- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
The Spanish government has a plan to prevent kids from watching porn online: Meet the porn passport.
Officially (and drily) called the Digital Wallet Beta (Cartera Digital Beta), the app Madrid unveiled on Monday would allow internet platforms to check whether a prospective smut-watcher is over 18. Porn-viewers will be asked to use the app to verify their age. Once verified, they’ll receive 30 generated “porn credits” with a one-month validity granting them access to adult content. Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits.
You have to request more porn credits from the government if you need more? Don’t want the government to be tracking this data of you. This is a privacy issue
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Sounds like someone in the Spanish govt is familiar with adult bookstore glory holes.
porn credits. gtfh
“Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits.”
Well that’s a relief. For a minute there, I was worried.
Back in my day, extra credit had to be earned.
I’m already chafed.
They made this to send people from legal sites to illegal sites.
People live in Spain?
Also I’m just imagining the look on on the store clerks face when that one person comes in to buy porn credits for the 5th time that day.
What gets me about this is that, while it would still be bad, they could have mostly avoided the privacy nightmare here with some kind of Zero Knowledge Proof scheme, but the tracking is obviously part of the point.
You think govt officials can ingest, articulate, or even fathom what ZKrollups are?
We have the wrong people in govt unfortunately. Its mostly lawyers.
But yea, some sort of ZK schema would be interesting. Still dislike the porn credits tho.
I’m not sure why this is the focus rather than legislating that router/access point manufacturers create robust and simple to use parental controls and then running public service campaigns that educate parents on how to use them.
Not that I really care that much since I don’t watch porn. I just don’t think putting adult content behind a verification system that applies to everyone makes sense when the idea is to prevent kids, who generally have at least one person who controls the networking equipment and should be monitoring their devices/activity, from seeing it.
The fact that they don’t go for any of the many ways to manage access to porn that are more effective and less invasive of privacy suggests that the point is, as always, surveillance and not protecting children from porn.
Sucks to live in Spain, I guess. The rest of us get spied on just fine without it being nearly as annoying. /s
The guy who’s likely to become Canada’s next PM wants to do this too.
Also it is not like the porn websites are hard to block really. They make it pretty easy.
Yo what the fuck guys can you not
Wow good job Spain.
I guess this works because email doesn’t exist.
I guess this works because file sharing applications and websites don’t exist.
I guess this works because VPN’s free and paid don’t exist.
I guess this works because Tor, i2p, Freenet, and Yggdrasil don’t exist.
I guess this works because torrenting doesn’t exist.
I guess this works because black markets don’t exist.
I guess this works because chat applications don’t exist.
To be a fly on the wall of these government meetings where they talk about this shit would surely be the funniest fucking thing in the world.
I want to be at the meeting a year from now where they realize only two people have ever signed up ‘Yay we fixed porn!’
Buy who am I kidding they brought VPN shares before this was introduced
and probably have some of the most depraved porn habits imaginable
Bought VPN shares and water shipping company shares because they know wasting money on this shit instead of on public infrastructure to provide more reliable clean water is only good for commercial interests.
You are right, it’s really stupid.
But it’s also stupid not to consider, that it’s not the real reason they made this in the first place.
They want to track you, and porn is the first excuse. If this is a success you might need this passport for alot of other things.
Thank you for contributing!
You’ve used the last of your political observation credits for the month. If you’d like to request more, please visit yourcountry.gov citizen portal and fill out the application. Your wait time will be 3-5 business days. We apologize for the wait but we are currently receiving a high volume of applications.
-govbot
Surely this will work.
I wish they would just push all the big mainstream porn sites to remove the most abusive misogynistic content rather than slapping these checks on everything.
Also this will never be okay until there is a zero knowledge version that means neither the government, nor the sites, nor any other party can establish a given person’s habits which is probably not something they’ll ever do because tracking is probably part of the point.
I’m not a fan of the easy access to porn that kids have or the proliferation of the industry in general but I am worried that as part of this harmless things like erotic roleplaying websites will be swept up as part of it and well I use those. And their point is not porn though some people host and share porn as part of it (which is why it’d get swept up with it eventually probably), it’s about writing, smutty, erotic writing. And I’d rather not have to tie my identity to my desires to roleplay out an elf who ends up at a gangbang with the wolf-men tribe to my real life identity (I’m not claiming that’s something I do there but it’s an example of something that would be kind of embarrassing for others to know and it’s far from the weirdest stuff that goes on in places like that).
Government having credits for how often I could say log in and continue a long-term erotic writing campaign with someone is just weird but that’s the end point of this kind of thing. Having credits seems not helpful anyways, the true porn addicts are just going to download stuff then share it in private forums, discords, p2p, etc. If the point is to stop kids from accessing this the credits thing seems odd.
Lol most porn is made in the US. How is Spain supposed to regulate US porn streaming companies showing content filmed and distributed by US companies?
Easy, they can set guidelines and block in the country sites that do not follow these guidelines.
I wonder how one would find an exhaustive list of porn sites. Using a blacklist seems like a hard problem because of discovery here.
Obviously, no censorship measure can reach all cases, especially when it comes to pornography, you can find it in every corner of the internet. But it can cover most cases if it targets the most popular sites. For example, there is a lot of child pornography on the surface web, despite it being banned in most countries, but the ban makes access difficult and guarantees punishment in any case that the law takes notice of. It is not a definitive strategy, as it aims at the effect and not the cause, but it is something.
How many here want to bet that VPN companies lobbied the Spanish Government for this?
I don’t think this is that bad compared to the alternatives I’ve seen (it doesn’t tie your identity to the content you’re viewing, only the use of your credits) but I would be curious to know if the government is also reexamining its sex education curriculum and delivery at the same time. Banning porn won’t magically improve the attitudes of young people (particularly men) towards their sexual partners.
(it doesn’t tie your identity to the content you’re viewing, only the use of your credits)
The website can’t know this, but the government can easily (and I bet will) link an identity to a token, and know where and when it is used. It can also request metadata on usage of a token, which websites will no doubt want to store.
That the government can track this sort of thing is bad enough, but I’m especially concerned that it or both parties will leak/share/sell their databases, allowing anyone to do the same.
Why do you assume they will? From the design document it sounds like that’s not how it will work. You mentioned data leaks but it sounds like there is no history log to leak.
I think this is bad because it doesn’t solve any problems (efficacy of age verification systems is questionable at best) and introduces new problems (token system violates privacy). Censorship under governments creates black markets and reduces privacy at taxpayer expense. If they are concerned about child safety maybe they should start with what studies show are the most effective ways to accomplish that goal as opposed to ineffective, expensive wastes of time.
If your worst-case scenario for lax online identity is that kids might watch porn… I don’t give a shit if kids watch porn.
When you are out of porn credits before the end of the month, you can go to the good ol’ simulator:
