There are a lot of GOP-controller legislatures in the USA pushing through so-called “child protection” laws, but there’s a toll in the form of impacting people’s rights and data privacy. Most of these bills involve requiring adults to upload a copy of their photo ID.
Considering these are Republican states, they’re just going to define Wikipedia articles about gender dysphoria as pornographic lol
Think carefully and double check before you ever agree with a Republican about anything.
This is literally the goal. They are using porn as a trojan horse because they know nobody is going to stand up and fight them on letting children see porn
Think carefully and double check before you ever agree with a
Republicanpolitician about anything.FTFY
I guess, but like, there’s only one party that wants me in a
concentrationconversion therapy camp for being trans.That doesn’t make the rest automatically trustworthy. Just not genocidal. Though I tend to agree with Progressives and Socialist Dems or Socialists more often than not. Regular, middle of the road Dems, not as much.
Not genocidal eh? Ask a Democrat how many people they think Earth can support long term, then subtract that from Earth’s current population. Your answer is how many people they, at some level, believe need to be gone.
Perhaps, but it was a bipartisan effort that led to requiring ID to buy music.
Sure, and I’m not saying both parties don’t want to surveil and control the population, but as you might be able to understand I’m a bit more focused on the Party that has all but made extermination of people like me the Party platform.
I’ve never heard anyone call for the extermination of queer communists (or whatever category you’re referring to).
I’m trans. If they simply take away my access to gender affirming care they’re as good as murdering me, because I won’t last long.
Furthermore, they believe being trans is a mental illness and that we’re all groomers and rapists. It’s not much of a logical leap for them to then declare that they’re “hospitalizing us” because we present a threat to ourselves and to public safety. They already call gender affirming care “self mutilation” and they actually believe that it’s contagious and making their children trans. You’re blind if you can’t see where that’s going.
Me being a communist just gives them a reason to shoot me when we start WW3 with China lol
Requiring ID to buy music?? What is this?
All politiicans should be listened to with scepticism, but the Republicans have gone to full on lies, alternative truths, fraud, grifting and fascism. It’s not a both sides issue.
This attempt of bothsidesing has failed.
The government has way too much influence over children already. Governments could do so much for children that would actually benefit them (better education, free lunch at school, better public libraries, ensure no kids are starving because of poor parents, no wars in foreign countries, whatever) but instead they use children to increase their control over people.
I think it has nothing to do with children. It is about requiring ID registration for online services so that identities can be tracked. Every time authoritarians want to push another mechanism of control it’s always “about the children”.
Ultimately, I agree with you and that’s why I’m against these laws, but I really do wish there was a good way to do it anonymously. Porn is not good for kids and it’s pretty much impossible to keep them away from it without drastic measures that are more harmful than porn.
Not sure if it’s actually possible given how far outside out evolutionary context internet porn is, but the correct solution here would be to train your kids to deal with the temptation of dopaminergic reinforcement buttons.
As a population, that isn’t a realistic course of action. It won’t work for even most parents that care to try.
What if the block is more harmful than just letting curious kids sneak a peek at porn sites? If all the legitimate places to get porn block anyone without ID then a lot of those prove will seek out unregulated places - they’re going to see far worse things and be in communication with potentially very dangerous people.
And of course the next step would be to totally limit any access to the internet to stamp out any unregulated communication and file sharing thus giving the corporations a total monopoly on the internet… It’s not about protecting kids it’s about controlling all of us.
Its not the governments job to make up for absent parenting.
If you dont want your kids seeing things or doing shit online, its your job to monitor them and talk to them about it.
Stop throwing your kids a tablet and expecting that to be the fuckin parent.
If I didn’t want my kids looking at porn online, I already have plenty of things to prevent them from doing so.
Not giving them access to a device without supervision. Using firewall filters. Child-mode browser/OS settings.
We don’t need more regulation for this. Parents just need to get off their ass and do their own parenting. But these bills aren’t actually designed to protect children. They’re designed to gain access to adults’ personal info and will be used more for oppression than safety.
Most effective way to prevent kids from looking at porn is to encase them in spray foam insulation with feeding tubes and catheters.
This also prevents that pesky physical growth which turns them into military-able adults.
You can cut down on porn and terrorism in one go!
Some principles and things to note:
- Adults’ expression to one another must not be restrained to only what is suitable for children.
- Sexuality is a normal thing that most people are interested in. It is not inherently illegitimate, deviant, or corrupting.
- Children and adolescents who are kept in ignorance and fear of sexuality are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse by adults.
- Anonymous and pseudonymous speech are necessary to the freedom of a free society.
- The chief threat of sexual abuse to children does not come from anonymous or pseudonymous speakers on the Internet, but from family members and acquaintances — especially those with authority over the child. As such, if the question is “Who should be subject to greater scrutiny, to prevent child sexual abuse?” the answer will be “parents, guardians, teachers, youth pastors, etc.” at a much higher priority than “anonymous and pseudonymous Internet users”.
- Identification requirements for speakers or audiences are a necessary step to violent and unlawful censorship, and are not necessary for legitimate purposes.
Given these principles and observations, I conclude that the expected effect of such regulations would be to increase sexual abuse of children, while also strongly harming the ability of a free society to discuss and educate about sexuality.
Very excellent points. While I agree kids shouldn’t be looking at porn, forcibly trying to keep all knowledge of sex and porn from them until they hit a magic age where now they can do anything they want isn’t the answer.
Children need to be educated so they can make wise decisions when the time comes. No matter how much people try to stop it, the time will often come before they reach the magic age set by laws, and unfortunately it’s sometimes through sexual assault or their naivety being taking advantage of.
I would combat that by saying I think most pornography is nowhere close to what sex is like. Anecdotally, I hear more stories about men who try to fuck someone like they’re in a porn film, which can result in physical pain to their partner.
I think teaching kids about sex and giving them access to porn that often displays non-consensual acts as normal are two totally different things.
But yes, I think 4 is a very strong point, which is why most of the bills that are being proposed are not being executed well.
Oh sure. Generally speaking, most porn is a terrible sex educator.
However, it’s also a wrong target for concerns about child sexual abuse.
And crackdowns on “porn” tend to end up being crackdowns on sexuality-related speech and sweep in a lot of other speech too.
This nails it right here, #1 and #2 especially.
Sex is fun, sex is awkward, sex is weird and messy and life-changing. Sex is mundane, sex is cathartic, sex is funny and sex is cardio. Also, sex makes people, oh and it feels good. All that is pretty fucking magical if you ask me.
What is done in private between consenting adults is none of your goddamn business, including porn. Don’t use kids as an excuse to control adults’ behavior.
I like the idea of having a cleaner internet for under 12s but I hate the idea of giving the government more control of the internet. Ultimately I side with freedom. I grew up on the wildwest internet and turned out fine. These kids will also be fine.
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Yup. If the government was concerned, they could educate and empower parents to do this kind of stuff.
You didn’t turn out fine! You grew into a Freedomist, which puts you at odds with our beloved Safetyism.
Usually when politicians says “to protect children”, it’s not about children.
When politicians talk about protecting children they’re really talking about dismantling the nuclear family.
None of these politcians who push for all those “protect the children” laws actually gives a shit about child safety. The only thing that such laws mange to do is restrict freedom of speech and expression for everyone including children.
If you are a careless parent, then no law is going prevent your kids from watching porn.
I’m against heavy handed regulation because it pushes people into more dangerous spaces, if you’re a teenager or unID’d adult who can’t access real porn sites do you decide not to look at boobs or do you seek out unregulated communities on places like discord?
Would you like your kid seeing generic regulated porn or seeing the kinds of things people can’t post on regulated porn sites? Plus not only is there the fact that the content on underground sites is by their nature the stuff not allowed on regulated sites but also do you want your kid taking to the creeps that hang out in porn sharing groups on discord?
It’s the parents job to do that, not the government’s. I have kids, when they were at the age I didn’t want them seeing porn I made sure it was blocked, and I educated them on safe internet browsing. I don’t need the government’s help with that.
I’m out of the loop on this one, but it sounds like yet another attempt at SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Back in 2011, people had to fight hard because the US congress was attempting to gain control over the internet. The congress’ reasoning was that they wanted to hinder piracy, but the implications of the bill was so much more.
I don’t recall the full history of this, but I believe that as soon as SOPA was turned down, a new bill regarding preventing child pornography was proposed. And that bill had basically the same implications, but if you were against it this time, the congress had implied that you were supporting child pornography.
It seems like the state’s attempt at gaining control of the internet is never ending, since they can propose new bills as soon as the previous bill is voted out. Basically the “throw enough shit at a wall and some of it will stick”-tactic.
It’s almost like porn has been available, to varying degrees, to youth, for decades if not centuries. Even discounting all the good arguments like “small government” and “think of the kids is a dumb excuse to curtail privacy”… You have to ask, what’s the goal?
Keeping kids away from porn? Why is that an important goal for the government? Is it one the government is even capable of doing? At what age is porn OK? 16? 18? 21? Never? Did you ever look at porn when you were in high school? Do you regret it?
Is there any real research that porn is corrosive to a 16 year old? I mean we can’t even pass simple, popular gun legislation because the NRA swears up and down we don’t know “for sure” if it will save more than a couple lives. We can’t even have an EPA that enforces laws, while millions of people suffer from asthma and other stuff that kills them.
Yes l, actually. We do have research into the effects. Here’s a summary I found:
https://aifs.gov.au/research/research-reports/effects-pornography-children-and-young-people
Things the study finds hard to do:
- define pornography. That will make it hard to legislate.
- they conclude it leads to unsafe sex practices but that also sex needs to be taught to kids. Probably not news republican legislatures want to hear.
- not really a link to crime
Also worth noting this is one study. In Australia.
Not saying the study should be discounted. But it’s not really a clear support for government intervention.
It’s not one study, it’s a review of research done across the USA, UK, and AUS.
To clarify, the review states multiple studies found links to sexual aggression and negative views of women. Decrease in safe sex, and an increase in riskier sex acts.
This is a highly cherry picked set of conclusions from the study. Sex Ed would probably, as the authors note, negate these negative aspect of accessible porn.
Odd, I found your points to be cherry picked as well. Where does it say it would entirely negate the negative effects?
Yes, it is one study. One study that performed a literature review and drew conclusions based on its findings.
As it is a review article, its conclusions are not experimental, but observational. It notes similarities between outcomes of different studies. However of particular note is that the conclusions that you are most interested in are all correlational. That is to say, the negative aspects of pornography were not observed to be directly related to the viewing of the pornography, but rather associated with the groups of people who tended to view pornography more. That does not mean that X causes Y, as it could be that a third variable Z is the thing that causes both.
For the government to restrict something, there needs to be a very good reason. Removing the anonymity of watching porn (which to be honest, was removed a while ago with Google and co spreading their slimy tentacles everywhere) is a dangerous breach into the private lives of citizens.
It’s like someone gets to go into your head and know exactly what turns you on. If you need an ID to watch pornography, this is exactly what is happening.
This is what you’re actually advocating for. Just because something may be bad doesn’t mean we need to get rid of it. It’s like banning cigarettes because it causes lung cancer or alcohol because men beat their wives while drunk.
Didn’t we figure out a while ago that banning shit arbitrarily is a bad idea that will have unforeseen consequences? I already envision a large exodus of young people to the dark net in an attempt to view porn, which is a natural desire for a teenager going through puberty, where they will be exposed to much worse than is on mainstream porn sites.
So we would have not accomplished our goal of preventing children from seeing porn but instead have made the situation worse AND we have removed the anonymity from adults leading to all sorts of potential issues. What if a porn site gets hacked and all the IDs are leaked? Many a closet gay could be in hot water. People deserve privacy where they can escape into their private world. This is basic 4th amendment stuff translated into the modern world
Do not miss the forest for the trees. A little bit of sexual aggression (allegedly) in our children is not a serious enough problem to justify this overreach. Not even close. The real solution is raising a society that treats men and women the same.
We shouldn’t let the government parent our kids. I know it’s human nature to be lazy, but the government isn’t the answer.
That’s basically what the Republicans claim to believe
It is still very shocking to us in Europe that the United States wants to control pornography before guns. I don’t know many people who have killed themselves by masturbating.
I’ve come close.
Doesn’t parts of Europe have stricter laws against porn or is that just UK?
I believe that pornography is illegal in Bulgaria, while in other places, there are no strict laws. There’s a warning banner that you must check if you are over 18 years old. That’s it. On the other hand, we have many gun control laws. Priorities.
Even the UK isn’t this level of strict - the things that are outlawed are those involving lack of consent and those that are very likely to injure people.
