porn and is personally dreading the upcoming uk age checks. but what’s good for society is not what i want most of the time)
I mean I imagine people would also feel all that if you burned their house down, and with the modern heat waves we should expect a lot more houses to burn in the coming years.
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)
> 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.
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.
Let the industry be innovative and find solutions themselves to stay compliant.
It is not regulators responsibility to solve problems.