French court won’t block Pornhub in France — for now - eviltoast

Paris and the porn industry have squabbled for years over how to verify viewers’ ages.

  • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How do people care so much about the age of users, but not give a shit about the age and treatment of performers?

    • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Not sure how blocking pornhub will help with that. They have at least some level of moderation. Working with them together could help much more.

      • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Agree to disagree that there’s any good or non-exploitative porn. I also don’t believe that ph can be in any way trusted based on their past actions.

        I know people are really invested in seeing this a certain way though.

        • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Agree to disagree that there’s any good or non-exploitative porn.

          There absolutely is. But that is besides the fact that people will consume porn no matter what - so we need to make it as safe as possible for everyone involved. That means proper regulations and working together with the industry. What exactly will closing ph accomplish besides giving traffic to even less regulated sites with even more questionable content?

          • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I think “blocking” a website in one location is a shifty solution on its own. Not only will people do as you say, but they’ll get around the block other ways and still access ph itself.

            I never actually suggested blocking ph. Not sure where that’s coming from here.

            • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              I never actually suggested blocking ph. Not sure where that’s coming from here.

              From the context of our conversation (ph block in France) and you disagreeing with my initial statement I inferred your opinion. Sorry if I was wrong.

              I think “blocking” a website in one location is a shifty solution on its own. Not only will people do as you say, but they’ll get around the block other ways and still access ph itself.

              Xhamster is blocked in Germany for example. They just use another domain.

              • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Yeah I was curious how the age gate would be reliably executed as well. Another tangent off my original comment taught me about their electronic ID thing, which is neat.

                But similar to blocking, not sure how useful it’ll be when people can spoof locations so easily. Not sure ph could do the x hamster trick when it gets so much value from its mainstream, well-known url, but basically technological fixes for this are really hard.

                Fwiw I’m glad it’s hard. Whatever our respective feelings on the subject matter at hand, a free and open internet is important.

      • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Not the French regulators, or they’d be block PH based on the underage and non-consensual content, not just user age verification.

        (But I’m not up on French politics, so maybe that’s part of it that just isn’t mentioned in this article.)

        • superseven@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Is it still so bad? I actually thought after their purge and content creator verification process they should be one of the cleaner platforms out there?

          • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I guess to some degree that depends on how you feel about porn, the sex trafficking industry, and sexual exploitation in general. If you somehow think that porn is great and doesn’t harm people, and the PH pimps are doing “ethical” things now, then maybe you’ll come to that conclusion.

            • superseven@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              Well, I basically think that the whole industry has many many issues, yes. But so far my impression was that, when speaking about plattforms, PH is one that at least tries to some degree to care while others don’t seem to bother at all.

              • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                PH is big and mainstream enough to care about getting caught not caring. What you see as “caring” is their cynical response to legal action. The pimps that run it are the same absolute trash.

                You could argue that’s better than having people who don’t pretend to care.

    • albert180@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I guess the backlash from blocking a popular porn portal would be huge. Also how do you want to ensure this on a global scale? (Age is simple, but Treatment is difficult to investigate/enforce in foreign jurisdictions)

      • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh for sure. It’s a very complicated problem and a lot of people are invested in allowing the abuse to continue (otherwise ph would have been prosecuted and shut down).

        I don’t agree that age gating is simple. Not only can people lie, but handling different jurisdictions is complicated af.

        My reaction was more to the specific complaint than the mechanism. I definitely appreciate how hard any of this is to implement with stuff on the internet.

        • albert180@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          At least in the European Union you can use the eID System of the identity cards which allows you to disclose your age without your personal information.

          • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Oh that’s cool. Not European, but will investigate because I like cool things. How secure is it, and how reliable/fake-proof?

            • ankokudaishogun@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              A lot secure and fake proof.

              It was made for accessing government services, after all. I think it’s still kinda slow and cumbersome though.

              • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Where I am from, “made for accessing government services” would suggest insecure and unreliable lol. Glad that’s not the case here, that sounds like a good part of the solution.

              • albert180@feddit.de
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                1 year ago

                You can use it with your Smartphone, But you need to remember your ID and the whole process takes like 30 Seconds. But I guess you would only need to do it once or every few months