this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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I really should remember to put a huge "THIS IS NOT A VERY SERIOUS COMMENT" on most of my comments. I find I'm way too snarky for text based communication.
Anyways. I'm not saying parents should be punished because their kid managed to watch porn. I was just making a joke about how stupid everything is.
I didn't grow up with routers and android phones. My equivalent of breaking into the router and changing the password was to climb into the paper recycling container to find Donald Duck comics but ending up finding porno mags.
The fact is, kids are always going to find porn. There's just no way around it. If they put ID proof protections on the websites, they just gonna figure out torrents or some other way of downloading stuff.
In that case: sorry to blow up on you. I have seen to many comments on here claiming these things while being 100% serious. I just saw your comment and incidentally had time to write the above for once, so, here we are.
I agree that there's no way to completely cut teens off from porn. Your torrent example is perfectly demonstrating this.
But I also do not understand the current outrage at anything trying to improve the situation, even when it's not some stupid "scan your face" scheme.
It's mostly just that I don't want the government to know precisely which websites I visit. Nor do I want the the porn sites to know exactly who I am.
Let me have my privacy. I've been watching porn since I was 12 or 13 and absolutely would've figured out a way to do it even if there'd been age restrictions because I was horny af. Nothing bad has happened to me because of it. Perhaps a mild addiction to masturbation unless I'm having sex but that hurts literally nobody. Worse case scenario I last a little too long occasionally.
Block pornhub and teens will find much seedier sites.
I understand, I want that too. It's easily possible though (just one example for a scheme):
Alternatively, if we go the "device has an age bracket field browsers access" route, it's even simpler, and just as if not more privacy preserving.
That already tells the government that I'm accessing porn because why else would I need to confirm I'm an adult online? And why would they implement it in a somewhat private manner if it could be implemented in a privacy-infringing manner?
I honestly don't think most democratic governments have an interest in making this privacy-infringing. Lobbyists/companies on the other hand... But all the more reason to write legislation that ensures age verification must be handled like this.
Cinema rickets for FSK18 movie? Ordering alcohol? Gambling? Renting a car?
Basically anything you're only allowed to do as an adult.
But that's kind of why I mentioned, it's just one rough draft for such a protocol.
None of the things you mentioned would incur an age check here because car rental companies demand your driver's license anyway, nobody cares about movie ages, and for alcohol you have to be ID'd in person upon delivery.
You would also think democratic governments have no incentive to legislate something like chat control, but there's always factions that want to control people, including here in the EU.
The ruling classes are scared of what the peasants might get up to when inequality gets too bad or policies too unpopular. Just because it's less bad here than some other places doesn't mean people aren't feeling the effects of it. The people at Brussels must be glad that Estonians don't have guns and can't afford two tanks of diesel anyway, because otherwise I reckon there would be a lot of people shooting up the place over energy prices and whatever. Age checks aren't of much help here, but it adds extra reliability to any browser fingerprint to real identity lookups. Though if you use government services or banks at all, that's already more or less a done deal.
It seems that our politicians are paving the way for dictatorship with these mass surveillance initiatives.
A social credit system would be the next step after online ID verification and ChatControl come into effect, and then our generous Lords would sleep more soundly knowing they were safe. Poor things, currently suffering from an insomnia that can only be consequence of the injustices they must be dreaming to commit.
Greetings from Portugal.