Back in the late 90s or so, there was a proposal to have sites voluntarily set an age header, so parents/employers/etc could use to block the site if they wish. People said it would never work, because adult sites had a financial incentive not to opt in to reduce their own traffic.

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masfuerte 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The porn companies already set the RTA header. It was designed by an organisation funded by the porn companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...

	▲	motbus3 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It seems there is a GitHub repo somewhere mapping Meta money to lobbyists inside other companies Which is at least interesting

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thesuitonym 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What, in the same way movie studios wouldn't comply with the Hayes Code, or comic book publishers wouldn't comply with the CCA, or games publishers wouldn't comply with the ESRB? The financial incentive is to police yourself, because government policing is much, much worse.

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nine_k 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's a great relevant quip: "If you think that the cost of compliance is high, try noncompliance".

	▲	californical 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If only it were true today :\|

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breezybottom 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure but the government doesn't police corporations in the US anymore. The Hayes code was before neoliberalism.

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shevy-java 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Quite true. The US corporations act like a giant global rabid dog. Fake legislation appears in the USA - lo and behold, it is copy/pasted into the EU. At the least lobbyists are getting rich right now.

	▲	htek 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At least the EU has GDPR. In the US, our personal data is collected by every app and website and company and packaged, sold and sifted through by a vast collection of private data brokers which the government already ingests.

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iamnothere 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You’d think that one could simply block sites that don’t have the age header set on child computers. This may block kids from hobbyist sites that don’t bother to set their headers as kid-friendly, but commercial sites would surely set their headers properly. Over time sending proper rating headers would become more normalized if they were in common use.

This still isn’t perfect, as it creates an incentive for legislators to criminalize improper age header settings and legislate what is considered kid-appropriate. But it’s still better than this age verification crap.

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Scaled 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, that's how parental filters already work. They use a combination of rta tags and external data to block pages. Even works with Google safe search, firewall devices, etc. The rta ecosystem is already built out and viable.

	▲	nativeit 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the better tack is to stop acting like these laws are being pushed by honest actors with good faith intentions of protecting children.

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Bender 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What I am suggesting could address most of that. If they do not participate they get fined. The government loves to fine companies. This assumes they put enough "teeth" into a law that prevents companies from accepting fines as the cost of doing business. This would also require legislation that could block sites that operate from countries that do not cooperate with US laws. Mandatory subscriptions to BGP AS path filters, CDN block-lists which already exist, etc... People could still bypass such restrictions with a VPN but that would not apply to most small children. Sanctions and embargoes are always an option.

	▲	Barbing 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>fined Exactly. If you’re hurting kids to make more money selling porn videos, straight to jail. I’m glad there are solutions that won’t ruin the Internet. Now the uphill battle to convince our legislators (see: encryption & fundamentally technically ignorant calls for backdoors). I’m here to die on this hill!

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btilly 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People were wrong.

We pay money online mostly through credit cards. Credit card transactions can be reversed. If children spend money on porn, those payments are likely to be reversed. This is really bad for the ability of the porn sites to continue receiving credit card payments, and continue making money.

An age header is a trivial step that can reduce the odds of the adult site receiving payments that later get reversed. Win, win.

But if someone is willing and able to pay, then the adult industry wants the choice of whether to access content to be up to them. If government tries to regulate them, they'll engage in malicious compliance - do the minimum to not be sued, in a way that they can still reach customers.

For example Utah tried to institute age verification. The porn industry blocked all IP addresses from Utah. Business boomed for VPN companies in Utah. Everyone, including porn companies, knows that a lot of that is for porn. But if you show up with a Nevada IP address, the porn's position is, "You're in Nevada. Utah law doesn't apply." Even if the credit card has a Utah zip code.

If you live in Utah, and you're able to purchase a VPN, the porn companies want your money.

	▲	scythe 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		>But if someone is willing and able to pay If someone is willing and able to pay, they have a source of money. If they aren't allowed to buy something, that control should be applied at the level where they get the money. If the child is using an adult's credit card, responsibility lies with the adult. If children need to have their own credit cards, the obvious point of control is the credit card itself. But also, most porn is ad-supported, pirated or free. Directly paid content is a small fraction. So all of this is moot for porn.
	▲	numpad0 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There was a random comment here on HN few days back that adult contents have lower chargeback rates than everything else. So ig stop spreading hallucinatory misinformations?

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Lammy 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Back in the late 90s or so, there was a proposal

This one: https://www.w3.org/PICS/

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Bender 5 hours ago | parent [-]

PICS was very complicated and attenpted to cover all possible "categories" of adult content. It was confusing, incomplete and only a handful of sites voluntarily labelled their sites with it. RTA is one simple static header that any site operator could add in seconds unless they get more complicated with it by dynamically adding it to individual videos say, on Youtube which means in that case the server application would need to send that header for any video tagged as adult.

I added PICS to my forums but it was missing many categories of adult content. I ended up just selecting everything as I could not predict what people may upload which made for a very long header.

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dylan604 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> unless they get more complicated with it by dynamically adding it to individual videos say, on Youtube

YT already does this. I never watch YT signed in, and I often see videos that require you to be logged in as the video is age restricted.

	▲	Bender 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed though in my example the point would be to set the header in the case the child is logged in but for whatever reason the site does not know their age. Instead of a third party site, a header is sent with the video tagged as adult that triggers parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner.