this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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I've seen multiple requests for nsfw lemmy communities like reddit has. I live in Germany, and I think you are required to verify that the users that see porn content are above the age of 18. Does Lemmy has or plan to have a feature for that? Maybe this should be an issue on github?

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[โ€“] RoboRay@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In all the history of the world, there has never been an effective technological solution to a sociological problem, legislation mandating such a solution notwithstanding.

Any technological solution you find or build that appears to be effective is merely an illusion of effectiveness to those unaware of its limitations.

[โ€“] Ghast@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yea, I have no idea why people are even attempting this nonsense. Perhaps they think that 'computers are magic', because it's quite clear that nobody would try to verify someone's age when it comes to posting images through snail-mail.

Of course if they wanted to give it a proper go, maybe someone could make a real age test:

  • which of the following is more irritating:
    • Gorillaz
    • S Club 7
    • N-Sync
  • how much do nappies cost per month?
  • which instrument do you use with a casette?
    • screw-driver
    • VHS player
    • bic
  • which type of phone was most popular in 1995?
    • Nokia
    • Rotary
    • Chordless
[โ€“] JollyRoberts@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Delightful questions.

My responses:

N-sync, bic, chordless

[โ€“] CookieJarObserver@feddit.de 14 points 1 year ago

No wtf a easy you can only enter when you are 18 pop-up should be absolutely enough.

Age verification is always a privacy issue.

[โ€“] planish@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Can we do this in a way that handles:

  • Accounts that were registered 18 years ago
  • Control of accounts elsewhere that were registered 18 years ago
  • Anybody who can sign something with an 18 year old key
  • Anybody who some ordinary humans can vouch for
  • Anybody who has a magic cookie from some kind of distributed system that does this
  • Anybody whose browser thinks they are 18

Determining that people are a certain age shouldn't be the magic power of enormous companies or government ID issuers.

[โ€“] png@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

The problem with this is that in most countries/most services, you cant legally have any accounts before you are a certain age like 13 or 16. Also, babies cant make accounts and people would just sell old ones.

[โ€“] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Pornhub is proposing something that would be enforced on the browser/operating system level, and then the service providers would only need to specify the minimum age for a certain resource. While there are obvious limitations with this approach, it would work much better than the current approaches for distributed services.

[โ€“] BentiGorlich@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That would be an interesting approach, but browsers are easily switched (to a "jailbroken" one) and I wouldn't trust windows with such information... Linux would be fine, but I guess the linux community would at least be torn on this one (though I might ofc be wrong)

like others said, there are downsides to every approach. Browser based would probably be the most reliable though, the bar for going around it would require a separate device or someone knowing how to install a completely different OS, under the age of 18, without their parents knowledge.

Which of course I knew how to do back in the days of Windows XP, but again that's a very high bar for most people.

I can see Lemmy taking an official approach of "We'll wait for that" because otherwise it's scanning IDs on one end of the spectrum and the other end is a button that says "Yeah I'm totally over 18"

[โ€“] coffeeisnotlatte@latte.isnot.coffee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you're old enough to get around those controls, you're old enough to view porn, frankly. It's like a rite of passage that I went through 15 years ago... the parental controls were also much worse then, so it's arguably more effective now.

[โ€“] 7heo@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exactly my approach. Plus, I can't, for the life of me, wrap my head around why porn is such an ever present concern, when so many other things, arguably as harmful, or IMHO more so, are apparently "totally okay".

Yes, sure, porn addiction can be a problem, but I feel that this topic is actually a common fetish of certain people, who will happily ignore the neurological consequences of OTHER types of harmful content and behavior: YouTube autoplay, the constant stream of ads aimed at making us consume every single last bit of resource on the planet for 10 people's net worth, the desensitization to violence, especially against beings different to us (different skin color, beliefs, species, etc)...

Yeah, but no. None of those things are a problem. Just PoOoOoOoRnNn... Will someone please think of the children?? And then what? Make a mandatory retinal scan before you can move a muscle? We wouldn't want people to actually get addicted to the only last good thing they have in their life, right? All this, because we achieved making a truly ground breaking rotten society, and people's "porn addiction" says more about the extent of their despair than anything else, really...

[โ€“] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

From what I understand it would work as other parental controls like on streaming services - i.e. parents of minors would configure the browser so it cannot open "inappropriate" content. The information wouldn't need to leave the device ever.

[โ€“] 7heo@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[โ€“] BentiGorlich@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

According to this wikipedia article it is mandated for pornography in Germany and the UK. Interestingly enough some alcohol companies in the US also try to verify their users age to ship them alcohol... So yeah a pretty isolated problem I guess

[โ€“] ElectronSoup@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

While the UK government abandoned this legislation

The law never really became law, it was dropped before the enactment date by Boris (because he loves his porn too much)

I could see value in having an option to the effect of "I'm the age of majority and I want to see adult content" in user profile options which is turned off by default, and if it's turned off then the UI would show a warning about the nature of the content and the user's current setting in place of posts or communities that have been marked as adult content.

[โ€“] BentiGorlich@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TL;DR Most people are against a age verification where you would input your personal ID or credit card. Adding a popup would be nice though (if it doesn't already exist)

Thinking about all the included responsibilities, legislation, etc. gives me headache so I will not bother setting up a NSFW instance, from which thought the question originated... Thats propably why there isn't a good one right now

You shouldn't host nsfw from Germany in general, our laws are so confus and unreliable in that regards...

[โ€“] mstrbtr@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[โ€“] BentiGorlich@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

I did not find something about that in their docs... Do you have a link for that?

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