You can never truly ban something that people love. People love sex, and by extension, they love porn. So when you do as the UK recently did and roll out a snazzy slate of online safety laws that were presented as well-intentioned efforts to protect children from the horrors of sex, you’re not so much creating a porn desert as much as you’re diverting a porn river.
It’s only been a month since the UK made it much more difficult (or, rather, a little more annoying) to access porn online. Already, the Washington Post is publishing an analysis of online traffic that shows that shadier, nastier, much more ethically dubious porn sites that don’t care about adhering to the UK’s laws have seen their traffic double or even triple.
Remind me again: during prohibition in the United States, did the consumption of alcohol cease completely? Was there not a drop of mash liquor to be found anywhere in the United States?
Age-Check Laws Are Accidentally Pushing People Toward Sketchier Porn Sites
It’s the unintended consequence that everyone saw coming, except apparently the UK government, which makes the US’s race to look even funnier. Twenty-five states have passed or proposed similar age check laws, which don’t stop teenagers from accessing porn but absolutely trigger free speech lawsuits and make everyone feel like their biometrics are being sold to third parties.
While all of this is happening under the shady, untrustworthy mantra of protecting children, there is a concern that it’s all just a ruse used to expand the surveillance state into your sexual impulses.
A good rule of thumb is always to be wary of people who want to make vast sweeping changes to society in the name of protecting children, a slogan that usually means someone wants to take away our rights or two. What was the GOP’s out-of-nowhere anti-drag queen story arc from a few years ago if not a blatant attempt to scrub queerness from the public eye?
Now that the fear that the government might come down on you if there’s even the slightest chance that your online service can be used for distributing pornography (when pretty much anything online can be used to distribute pornography), companies like Discord, Reddit, and Spotify are now testing out face scan technology.
Those services/websites are big enough that they can likely afford the cost of compliance. There is little to no hope for smaller companies and sites, which are struggling to get by as it is.
It’s no surprise that VPNs are having a bit of a golden era. They float to the top of app store sales charts thanks to the buoyancy of porn. It feels like it’s only a matter of time before governments start targeting VPNs as well.
And why wouldn’t they? Remember, they must protect the children. You don’t want to ruin children, do you?
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