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Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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Privacy
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I'm getting to the point where I'd rather see csam legalized than this shit. (Keep reading)
Think about it: csam will happen, period. I'm not world's best computer engineer but even Incan build something that embeds data like text or images in other files in ways that cannot be detected. I can build basic but effective encryption that will be hard enough to crack. I can find ways to exchange files outside the internet, hell, do sneakernet
And kids watching porn online? They'll have their buddies who have libraries that will be copied. A single USB drive can contain days of porn videos and you can't stop that either
Then there are these laws that "are to protect children" which makes me just outright want to vomit. You take victims of child pornography and use them for your political gain, for your power. You are almost worse than pedophiles. At least pedophiles harm only one child, you harm all of them you sack of fucking shit.
And no, of course I don't want child pornography legalized, of course not by what is the solution?
These assholes have been at it for decades now and they play the long game. They can lose every year and come back next year. They only have to win once and they move on to he next good thing they can destroy.
So what can we actually really seriously do to stop this?
I think we just have to accept that no solution is 100%. You just need some balance between success and side effects.
As long as people can communicate, it will to some extent spread. So really, the only truly 100% solution would be a couple of nuclear bombs all around the world. Look at that, crime rates went to 0!
I am not really intelligent or knowledgeable enough to provide best-balance solutions.
Anyway, as far as limiting access to porn, perhaps it could be done privately. You could have some trusted verification platform, perhaps even government provided, deal with it with cryptographic signature, maybe as I said, I am too dumb for solutions.
My idea is, the website that wants to verify your age knows the public key of the government provided service used for this purpose (who already has your data anyway), and generates some random data in base64. You copy that, paste it into the verification website, they sign it, and give you the base64-encoded response. You then paste the response into website that wants to verify your age, it verifies the signature and then that you're 18+.
Basically just trusted authority saying "verified being 18+". The website doesn't know who you are, verification system doesn't know what you wanted that verification for.
Of course, you could verify that for anyone else, but I can also walk into a shop, buy cigarettes, alcohol and give them to a kid. Not 100%, but good enough.
We had hardcore magazines that circulated back in the days before easy internet. Guess the last time children didn't have access was probably in the 18th century or so.
Guess the next step is controlling all chat groups, emails and cloud spaces to "avoid children exploiting these"...