Age limits on buying cigarettes are easily thwarted by finding a corner shop that needs the sale and will sell to kids. Height restrictions on fairground rides are easily thwarted by putting bits of wood in your shoes. None of this matters.

The point is that this kind of control will drastically reduce under 18s consuming content that they shouldn't. We don't need the all of society's controls to be flawless.

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rcxdude 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

A VPN is a hell of a lot easier to access then a corner shop that's willing to break the rules, and such rules on corner shops didn't exactly stop teenagers from finding porn before the internet

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SoftTalker 3 days ago | parent [-]

For a kid, finding porn before the internet was significantly more difficult.

If you were old enough to pass for 18 yeah a newstand might sell you a magazine. Most would not if you were clearly younger. And you needed to pay for it. Most kids (especially young kids) don't have any money.

And then you had one magazine. Still photos. And it didn't show anything but naked bodies. No real sex, the hardcore stuff was only in adult bookstores.

It was virtually impossible, pre-internet, for an average kid to find a way to spend hours and hours looking at an endless stream of hardcore porn.

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codedokode 3 days ago | parent [-]

At my school one guy had adult VHS cassettes (probably his parents') and a VHS player and he invited other guys to watch porn. By the way I wasn't invited. Maybe it was good because later the teachers found out about this.

	▲	SoftTalker 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, the arrival of home video players was a glimpse into what was to come with the internet. Easier availability.

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thomascountz 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Without co-opting the loaded notion of what we mean by "shouldn't," I do agree that, at a certain point, manipulating controls to feather through the margins and outliers has diminishing positive returns and increasing negative ones.

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dns_snek 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Should or shouldn't is a matter of opinion that I disagree with because it has no evidential basis. Downloading a free VPN isn't just doable, it's completely trivial in the privacy of your home and doesn't require any confrontation or risk unlike trying to buy alcohol or cigarettes illegally.

And that is before you consider that what you're ultimately doing, even if your blocking strategies were successful, is steering kids towards the darker markets where illegal and actually harmful content isn't removed and that don't care about your ID laws.

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cherryteastain 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

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pyman 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exactly. For example, adult smoking prevalence in the EU has dropped by about 9% per decade among men which means it's fallen nearly in half since the 1970s.

The US is always against regulations when they don't benefit their companies, whether it's social media, AI, porn, tobacco, or weapons.

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ghusto 3 days ago | parent [-]

That was after the ban on smoking indoors and public spaces.

	▲	pyman 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Most EU countries passed laws between 2002 and 2009 raising the tobacco purchase age to 18. And they also introduced regulations on how and where they can advertise smoking, how the packaging looks, and even where the products are displayed. The EU and Asia are doing a great job protecting their people from harmful US goods and services. On the other hand, South America and Africa are poor continents with little power to negotiate.

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ghusto 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> We don't need the all of society's controls to be flawless

We don't, but we do need them to be at least close to best-effort. This is a nonsense law, implemented in a nonsense way. Clearly nobody cared whether it worked or not, and there's either an anterior motive or it was something the current government (whose idea it was not) couldn't back out of without being labelled "pedo-loving scum!".

Unfortunately, I can't let your examples go without comment either. Age restrictions on the sale of tobacco caused a dive in the numbers of children smoking since those shops absolutely stopped selling to children when the penalties came in. I know, I was one of them and none of my friends could get cigs from shops anymore. As for the height restriction bypass; we're not in Looney Tunes, that's not a thing.

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figmert 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you think VPN is going to stop kids from accessing porn, I have a bridge to sell you.

	▲	Aeolun 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Porn is a service problem?

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nottorp 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh, if these rules would teach the under 18s to not be 'content consumers' as you seem to consider yourself, that would be great.

But I'm afraid they're only there to satisfy the puritans. The average shitty content that you 'consume' will still be fine.