Always funny to see the senile politicians blaming porn as the biggest threats to children and not their collapsing economies.
I'm sure when those kids grow up and work long hours for the rest of their lives (if they can find a job at all!) just to be able to afford rent they'll at least be grateful they weren't able to access porn in their teenage years.
While the failing economies definitely is orders of magnitudes more important, the problem of hyper stimulants is definitely worth giving some attention.
The effects of porn, SoMe, ultra processed foods, etc. Likely also affect the real economies in ways wondo not yet fully grasp.
> On Friday, the Sejm (lower house) passed an amendment to the bill on the provision of electronic services, which allows for the blocking of illegal content on the internet. The new regulations anticipate that the president of UKE (Office of Electronic Communications) and KRRiT (National Broadcasting Council ) will be able to decide on the removal of content concerning 27 prohibited acts, mainly specified in the Penal Code. Prohibited acts include criminal threats, incitement to suicide, glorification of paedophilia, promotion of totalitarianism, incitement to hatred and content that infringes copyright.
> Under the bill, the author of the disputed content will receive a notification from the internet service provider about the initiation of the procedure and will have two days to present their position. The decision of the UKE and KRRiT to remove the content will not be subject to appeal, but the author will be able to lodge an objection with a common court.
> 237 MPs voted in favour of the bill, 200 were against, and five abstained. The bill will now be debated in the Senate.
This happens four days after Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said that "Poland strongly opposes the introduction of mandatory scanning of private messages in instant messaging services.".
---
I don't want to wear a tinfoil hat but considering that chat control is unlikely to work at EU level, local "solutions" like above in Germany and Poland may give legal way to include scanning instant messengers in the future.
Every time when I see how this censorship laws are pushed, I cannot understand how it is possible that anyone of those who vote for them can believe that such laws can achieve their stated goal of "protecting the innocent children".
Actually I cannot believe that the voters, or at least most of them, are so stupid that they no longer remember what they were doing as children, so I can only assume that the real purpose of the laws is not the claimed purpose, but something much more sinister.
I am male, so I do not know about what young girls think, so perhaps they are innocent and they might be protected by censorship, but I am certain that the "innocence" of young boys cannot be protected by such laws, even if they were technically successful.
I have grown in a country occupied by communists, like Poland. There existed absolutely no pornography whatsoever. There were no erotic movies, no erotic books, no erotic magazines.
So one might have believed that the "innocence" of young children was "protected", but such a belief was terribly wrong.
Due to the lack of any other kind of entertainment, a favorite pass-time was telling jokes, many of which had a strong pornographic content. I have no idea which were the sources of the jokes, but there existed a huge number of them. Starting from the age of 10 years, it was very frequent among boys to tell such jokes or listen to them.
The content of the jokes included pretty much everything that can be seen in a pornographic movie today and any young "innocent" boy was very familiar with such content, even if most did not understand the meaning of many parts of the content, for lack of explanatory images.
Of course, no boy would admit in the presence of adults of being aware of such things, but I would have expected that someone being now adult would remember his lack of "innocence" when young and would understand how futile is to expect that "innocence" can be "protected" by technical censorship, when the only means that could ensure "innocence" would be to be locked permanently in a prison cell, to avoid contact with any other humans.
Unrelated, but shows the "slow collapse" of Europe (where I live in).
We all know what a big issue Climate Change (and specially warming in Europe) is. So most European politicians go on and on about environment and all that.
Well, yesterday, I went to play football at night and finished at around 10PM. I was planning on taking the metro, as any normal European citizen.
Much was my surprise when I compared the time and cost to a Car Sharing app (Free2move).
The metro in my city is €3,80 and Google Maps estimated a metro travel time of 30 minutes.
I ended up paying €3,64 for the Car and made it home in 19 minutes. Worst part, the car was not even electric.
It makes absolutely no freaking sense.
So yeah, European politicians are just scammers. They're doing their own businesses while claiming to protect the population.
> Manufacturers of operating systems, tech associations, and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) sharply criticize the draft law. They consider the filtering requirement, in particular, to be technically and practically unfeasible, as well as legally questionable.
* you add an HTTP header saying "I am a kid"
* porn web servers read and handle this headers
* if they don't (easy to test), they get fined
It is easy to implement, easy to monitor, and will probably just work if the government do the effort to monitor and enforce it. If not, it will just be an other DNT header
> The core of the JMStV amendment, which has been debated for years and to which the state premiers agreed almost a year ago: End devices that are typically also used by minors should be able to be switched to a child or youth mode by parents with filters at the operating system level at the push of a button.
⇒ This will require OSes to have a filter, but it doesn’t require it to be switched on, not even for children using computers. Whether to switch it on will be a parent’s choice.
Risk, of course, is that this will be sloppy slope. Parents who don’t switch it on for their kids may get seen as not caring enough for their children, effectively forcing parents to switch the filter on.
It always puzzles me, why the porn? How about seeing war in action? Murders? How about fostering the gambling addiction via freemium games? Why seeing pussies, dicks and tits is more of a threat than anything else? This porn fixation is ridiculous.
Seems really the only way forward is having your normal fast internet/live/banking/gov crap where you play a happy citizen role. And outside of that a mesh network where you really live. Sure not for most, but for me, yep.
Not sure it is. It will require a lot of locked down control, and may make open source OSes effectively illegal. Even on Windows it will require only being able to install software from the MS store AND MS only allowing software that complies with this law to be installed by German users.
I'm not really afraid of porn. That can be handled by talking with the kid. What I'm afraid of is the kid watching one of those awful NSFL videos. It'll eventually happen, but the later, the better.
Linux might receive this too. Remember, Valve is using Linux for their Steam Deck/Machine/Flare, and they are selling well enough, that the law might apply to them at least.
Quite the opposite. From the description in the article it will make Linux illegal unless distros and app stores comply with German law. It may ban installation of software from outside locked down app stores.
>The aim is to protect young people on the internet from age-inappropriate content such as pornography, violence, hate speech, incitement, and misinformation.
Who decides what hate speech is? Incitment? what the actual fuck. Linux is the way until they come for that as well.
> The aim is to protect young people on the internet from age-inappropriate content such as pornography, violence, hate speech, incitement, and misinformation.
Hmmm, I doubt they really care about pornography and more about censoring certain stuff that politicians do not like. But what do I know, I'm probably just a conspiracy theorist.
That part also caused my tin foil hat to heat up. At least they get the credit of including it directly instead of adding it in a later revision that gets even less news coverage. It is hard not to grow cynical when you see this.
I am also worried about another detail:
> The states also want to prevent the circumvention of blocking orders by erotic portals ... using so-called mirror domains – i.e., the distribution of identical content under a minimally changed web address. For a page to be treated as a mirror page and quickly blocked without a new procedure, it must essentially have the same content as the already blocked original.
Note the part "quickly blocked without a new procedure" so there is a way to block sites with even less process and oversight. That just invites overblocking without accountability.
Well considering you can go to prison in Germany for posting a meme on social media, that ship has already sailed. This has been a thing for a while. The only difference with this is this gives some parents control over what they allow their children to see on their computers
I think they should criminialize porn instead and leave the machines alone. Since that industry (conspiracy theories aside) value money above all else, massive fine and taxes on the owners of porn production is the way to go imo.
*This does not seem like a censorship measure.* It seems like it requires OSs to give parents an easy way to filter porn.
I struggle with porn addiction. When I really fall back into it I act out 5-10 times a day. I can’t stop even if I want to. It distracts from work and from my real life relationships and girlfriend.
Everyone on HN loves to rag on social media because it’s so toxic. What about porn? If social media makes it easy to compare my “boring” life with “beautiful” influencer lives, why wouldn’t porn make my normal girlfriend and normal sex seem boring. Part of that is how young I found porn when my brain was still developing and forming how it processed sex and relationships. Porn makes me feel so depressed.
I am sure other people handle porn and social media better than me. And that’s ok, I respect that. *But even if you think porn is ok as an adult, can’t you see why adults should be able to have more control over what their kids see.* Yes if they are motivated kids will find it - I learned a lot of the engineering skills I have now getting around my parents blocker. *Not every kid is that good and this might help many.* If it’s not required to be on in the OS, what’s the harm?
P.S. if you struggle with something similar to me, look up SA, SAA, or SLAA.
Okay. I hear your struggles and want to ask: would you rather give others the tools to block your porn, or would you rather have easier access to help?
The issue here is not having an easy way to block porn, the issue is enforcing it. And easy ways to block apps and websites already exist. One I can recommend is called Freedom.
I find it interesting how these kinds of measures are incredibly unpopular on HN and other online platforms. But if there was some regulation about social media algorithms, short form content, age restriction for social media and other mandated restrictions on social media companies, people are a lot more open.
Why is any restriction on adult content so fiercely defended? I can post that Mark Zuckerberg should be arrested and tried at the Hague and receive a somewhat warm reception on this platform. But there are these giant faceless corporations pushing unrestricted, often depraved content to minors and people stand up for them. And this content often includes anonymous uploaded content with underage girls. It's like the meme "leave those billionaires alone!"
I'm sure this will get downvoted, but help me understand what the visceral reaction is. I've heard people argue that this kind of adult content isn't harmful, but it seems obvious that it is, especially to children. At least more than short form content like TikTok. What would you rather your 12 year old spend hours watching? The adult industry has always been a few steps ahead of popular media in terms of virality, addiction and kitsch. They're shaping the online generation, and not in a good way.
Social media algorithm are being used to push agenda from other countries, see the Cambridge analytica case, or push extremist content to youngsters since it generates much more engagement.
Porn doesn't do this. It may have other issues, but it doesn't aim at maximing engagement with infinite scrolls and similar tactics. Let alone the content, who would watch porn for 12hrs/day? We already have the possibility to do that, and if somebody doesn't have mental issues, I'm of the opinion (s)he's not going to do that
It's the classic "think about the children" argument used to push through plethora of other shit. See UK.
I have very low trust in government (mine or other). We had these restrictions before. My country has been there, done that, for 41 years, not keen on repeat.
And unlike corporations (for all their problems and there are many), you can't avoid that.
My visceral reaction is to the slippery slope, and the fact that our government is not to be trusted.
I'm honestly not against blocking social media for children. It's just sad that we got to this point. In an ideal world, parents would be the gatekeepers and the reason for not allowing their kids to use TikTok would be that it's simply not good for them. But I'm not happy with the solution, which means that you need a way to prove your age and/or identity to all these sites. Mkey. I guess. For social media that's one thing, but you already see that they're very keen on applying that same thing for porn now? Why? That gives my government highly fucking sensitive information about me. I seriously detest that thought, so I'd rather just not give any government the tools to interfere and/or closely watch what I do.
Social media regulation isn't particularly popular here on HN, though it is certainly in other areas. You also won't find many people defending CSAM here as you imply.
You also have to assume that people are not taking the purpose of these new measures at face value, but assume that there are other underlying motives and that the measures are broader than just simple pornography. And I don't think that assumption is unjustified.
The ID-based measures like in the UK are a gigantic privacy nightmare as well.
These measures are also not specific to kids, in the end they essentially always affect the access to this kind of content by adults as well. And some people think that is none of the government's business.
An additional factor is that these measures are technically infeasibly without drastic measures. So they're either easy to circumvent, or would give the government enormous power and access over all kinds of communication.
I generally agree that social media regulation is the medium where political censorship is being pushed. I disagree that measures regulating Meta or TikTok are not popular on this platform.
This is a regulation that, at least in theory, would give parents more control over what their children consume. If you think about it on a family unit, this is pro consumer. You don't have to use it.
But in general I just don't think we need freedom max absolutely everything. I think its destructive to society (as is social media but this is much worse). Naive purely economic measures like GDP and consumption miss out on the things that actually matter, like kids being the first generation in history to have unlimited unrestricted access to extreme content in their pocket.
I want a "one button solution" to keep the boomers and the elderly from getting their brains fried by facebook and voting for authoritarian parties that want to implement such antiliberal mechanisms
early cremation, not like they're any kind of useful nowadays. "but you'll be in their place someday", yes i'm sure of it, being poisoned physically and mentally by every single thing existing i'm pretty confident i'll live till 50.
I'm sure when those kids grow up and work long hours for the rest of their lives (if they can find a job at all!) just to be able to afford rent they'll at least be grateful they weren't able to access porn in their teenage years.
The effects of porn, SoMe, ultra processed foods, etc. Likely also affect the real economies in ways wondo not yet fully grasp.
+Should be clear is that exposing children to porn or normalizing porn in no way promotes "healthy economies" either.
> On Friday, the Sejm (lower house) passed an amendment to the bill on the provision of electronic services, which allows for the blocking of illegal content on the internet. The new regulations anticipate that the president of UKE (Office of Electronic Communications) and KRRiT (National Broadcasting Council ) will be able to decide on the removal of content concerning 27 prohibited acts, mainly specified in the Penal Code. Prohibited acts include criminal threats, incitement to suicide, glorification of paedophilia, promotion of totalitarianism, incitement to hatred and content that infringes copyright.
> Under the bill, the author of the disputed content will receive a notification from the internet service provider about the initiation of the procedure and will have two days to present their position. The decision of the UKE and KRRiT to remove the content will not be subject to appeal, but the author will be able to lodge an objection with a common court.
> 237 MPs voted in favour of the bill, 200 were against, and five abstained. The bill will now be debated in the Senate.
This happens four days after Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said that "Poland strongly opposes the introduction of mandatory scanning of private messages in instant messaging services.".
---
I don't want to wear a tinfoil hat but considering that chat control is unlikely to work at EU level, local "solutions" like above in Germany and Poland may give legal way to include scanning instant messengers in the future.
The UK already arrests 33 people PER DAY for social media posts and that was in 2023.
If we're going to throw people in jail for posting political memes anyway, at least parents will have some control over what their children consume.
https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1mut3gv/12k_arrests...
Actually I cannot believe that the voters, or at least most of them, are so stupid that they no longer remember what they were doing as children, so I can only assume that the real purpose of the laws is not the claimed purpose, but something much more sinister.
I am male, so I do not know about what young girls think, so perhaps they are innocent and they might be protected by censorship, but I am certain that the "innocence" of young boys cannot be protected by such laws, even if they were technically successful.
I have grown in a country occupied by communists, like Poland. There existed absolutely no pornography whatsoever. There were no erotic movies, no erotic books, no erotic magazines.
So one might have believed that the "innocence" of young children was "protected", but such a belief was terribly wrong.
Due to the lack of any other kind of entertainment, a favorite pass-time was telling jokes, many of which had a strong pornographic content. I have no idea which were the sources of the jokes, but there existed a huge number of them. Starting from the age of 10 years, it was very frequent among boys to tell such jokes or listen to them.
The content of the jokes included pretty much everything that can be seen in a pornographic movie today and any young "innocent" boy was very familiar with such content, even if most did not understand the meaning of many parts of the content, for lack of explanatory images.
Of course, no boy would admit in the presence of adults of being aware of such things, but I would have expected that someone being now adult would remember his lack of "innocence" when young and would understand how futile is to expect that "innocence" can be "protected" by technical censorship, when the only means that could ensure "innocence" would be to be locked permanently in a prison cell, to avoid contact with any other humans.
We all know what a big issue Climate Change (and specially warming in Europe) is. So most European politicians go on and on about environment and all that.
Well, yesterday, I went to play football at night and finished at around 10PM. I was planning on taking the metro, as any normal European citizen.
Much was my surprise when I compared the time and cost to a Car Sharing app (Free2move).
The metro in my city is €3,80 and Google Maps estimated a metro travel time of 30 minutes.
I ended up paying €3,64 for the Car and made it home in 19 minutes. Worst part, the car was not even electric.
It makes absolutely no freaking sense.
So yeah, European politicians are just scammers. They're doing their own businesses while claiming to protect the population.
It is easy to implement, easy to monitor, and will probably just work if the government do the effort to monitor and enforce it. If not, it will just be an other DNT header
⇒ This will require OSes to have a filter, but it doesn’t require it to be switched on, not even for children using computers. Whether to switch it on will be a parent’s choice.
Risk, of course, is that this will be sloppy slope. Parents who don’t switch it on for their kids may get seen as not caring enough for their children, effectively forcing parents to switch the filter on.
If you can give children something that is basically whilelisted access then it reduces the need to try to filter the open web.
The lives of others (Das Leben der Anderen) has 8.4 on IMDB.
Who decides what hate speech is? Incitment? what the actual fuck. Linux is the way until they come for that as well.
Hmmm, I doubt they really care about pornography and more about censoring certain stuff that politicians do not like. But what do I know, I'm probably just a conspiracy theorist.
I am also worried about another detail:
> The states also want to prevent the circumvention of blocking orders by erotic portals ... using so-called mirror domains – i.e., the distribution of identical content under a minimally changed web address. For a page to be treated as a mirror page and quickly blocked without a new procedure, it must essentially have the same content as the already blocked original.
Note the part "quickly blocked without a new procedure" so there is a way to block sites with even less process and oversight. That just invites overblocking without accountability.
https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2025/04/11/german-court-p...
I struggle with porn addiction. When I really fall back into it I act out 5-10 times a day. I can’t stop even if I want to. It distracts from work and from my real life relationships and girlfriend.
Everyone on HN loves to rag on social media because it’s so toxic. What about porn? If social media makes it easy to compare my “boring” life with “beautiful” influencer lives, why wouldn’t porn make my normal girlfriend and normal sex seem boring. Part of that is how young I found porn when my brain was still developing and forming how it processed sex and relationships. Porn makes me feel so depressed.
I am sure other people handle porn and social media better than me. And that’s ok, I respect that. *But even if you think porn is ok as an adult, can’t you see why adults should be able to have more control over what their kids see.* Yes if they are motivated kids will find it - I learned a lot of the engineering skills I have now getting around my parents blocker. *Not every kid is that good and this might help many.* If it’s not required to be on in the OS, what’s the harm?
P.S. if you struggle with something similar to me, look up SA, SAA, or SLAA.
Why is any restriction on adult content so fiercely defended? I can post that Mark Zuckerberg should be arrested and tried at the Hague and receive a somewhat warm reception on this platform. But there are these giant faceless corporations pushing unrestricted, often depraved content to minors and people stand up for them. And this content often includes anonymous uploaded content with underage girls. It's like the meme "leave those billionaires alone!"
I'm sure this will get downvoted, but help me understand what the visceral reaction is. I've heard people argue that this kind of adult content isn't harmful, but it seems obvious that it is, especially to children. At least more than short form content like TikTok. What would you rather your 12 year old spend hours watching? The adult industry has always been a few steps ahead of popular media in terms of virality, addiction and kitsch. They're shaping the online generation, and not in a good way.
Porn doesn't do this. It may have other issues, but it doesn't aim at maximing engagement with infinite scrolls and similar tactics. Let alone the content, who would watch porn for 12hrs/day? We already have the possibility to do that, and if somebody doesn't have mental issues, I'm of the opinion (s)he's not going to do that
I have very low trust in government (mine or other). We had these restrictions before. My country has been there, done that, for 41 years, not keen on repeat.
And unlike corporations (for all their problems and there are many), you can't avoid that.
I'm honestly not against blocking social media for children. It's just sad that we got to this point. In an ideal world, parents would be the gatekeepers and the reason for not allowing their kids to use TikTok would be that it's simply not good for them. But I'm not happy with the solution, which means that you need a way to prove your age and/or identity to all these sites. Mkey. I guess. For social media that's one thing, but you already see that they're very keen on applying that same thing for porn now? Why? That gives my government highly fucking sensitive information about me. I seriously detest that thought, so I'd rather just not give any government the tools to interfere and/or closely watch what I do.
You also have to assume that people are not taking the purpose of these new measures at face value, but assume that there are other underlying motives and that the measures are broader than just simple pornography. And I don't think that assumption is unjustified.
The ID-based measures like in the UK are a gigantic privacy nightmare as well.
These measures are also not specific to kids, in the end they essentially always affect the access to this kind of content by adults as well. And some people think that is none of the government's business.
An additional factor is that these measures are technically infeasibly without drastic measures. So they're either easy to circumvent, or would give the government enormous power and access over all kinds of communication.
This is a regulation that, at least in theory, would give parents more control over what their children consume. If you think about it on a family unit, this is pro consumer. You don't have to use it.
But in general I just don't think we need freedom max absolutely everything. I think its destructive to society (as is social media but this is much worse). Naive purely economic measures like GDP and consumption miss out on the things that actually matter, like kids being the first generation in history to have unlimited unrestricted access to extreme content in their pocket.
Parents can put filters on their kids' internet accessible devices and everyone should be happy.