Porn passports

Given the UK has been trying to make this work for at least a decade now and hasn’t ever succeeded in getting it off the ground due to various very basic but near insurmountable issues, if it’s being floated as an idea here in 2023, I’d imagine most of us would be long dead before it ever happened :sweat_smile:

Call me cynical but I think we’re being shafted !

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That makes it sound as if you’re already accessing those sites :wink:

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I can sympathise with the need to at least try. With everything now going on in IT, I cannot really see in a practical sense this working but I suppose, like smoking, the harder you make it with more hurdles, it may deter a few.

This does however seem the wrong end, so to speak, of the problem. My vote would be to ban porn sites entirely. Or tax them out of existence and send the money to Save the Children. Surely, with AI advances it can glean the net for specific images and videos and shut them down immediately?

The porn industry creates victims. I’m against it. When do we march?

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Probably impossible, like the rest of the sex industry you can have it visible, somewhat regulated and the worst excesses of exploitation limited at least a bit or you can drive it underground - which significantly magnifies the downside.

Unfortunately we lack (at present) a reliable way to detect whether people are over 18, or 21 or whatever online which is globally agreed upon (therein relies a considerable rub - if you don’t like the rules in your own country get a VPN and use someone else’s rules instead).

Having to pay via a credit card probably filters the below (finger in air) 14 year olds but so much of the stuff is free anyway. Censorship is not the answer because it is a sledgehammer to crack an nut - for it to work you’d have to cast the net so wide as to basically shut down the Internet (now there’s an option :smiling_imp:) - otherwise it’s both annoying and ineffectual.

It does, yes. But as long as you have men (and women) with libidos there will be a sex industry.

Like a lot of stuff the way forward which would actually work would be to admit that it is part of being human and embrace it and allow “sex work” to be a free choice and not viewed as something tawdry and unpleasant.

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Is this subject linked to this thread?

I was always told it makes you go blind!

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OK. But not for children to view and certainly not for children to be exploited in. :pleading_face:

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When I lived in Dubai the Telco there blocked all dodgy sites. I guess they had an army of low paid agents checking for the stuff, but now I’m sure it could be automated. On returning to Europe I couldn’t figure out why telcos didn’t offer a “safe surfing” option that would use similar lists to those built in Dubai, possibly shared between telcos, to keep the kids safe. I would have happily subscribed. Nowadays VPNs make that a little more difficult but home computers and children’s phones could still be “porn proofed” if there was a will to do so.

I’m not disagreeing with either of those points. Maybe the former should be more about parental engagement and responsibility though and, as I said, the latter is more likely the more underground you drive the sex industry.

Trying to prevent anyone who has access to the Internet from viewing porn if they wish (or even if they don’t) is a bit like trying to put an octopus in a string bag.

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I don’t think it’s impossible, except in the sense that no Western government would dare even try. So it’s never going to happen.

All forms of prostitution are indeed “tawdry and unpleasant” and demean those involved in it, as buyer or seller. Such behaviour may - in the “progressive West” - be “part of being human”, but so is violence, and exploitation, and racism, and sexism …

No, that’s simply a choice that we made somewhere along the way - completely arbitrary.

Probably tied up with chance of STDs which goes up massively with multiple partners so not completely irrational. But I fail to see the act is fundamentally different whatever the setting if neither partner is coerced.

Of course it’s impossible, or - after centuries of “the authorities” trying to stamp it out - we wouldn’t have a sex industry.

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Oh, and for the avoidance of doubt - violence, especially sexual violence or any form of coercion or entrapment into sexual activity is absolutely unacceptable and to be condemned in the strongest terms.

But, you know, some people go into the sex industry as willingly as they go into any other job.

As with drugs it’s the criminalisation of the act which pushes it underground and attracts criminal elements and increases the chances of abuse.

And when the people responsible for the lists decide teenagers googling stuff about sex that they don’t even feel comfortable discussing with their peers is dodgy, or blocking the term “breast” and hitting breast cancer sites, or deciding that criticism of the government is to be disallowed, or criticism of religion or religious leaders or …

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It is possible that a very small proportion of people do so, though whether it genuinely is a choice is debatable.

The great majority have not been in a position to make a choice. Drugs, poverty, poor education (often the result of lack of encouragement at home), precarious housing, unexpected debt, … in many ways the same causes as homelessness, in fact.

I wonder if a good question to ask is, “Do I think that helping women out of prostitution is a good thing?”

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I agree, but…

One of the notable things about OnlyFans’ ban on pornographic content was the number of content makers who themselves objected as it robbed them of a safe portal for sex work.

I agree that it is a difficult subject, in practice it *is* viewed as seedy even if (in some jurisdictions) it is legal, there is also an inherent lack of balance of power between clients (mostly male) and sex workers (mostly female).

Agree - though tackling the root causes which are basically poverty and poor education would benefit everyone.

A better question is “Do I think that removing the factors that drive some women into prostitution is a good thing?”

Indeed. I would argue for any woman’s right to work in whatever industry she chooses.

What worries me is that the choice is sometimes nor really a reasoned choice but one out of desperation and necessity. The big horror of the porn industry is how it objectifies women. Not just to themselves but to every man that ogles them.

Better ogle a sexbot. As long as it is not sentient.

For now…

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I’m not sure how you deal with that - better education for men is certainly part of it, as well as a society which values women and views them as equals - we’re better at that than we used to be but not good enough.

I’m not a big subscriber to the “oh but men are a slave to testosterone/the latent caveman/society’s expectations/whatever other lame excuse is next on the list” but if there is demand there tends to be supply (and vice versa) so, as I said, given that humans posses libidos I can’t see the sex industry disappearing - indeed it has not done so in the past 5000 years.

The Romans seemed to have a better attitude in that prostitution was legal, even state sponsored though prostitutes had no standing in society (along with actors and gravediggers) and it was frowned upon to visit the brothel too often.

If we accept this and make sure that working in the industry as as safe and “free choice” as possible you will remove most or all of the criminal element - this is similar to the situation with drugs, having safe legal access gets rid of many of the problems at a stroke.

Sadly beliefs are too entrenched, especially where drugs are concerned.

Perhaps the best place to analyse would be Amsterdam - my understanding is that most of the sex workers there are not pimped or coerced.

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Very true, its the minority like judges, bank managers, city traders etc

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Sex workers have almost all been exposed to sexual violence when young. For that reason, I can’t condone it.

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