Technology

Sure, but parents are responsible for their kid's internet use, not the fucking government. All these bullshit "won't anyone think of the kids' internet regulation things are all about tracking the whole population, the kids are just the excuse they use to try to roll this nonsense trough.

This is what I worry about. If I’m on a list for accessing porn, what’s to stop them from seeing I like to watch gay porn? Then I’m on the gay list. Wrong government comes in and now I’m in more danger than I already am just for simply existing different from church approved heterosexual behavior.

I don’t want kids watching porn/violence for what it’s worth. Surely there is a privacy respecting aspect to this issue, but ID for access is a dangerous precedent

That's the thing - you think it has a negative effect. It might, but we need real studies to back that up. Laws shouldn't be made because of unsubstantiated feelings. If you want something meaningful to come out of these things you should advocate for unbiased mass studies.

I don't see that previous generations had a better attitude towards sexuality. I rather think it was worse.

Age verification can only be seriously enforced through very intrusive surveillance of internet activity. You'd need a good reason to justify that, which doesn't exist. How about we give all minors cameras to put in their bedrooms, so that CPS can check in on them? Too intrusive? Well, that actually might help against child abuse, which is a real issue.

I'm not sure to what degree that this restriction is practically possible with the way the internet works though. You can probably make it work on big websites dedicated to that content, sure (there's admittedly still the issue of using VPNs to appear to be from a location without such rules, but given that these kinds of laws seem to be slowly becoming more common, maybe that won't be an issue forever), but children are curious about things kept off limits, and includes teenagers who may seek that content actively. As such, if there's a reasonably easy way to find that content, they'll find it, so simply gating big websites isn't enough. In theory, laws about the matter probably apply to more than just those sites, but consider: small websites based in other countries might just not care about foreign laws, any web service that allows user generated content (which is a lot of them) can potentially be used to share pornographic content, and some such web services are set up in a way that moderation sufficient to actually stop this is not realistic (say, discord servers secretly set up for sharing it, or fediverse instances too small to be notified by regulators, or based in another country, or with inactive moderation that doesn't notice what is being shared). As such, I don't think it's really realistic, short of a type of authoritarian control on any site that allows any kind of user uploaded content that would cause way more harm than what it tries to solve, to actually be able to stop minors from being able to access porn if they really want to. As such, I'd think that a better way of addressing concerns like them getting the wrong ideas about how sex works, or having unrealistic standards of appearance or such, is better sex-ed. When they grow up they'll be able to access this stuff anyway, so if one is worried about it giving incorrect ideas, it makes more sense to tell them that they're incorrect, and why, and what the reality of the matter is, rather than try a futile attempt to childproof the internet.

This is being introduced by the party that wants to remove sex education.

This isn't about protecting children.

Usually, anything the Conservatives do in the name of "protecting children" is about anything but. Probably the opposite, in fact.

In this case, I imagine that this won't only apply to pornography, but any "sexually explicit" material. Taken to extremes, that'll likely include resources for learning about sex, sexuality, or even aspects of biology relating to sex. Or hell, maybe even information about abortion access.

Kids looking for support for queer individuals? Banned. Kids looking for information on transgenderism? Banned. Kid looking up whether his/her experience with puberty is normal? Banned.

No problem, people shouldn't be accessing this kind of info (or having sex) until 16 anyway, one might argue? Well, if you (an adult) want access to any of that, be prepared to have your government ID tied to your porn access, and be ready to justify anything questionable the website loads into your browser (including thumbnails and titles for videos you never clicked on).

Nothing the Conservatives do is about protecting children. It's about fucking us over.

I don't want my kid to murder someone, so ban all violence on TV and in movies and videogames for everyone in the entire country so I don't have to parent.