Along with it organised crime, which gets richer faster and then tends to branch out into other areas. Prohibition in all its forms has caused an enormous cost to people outside of those wanting the now banned things.
Good news, the end goal that is being pushed by corporate lobbyists is still in sight.
Give it a few years (months if you're an optimist?) and you will have to use your Google/Apple hardware device to formally tie your real identity with your digital identity for every site that has even the slim possibility of being a small danger to hypothetical children.
I'm sure Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg will gladly join this effort to reduce harm to children as well, I'm sure that's high on their priority list. They may even already have the infrastructure in place to handle that digital ID, what an amazing coincidence.
> Good news, the end goal that is being pushed by corporate lobbyists is still in sight.
It's less bigtech corporate lobbying and more evangelical lobbying (exodus cry etc.). This outcome plays along their plans. Create restrictions, which kill off the legal market/actors (good!) and push people into incompliance (excellent!) then push for harsher measures (see what a rampant problem illegal porn sites are). Their main goal is to go full prohibition on adult content.
This outcome was always obvious. The internet is too big. You can degrade the sites that are legitimate enough to follow the law, but that's just a drop in the bucket in the sea of porn.
They gave up on banning VPNs.
They did a consultation and found that the overwhelming majority of children aren't using VPNs to bypass age checks, they're just going to websites that don't implement them.
What they said is true. The outcome of the consultation [1] states, "We will not ban or age-gate VPNs." It also states, "... children typically circumvent age assurance with less sophisticated methods rather than with VPNs, using VPNs more for security and privacy."
They're going to build an internet where every device must be attested and logged in with your personal state identification.
They're not just stopping filthy, sinful porn. They're making sure wrongthink will be traced to the source and jailed. You can't be allowed to have a job or be banked if you're saying harmful things.
You exist to work and die and be a good little ward of the state. No stepping out of line. You do not get to live as the elites live.
The logical endpoint of this is that nations campaign on "internet sovereignty" and begin whitelisting the internet with strict restrictions and licensure of who can open up new sites. This is reportedly occurring to a limited extent in russia: https://www.intellinews.com/russia-s-mobile-internet-whiteli...
I think the point is that porn is decentralized enough rather than the internet too big. Regulating just a handful of sites would deal with like 95% of social media, but you could regulate hundreds of porn sites and have basically 0 effect.
Had they not passed the "ban porn site" bill then the majority of people would be viewing porn on sites which will enforce (or at least attempt to enforce), and consumption of it would reduce.
Instead UK people consume port from places which is quite happy to have choking, bestiality, and child porn.
When I got blocked by big porn sites attempting to obey Arizona law, who demanded a selfie to proceed, I immediately switched to other sites without the restriction. It took about thirty seconds. I don't miss anything about the old sites. The age check approach won't work without an internet sized jurisdiction or a firewall that limits the reachable internet into your own jurisdiction.
I think the most damning thing about porn hysteria is that society as a whole ran the experiment of an open internet for 30 years, long enough for a full generation of people to be raised on it and -none- of the things the anti-porn crowd cried about came true. In fact things actually moved in the opposite direction. The whole think is unsurprisingly just as bunk as the hysteria over violent video games and "demonic" music.
It seems plain old social media is the actual damaging thing to come from the internet.
One could make the argument that it has, via political changes. DOGE, for instance, who's cuts have been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths, would have been very unlikely without social media.
“Damage, difficult to measure” was not what was predicted 30 years ago. Satanic apocalyptic 40k dark elves society, blood orgies and lawlessness was much closer to the messaging. Literal actual Judaic apocalypse was a major risk.
Could you qualify the things the anti-porn crowd claimed would happen that didn't?
Just saying they didn't seems shortsighted when there are obvious harms. Kids go into relationships expecting rough play, choking to be okay. Onlyfans normalised online sex work. Porn's omnipresence enabled its addition. And a whole pile of people have a very odd idea about what parts of the body should look like. Internationally it has enabled a slew of sex slavery mechanisms.
And something similar will happen with chat control I'm afraid. Make every public messenger scan all messages to "protect the children" and those people that would be affected by these scanners will simply find another way to communicate (or build their own E2EE chat app like EncroChat in the past) and the only ones that suffer are the normal people who are now being surveilled and with no real reason.
These things are all pretences to track and control “normal” people anyway though. It’s not really about protecting children or about reducing porn access or whatever, it’s about control. It’s less important that the people that really want to do this stuff slip through, the key is to tighten the screws on the population generally. This is why there are apparent inconsistencies, which disappear once you realize what’s actually happening.
I don't recall her name, but a past government hired a consultant before implementing the age verification laws, who warned that this would obviously happen, and they promptly fired her.
43 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 7.9 ms ] threadGive it a few years (months if you're an optimist?) and you will have to use your Google/Apple hardware device to formally tie your real identity with your digital identity for every site that has even the slim possibility of being a small danger to hypothetical children.
I'm sure Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg will gladly join this effort to reduce harm to children as well, I'm sure that's high on their priority list. They may even already have the infrastructure in place to handle that digital ID, what an amazing coincidence.
Everything will be fine!
It's less bigtech corporate lobbying and more evangelical lobbying (exodus cry etc.). This outcome plays along their plans. Create restrictions, which kill off the legal market/actors (good!) and push people into incompliance (excellent!) then push for harsher measures (see what a rampant problem illegal porn sites are). Their main goal is to go full prohibition on adult content.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-th...
They're not just stopping filthy, sinful porn. They're making sure wrongthink will be traced to the source and jailed. You can't be allowed to have a job or be banked if you're saying harmful things.
You exist to work and die and be a good little ward of the state. No stepping out of line. You do not get to live as the elites live.
"I've got a hobby
Re-reading Lady Chatterley"
The UK tried to ban choking porn. Quite reasonable given the realities of monkey-see monkey-do.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/06/chokin...
Trouble is, "nobody in the UK" consumes porn.
Had they not passed the "ban porn site" bill then the majority of people would be viewing porn on sites which will enforce (or at least attempt to enforce), and consumption of it would reduce.
Instead UK people consume port from places which is quite happy to have choking, bestiality, and child porn.
Good job Mary Whitehouse Brigade.
..the answer is almost everyone, apparently
It seems plain old social media is the actual damaging thing to come from the internet.
Ah come on man used by billions it should have killed hundreds of thousands by now if what they say is true about it
The damage was at a sociological/behavioral level and thus difficult to measure.
Just saying they didn't seems shortsighted when there are obvious harms. Kids go into relationships expecting rough play, choking to be okay. Onlyfans normalised online sex work. Porn's omnipresence enabled its addition. And a whole pile of people have a very odd idea about what parts of the body should look like. Internationally it has enabled a slew of sex slavery mechanisms.
So just MindGeek kvetching about a good thing.