Filtering has never been easy or practical for the general public. But the situation has become much worse.

In 1998 it was easy for a family to have no computer at all, or to put their single computer in the living room where it could be supervised. Internet use was limited because it tied up the phone line. These factors made it easy for parents to supervise their children.

Today, computers are everywhere, fit in your pocket, and its very easy to get online. Even if you don't buy any computer for your children (which is hard, because your children will tell you that they're getting bullied and socially ostracized, which probably won't even be a lie!) they will probably be given a computer by their school and any filters on that computer will inevitability be circumvented. And even if that doesn't happen, they can trade or buy one of their peers old phones and use that on free WiFi to access the internet without you knowing it. Are you going to thoroughly search their belongings every week? If you do, they'll know and find ways to hide it anyway.

And yes, I know kids used to procure and hide porno mags. What they have access to on the internet is a lot more extreme than a tattered playboy.

My complaint was exactly that with modern devices, the owner does not have absolute control over communication on the device, and that's a problem. I think anyone in the open source community or people that believe in democracy would agree that e.g. the owner of a phone or computer should absolutely have the ability to intercept, record, manipulate, and filter all communication that device is doing.

Do you believe the ease with which a service can be used influences the amount of people who use that service?

Like with marginal users?

Right. My friends in middle school would trade floppies with porn on them, which older students and siblings would be happy to provide.

> trying to get everyone to filter

We never needed everyone to filter, just parents busy lobbying the government to impose crap onto every possible service and website across the entire world.

Instead, they should purchase devices for their kids that have a child-lock and client-side filters. All sites have to do is add an HTTP header loosely characterizing it's content.

1. Most of the dollar costs of making it all happen will be paid by the people who actually need/use the feature.

2. No toxic Orwellian panopticon.

3. Key enforcement falls into a realm non-technical parents can actually observe and act upon: What device is little Timmy holding?

4. Every site in the world will not need a monthly update to handle Elbonia's rite of manhood on the 17th lunar year to make it permitted to see bare ankles. Instead, parents of that region/religion can download their own damn plugin.

> The only question is whether age verification is still too onerous.

You've skipped right past the "does it work" question. It doesn't. Porn is available on file sharing networks in far greater quantity than it is on reputable websites.

The only realistic methods I'm aware of are whitelist filtering, sufficient supervision, or sufficient interaction and education.

I suppose you do not have children. I am open-minded, mid 40's. The level of violence in porn you can get access to with just one click, has no comparison with what I could get access to as a kid (basically nothing).

With the net, you get access in one click to the worse and the best. It is a lot of work as a parent to educate the kids about that.

As kids, teenager and even as 20 something, if we wanted to do some experience, we had to physically access the media or be physically present. This was not on-demand over a screen.

So, I filter the access at home while also trying my best to educate. This is not easy and I can understand that non tech savvy people request more laws, even so I am personally against.

The article is pretty well balanced, we have no silver bullet here.

My girl discovered self-pleasure at the age of 5, ironically during an exam from her doctor (she doesn't think it was intentional). I had an ex discover masturbation around the same age. I personally discovered it around 11 or 12. All of the above discovered porn accidentally as kids. I don't know about them but after that I intentionally sought it out.

Guess what! Both of us are perfectly fine!! (Well the ex is a bit psychotic but that's unrelated...)

This obsession with protecting kids from the realities of life is just fucking stupid. We as a species have the stupidest, most ridiculous views about something that is required to keep us alive!

The problem is that most porn depicts sex as somewhat violent and sets unreasonable expectations of what sex is like.

Not every woman is capable of deep-throating or going straight from vaginal to anal without adding some extra lube. Most women don't want their man to put his hands around her throat during sex. Almost none of them are okay with going from ass to mouth.

Porn also sets an unrealistic standard for penis size. When the average is 5.2 inches with a standard deviation of about an inch, it becomes clear that the 7+ inch penises used in porn are like the top 5%.

I don't think parents are having these conversations with their kids about this.

it is recommended not to employ sarcasm when counterpoints are easily available

> Jesus, how does your society still function when underage people can see videos of people having sex?!

It kind of isn't anymore. But not just because of porn, obviously.

Early porn exposure goes hand in hand with the problems we see typified in the recent Netflix movie Adolescence. Seen women constantly railed and treated like meat when that young probably does do something.

"Videos of people having sex" is deliberately misleading, modern porn is not dry educational science videos. It's clear you'd rather be snide than correct.