Pornhub and other adult sites sue EU over landmark digital content law

Pornhub and two other adult sites are suing the European Union over a landmark digital content law, the Digital Services Act, which imposes age verification and other obligations on large platforms. The European Commission last year named Pornhub, Xvideos and Stripchat as a category of “very large online platform” under the act, which includes obligations such as age verification measures for minors and creating a library of adverts published on their sites. Companies that fall foul of the law can be fined up to six percent of their global turnover. This lawsuit follows similar legal challenges by online retailers Amazon and Zalando.

Matriks404, (edited )

Parents should monitor their children internet usage, and there are tools that make it easier. I don’t get this is for, aside from normalizing parents spending less time on their children and giving away control, and we can already see trend of parents just not giving a fuck about them and how they use internet/technology in general.

tb_,
@tb_@lemmy.world avatar

we can already see trend of parents just not giving a fuck about them and how they use internet/technology in general.

Tech-illiterate parents have been a thing since the dawn of the internet.

Which isn’t a defence of this law, but pretending as if this is a new phenomenon is simply false. Having a kid’s parents surveil everything the kid does isn’t exactly healthy either.

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

so basically a bunch of adult sites are mad that they now have a responsibility to protect underage viewers from visiting their sites

honey_im_meat_grinding, (edited )

There hasn’t been any scientific consensus change on whether porn is actually harmful to view for underage viewers, much less how much harm at various ages (i.e. should we lower it from 18, or raise it). Meaning, anyone who outright claims it is, is likely falling for populist rhetoric feeding off our cultural aversion to nudity and sex, not scientific truth.

It gets even worse when you consider how instrumental porn is to us queer folks who often learn more about their sexuality through the medium, esp. when you consider consumption rates of queer folks vs straight folks. Or when you consider the queer folks who use sex work to earn money because they’re treated worse in other jobs simply for being queer.

Let this sink in for a second: it took us less than a decade of anti-porn laws being proposed to being implemented without scientific consensus (in the UK, Germany, the EU now, Canada is currently doing the same…). Meanwhile we dragged our feet for decades on climate change and still are. That alone should make this whole trend smell fishy, like it’s being done with ulterior motives.

SoupBrick, (edited )
  1. Porn websites should not have to do a parent’s job
  2. They would have to either host a metric shit ton of personal IDs on their servers or have direct access to that database. I would absolutely not be willing to entrust my ID to any site that was not a government site.

If you are interested in seeing why this is a bad idea, I’d recommend looking up the KOSA bill (US version of this) and watching arguments against it.

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

thank you, ill look this bill up tonight and read more about it!

Plastic_Ramses, (edited )

1

AnUnusualRelic,
@AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

Shouldn’t it be for all web sites? It’s logical when you think about it. After all you never know what’s on there.

knobbysideup,
@knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works avatar

.kids tla. Regulate and certify what can be on that. Let parents implement the .kids whitelist if they want.

ninja,

Digital age verification is only advocated by people who don’t know how the internet works. All it’s going to do is drive usage away from regulated sites to unregulated ones.

ganksy,
@ganksy@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah but the pious get to feel important

sudneo,

Many appliations do identity verification: financial platforms, crypto scams, roblox, car sharing platforms… It nowadays takes a couple of minutes and it’s done once, associated with your account. I am not saying I agree with the idea of doing it here, but I think that many people wouldn’t care to change platform. And if they do, some other platform will grow and eventually will have to do the same.

BlushedPotatoPlayers,

Yepp, I always wanted to have a login to a porn site verified with my ID and connected to my home address

AnUnusualRelic, (edited )
@AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

You forgot the special fanal on your porch that lights up every time you connect per the new site regulations.

sudneo,

In fact I don’t personally agree with doing it here, but I mean, there is no other way to do age verification. There are technically ways that can make sure the only data reaching the end customer (the porn site) is a boolean (minor or not), and the identity verification is generally done by another entity, but ultimately yes I agree, I wouldn’t do it either and I personally think it’s not worth in this case at all (I think proper sex education in school is probably what I would invest on).

There is also another thing to consider though, which is that porn is different from -say- a gambling site (where you have to make identity verification) mostly due to religious/moral stigma on sex. This makes me a little bit conflicted because I would like a society in which sex is freed from stigma and shame, and where “associate yourself with a porn site” is not as bad as it is now. Definitely the age verification is not the way to pursue this objective, but overall this makes me ask questions like "why would I have not a problem doing the same for a gambling site but I would for porn? Does it align with my values or is it coming from cultural pressure I disagree with?

GregorGizeh,

But why does it need age verification in the first place? Any horny teenager will find a way to look at porn, this only makes them seek out less reputable sources.

Besides, when I was that age we didn’t have any of that, and I didn’t degenerate into a weird hypersexual either despite looking at copious amounts.

sudneo,

This is a separate discussion, on which tbh I have not a strong opinion. I can understand the risks of children without proper sexual education consuming porn, but I also understand the pointless nature of trying to block it.

Dudewitbow, (edited )

basically the only way it would ever remotely work is if countries adopted the south korean method of identy. they have a kssn used for basic identity purposes, and a seperate id for tax/money related purposes. if a country has both as the same ID, it becomes MAJOR liability if a company had leaked the number. having seperate identity and financial numbers removes the financial risk if the identity value was leaked.

although of course, it removes privacy as the government now can track users (e. g how korea tracks children’s game playing time online, as a KSSN is required to register to play)

funkless_eck,

there must be a black market in dead peoples KSSNs, right?

Riven,
@Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

People use their grandparents kssn all the time according to gamer koreans I’ve spoken with.

Tangent5280,

Explains how some 102 year old korean keeps fucking my ass in starcraft every week. I thought I was just terrible at it.

Dudewitbow,

people often use other peoples kssns, usually parents or grandparents to bypass the child timer yes. but its a roadblock nonetheless

Kyrgizion,

I remember using one in 2004 to be able to play the Korean WoW demo. I have no idea where I managed to find one.

ominouslemon,

I generally like the spirit of the DMA and the DSA, but the age verification policy is utterly garbage. Privacy and age verification are mutually exclusive

homoludens,

You can use the German ID card as a way to authenticate yourself via Internet (by using an open source app), including age. Shouldn’t it be possible to provide a limited interface that e.g. only signals if the person is above a certain age? You already have to enter a PIN in the app so it could also easily show which information is asked/transmitted.

circuitfarmer,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.world avatar

The infrastructure to support such things are naturally anti-privacy. Ultimately it requires someone to simply ignore other info that would otherwise be accessible. There could be a unique governing body for that part which is chartered for only sharing appropriate info, but even then, it’s an ask for people to trust that body and that it wouldn’t leak.

barsoap,

Ultimately it requires someone to simply ignore other info that would otherwise be accessible.

Nah. The ID card says “here, have a proof that I’m an ID card issued by <state>, and I assert that the bearer is 18+”. The crypto involved can be furnished such that nothing but the issuing authority and the fact “18+” gets transmitted, no name, no id number, no nothing. You can’t even match up different times you age auth with the same ID as every time the proof will look different.

That said I’m still against that kind of auth online, but the crypto is not the issue. Unlike voting it’s actually solvable.

circuitfarmer,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.world avatar

The crypto involved can be furnished such that nothing but the issuing authority and the fact “18+” gets transmitted, no name, no id number, no nothing.

This is a best-case-scenario implementation. I just think it is extremely likely that any approach actually implemented would not have the privacy of the user in mind.

Redjard,
@Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

In essence, if that where possible someone could build an api and donate his ID into it that answers all the authentication requests for everyone. There needs to be a way to ensure different users use different IDs, which necessitates a bunch of tracking.

And that in the ideal case

iknowitwheniseeit,

A system doesn’t have to be perfect to accomplish most of its goals. I mean, mass usage could be easily caught. Smaller scale abuse would be like giving your younger friend a beer - technically against the rules but not really a huge problem.

Redjard,
@Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

To be able to catch that, you need tracking. Some identifier to determine if you had 1000 authentications from the same source or different ones.

iknowitwheniseeit,

Yes, correct. You have to assume that each party will be tracking everything they can, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. So the age verifier will know that you have requested many authentication in a given time.

iknowitwheniseeit,

Yes, and it can be done in a way where the organization validating the age doesn’t know the purpose. They would still know that you requested an age validation and when, but that’s it. So the German government wouldn’t know whether it was for porn or for signing up for a youth hostel.

I’m not saying that I agree with the restrictions, but it is possible technically.

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