I mostly agree with you, mostly because I don't like being tracked, and I don't like the surveillance state.
But, I mean, kids probably shouldn't be looking at porn. Arguably no one should be viewing porn but it's probably especially bad for young, developing minds to be watching that kind of stuff, and if we agree that kids shouldn't be watching porn then maybe we should be doing a cursory effort to make it so they're not?
It's easy to say "no it's the parents' responsibility", but let's be honest with ourselves. My parents tried child blocks for me so that I won't look at unsavory websites when I was thirteen, and those worked for about twenty minutes until I figured out how to get around them, and eventually reformatted my hard drive with OpenSUSE so my parents wouldn't be able to try again. Kids find a way.
So I dunno, maybe things should be on the provider sometimes?
Yeah the world is not going to end if some teenage boys get to see some naked breasts. All this effort could be invested into providing decent sexual education to teenagers instead.
The world isn't going to end if a teenage boy sees a booby, but I think that it can distort a teenager's view on sex and sexuality. I think that part of the disturbing woman-hating incel "movement" might be, at least in part, a result of a lot of very stupid guys seeing distorted views sex and seeing a lot of media where objectifying women is rewarded. [1]
Also, porn nowadays isn't just a woman showing a titty; if you go on PornHub or something, it is all pretty hardcore now.
I agree that good sex education is ideal, but I still think that we probably shouldn't be allowing kids to watch porn.
[1] Also, who actually pays for the pizza???? I mean, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Pizza should count as lunch, or at least dinner. Are all these horny housewives ordering pizzas with no way to pay for it making the prices of my pizza go up?
I was making a joke about the old porn trope of "delivering a pizza with no way to pay for it", but honestly I think you could make a pretty solid argument that we shouldn't be feeding that to children either, and maybe we shouldn't be letting parents do that regularly.
Let's pretend for a moment that age verification has anything to do with protecting kids.
If we agree that nobody should be viewing porn because it makes us worse human beings, then maybe we should be wondering why producing it is permitted in the first place?
I have no definitive opinion on the topic, like everyone I am torn between desire for individual freedom and desire for effective collective measures. I wish I lived in a world in which we could regularly and scientifically assess the costs and benefits and just enact policies accordingly.
> If we agree that nobody should be viewing porn because it makes us worse human beings,
I'm not necessarily saying that it's bad for adults to be viewing porn. I think there's an argument to be made that it's bad for all humans, though I personally don't think I subscribe to it. Since I don't think it's inherently bad for an adult to watch it, I don't think there should be prohibition on producing it.
I mean, let's rewind back to before the internet; if I thirteen year old wanted to view porn they couldn't easily go to a store and buy it, and even if they did get some the stuff that was easily available, to my understanding, was tame compared to what you get on PornHub. If a kid got a Playboy or caught something late-night on Skinemax, they'd see a booby and some obviously fake moaning, not hardcore stuff you get on pretty much any site.
Obviously this kind of stuff doesn't affect everyone the same way. Many, many, people looked at porn when they were teenagers and most of them aren't incels or creeps, but I don't think it's something that kids should really be viewing. I think drawing the line at "adult" vs "not adults" is a good enough demarcation.
Is it ok for adults because they are accustomed to it already? Or is it because they know better how to use the internet? In either case nobody would suffer from the disappearance of disturbing violent porn but the few ones who make money out of this industry.
The hard question remains: what individual freedoms are we willing to sacrifice for this? Is it worth a Prohibition like policy? Online surveillance?
But in all seriousness, let's not pretend this has anything to do with kids' safety. This is just one more step from the global village towards the safe shopping mall.
> Is it ok for adults because they are accustomed to it already?
I think it’s ok for adults because they aren’t nearly as confused and developing sexually. I think an adult viewing porn is more likely to be able to contextualize it as fiction/fantasy than a young teenager.
> But in all seriousness, let's not pretend this has anything to do with kids' safety. This is just one more step from the global village towards the safe shopping mall.
Ok but that’s why I am conflicted about it. I don’t know the motivations of lawmakers, I am saying my perspective.
