And thanks to open source software, we will just remove it if they do. Politicians really don’t understand how this all works do they?
Yep, that was my thought. Even without OS. It would only work for compiled browsers built within the legal jurisdiction of France. Anyone else would have 0 motive to obey them. And French people would just download non-French browsers.
Makes it very clear the proposer knows less than 0 about how the Internet works. And has spent even less effort thinking about it. Has he somehow not thought china would have done this, if it was in any way effective?
Not just remove, use it as reference
Removed by mod
They’d likely be forced to share the list, anyway, after the first judicial challenge for undermining a legitimate business.
Politicians really don’t understand how this all works do they?
For tech-savvy people, not really. And if they do they don’t want to make us mad. We’re InNovAtoRS, after all! (I mean we often are, but it’s still hard not to roll one’s eyes at such a buzzwordy thing)
For the average Joe who just uses the Chrome browser a device ships with, this could have an effect.
In order to prevent porn and fraud sites from being accessed, they’re uploading exhaustive lists of those sites to everyone’s computer? Somehow this seems like it won’t work out.
As far as I know, there are ways to do that without revealing the websites blocked (for example bloom filter, with a note that it can have false positives, or just the hashes of the domains)
False positives seem bad when you’re trying to justify your censorship as necessary and not arbitrary
I think the catch is more that it will be hard to keep an exhaustive list.
I’d like to add the whole government misuse angle too. People roll their eyes sometimes but It Could Happen Here. History has not ended, that’s just a comforting delusion at this point.
‘roll their eyes’. Even if they (the government) didn’t try to misuse it, lots of sites will end on it accidently or by deciding individuals that have an agenda. And it suspect it would be a nightmare to get your site off it.
Kind of odd article saying this sort of legislation is bad because it adds features that would be susceptible to scope creep - we already have content blocking in browsers
Ad-blocker-blockers are already coming up in Chromium. Surely they could make a stronger argument otger than bloatware in modern software.
Sure there’s a better way that can’t be easily bypassed… Idk allowlist maybe of all known safe domains, any new sites, must register for dns at the government instead of through a private org.
Another solution allowlist all know webhost who will regularly perform audits of the sites they host for illegal content and remove + report to french authorities. At least these would be better than this easily bypassed “solution”…
I recently bought a domain. But it’s for a year, it might take the government all of a year to approve it, and by that time the domain name renewal would be more expensive.
ISPs also don’t necessarily host sites
I meant webhosts
The French government’s drive to prevent children from accessing pornographic content online is well-documented. Few disagree that widely available and openly accessible ‘tube’ sites are unsuitable for minors, but in a world where parental responsibility is considered old-fashioned, not to mention ineffective, France believes that legislation is the only way to protect the country’s children.
Don’t know how to feel about this. On one hand, it’s for a good cause, exposure to porn at a young age can have some pretty devastating consequences later on. The way they’re going about it though, that doesn’t sound too good.
It’s the wrong solution to the problem. The problem isn’t children going on the Internet and looking at porn, it’s parents allowing their kids unsupervised access to anything they want from a young age and not giving them any actual guidance. I’d argue it’s just as damaging sitting your child in front of an iPad with unrestricted YouTube/TikTok for hours on end.
Lots of parents are fucking terrible though. Yeah we can blame them but it’s unlikely they’ll stop being terrible.
I’m not sure what the solution is and I don’t like the idea of this one but there defo needs to be a few more hoops to jump through for kids to access that stuff.
I agree that it can be a bit of both sides here, however what are the practical ways to prevent that? If you give your kid an hour of iPad time a day or whatever, are you going to stand over their shoulder the whole time? Maybe you have the technical expertise to block certain websites on a case by case basis on your router, but that’s not most people. Even then, as soon as they’re not on your home network anymore, it’s free game. Again, I’m not saying the proposed french way is perfect, or even good, i’m conflicted.
Change in culture, it used to be socially acceptable for people to drink and drive and not wear their seatbelt. Nowadays, it still happens but not so much. Of course, those two things are very clearly easy to show how they are dangerous and we still haven’t managed to get rid of it completely so something similar for kids use of the Internet would be harder to pull off. I think combined with some actual studies into the effects, tighter regulation of social media it might actually work though. In the parenting world there’s always something new that you get shunned for doing with your child, maybe one day it could be sticking them in front of an iPad.
I’m asking this in good faith: what are the “devastating consequences” of watching porn, in your opinion?
Too young; Unrealistic expectations, stunted emotional growth, disfigured view of women, and generally developing worse fetishes. This is all anecdotal and/or personal experience however.
Overall however i think the porn industry should be abolished, no one should have to do any of this for money, and it objectifies the people involved way too much.
Cool username btw :)
There is most definitely some really dark porn out there, and I would like that kind of crap to be unavailable everywhere because it is exploitative (at best). However, not all porn is like that. I was raised in a hyper-religious family and seeing a naked person was taboo, so the first time I saw porn—which, thankfully, was not of the darker varieties—was actually an eye-opening experience and it gave me a healthier opinion about sex and human bodies in general.
That is to say, I don’t think it is all bad and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the entire industry should be abolished. If it wasn’t frowned upon so heavily by a large majority of mostly religious nutjobs, it would be easier to regulate, because currently it is mostly relegated to shadowy corners of the market.
Ten years ago it was “unfortunately we have to infringe on your civil rights due to terrorism.” That excuse has since been overused and isn’t as blindly accepted anymore, so clever politicians and their bourgeoisie patrons have moved on to “unfortunately we have to infringe on your civil rights to save the children.” It’s the same excuse behind the EU wide proposal to effectively neuter encryption in communications services, and it’s absolutely bullshit. Law enforcement agencies already have the capability to investigate and stop the vast majority of child sexual exploitation, but they don’t get the resources required nor the priority. A healthy society would likely take care of whatever would slip through the cracks. Breaking encryption or free access of information does absolutely nothing to stop this behaviour, and in some ways would put children in an even more dangerous position.
Tldr: this is about controlling the plebs, not about protecting children.
what would be a good way of preventing children from accessing porn, then, other than going China’s route and straight-up banning it, maybe the extra complexity to access it is good enough to achieve the same goal ?
