
France to introduce controversial age verification system for adult websites - docdeek
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-to-introduce-controversial-age-verification-system-for-adult-pornography-websites/
======
Waterfall
As a kid, I was able to figure out limewire, Emule, torrents and I'm sure kids
today will be able to download a free vpn or use similar tools I used as a
preteen to figure out how to circumvent these pointless blocks. I started with
free video samples and only moved onto methods by high school to get access to
premium websites. As a human, our strength is not only the ability to do these
things but to also teach others to do it. I was able to help my friends to get
access as well. If one ape discovered fire it would die with them, but our
ability to spread information, like a virus is what gives humanity
intelligence. One kid like me at school is all it takes to make this stupid
law useless.

Adult websites want brownie points and also don't like nonpayers, but mess
with their revenue and you'll get a push back.

~~~
raxxorrax
A mistake many people do. Maybe there are people now wary of children being
subjected to certain content on the net. They are forgetting at least three
things:

They also were exposed and survived just fine

Their kids are probably going to be better with tech at some point.

The vast majority of pornographic content is available without being on the
market which makes regulation nearly impossible. Yes, you can maybe attack the
platforms hosting it, but I don't see this going anywhere. You would punish
commercial distribution on push other content underground. Many in porn are
already directly financed by their viewers.

Wasn't the Australia block circumvented within 24h by a ~14-year old kid?

Some people suggested to make brushing teeth illegal so that kids do it in
secret in a dark corner.

~~~
yomly
I agree - for many of people(including teens) circumventing restrictions is
part of the thrill.

That said I do think there has been an escalation of porn over the years. It's
really apparent when you look at things from the 70s. Though apparently
banning porn from cinemas shifted content to more "trashy" VHS/DVD/Online
videos

I feel data-driven analytics has probably accelerated this, like a race to the
bottom (pun unintended). Extremity probably drives engagement so the porn kids
are exposed to today is much more extreme than what we may have been as up and
coming internet users.

~~~
rapnie
It is so easy to encounter it, even accidentally. Things have improved a bit,
but 3 yrs ago when I switched to DDG almost any image search with
SafeSearch=off came with sudden unexpected nude or porn pics on page 2 or 3
almost regardless of the search term.

~~~
randomchars
You mean you turned the safe search feature off, and you got unsafe results?

~~~
rapnie
Sure, what can you expect, right? Imo not that any unrelated search yields
porn. With google this never happened (actually I can't remember ever seeing
porn images unexpectedly in ggl image search where I also had safe search
off). It held me back recommending DDG to others. Though, as I said, things
have improved a bit nowadays, and it happens less often.

~~~
mrep
I think I read it here on HN that google has/had an entire team dedicated to
making sure you never ever got porn unless you were very specifically
searching for it.

------
gorgoiler
Websites that don’t follow the new AV laws will have to sanctioned. If the
website is local, you can go ‘round to their office and arrest the owners.
Lock ‘em up and throw away the key, it being _the only language they
understand_ etc.

However, if the website is not local then it must be blocked, either by
statute, by the courts, or by a regulator.

This may require a _National Firewall_ to block sites (eg The PRC.) As a
bonus, your blocking infra can also be used for monitoring and logging.

If you’re lucky though the nation state will implement its _Great Firewall_
using a borked DNS infra (eg The UK) that isn’t even mandatory for ISPs with a
small enough userbase.

Exciting times, er, _temps fantastiques_ , even. What tech does _En Marche_
intend to mandate for blocking hairy armpits? Hopefully nothing too competent.

~~~
mytailorisrich
Websites may already be blocked in France upon order from the Government,
based on anti-terror laws.

Basically, the Ministry of the Interior decides and orders all Internet access
providers to block a site. Courts are not involved on the premise that this
must sometimes be carried out as quickly as possible, though there is a right
to contest a decision _a posteriori_.

~~~
mantap
There's no such thing as blocking a site. You can direct DNS providers to
block DNS, which doesn't help for anyone using Firefox. You can direct ISPs to
block an IP but then you have hard decisions when the site you want to block
is hosted by a foreign cloud provider.

~~~
enitihas
How does foreign cloud provider matters. As of now encrypted SNI is not there,
so they can block simply based on SNI. If SNI info is not correct, they can
ask the foreign cloud provider to block the website. Any cloud provider where
SNI block won't work well is large enough to not deny requests from the french
government.

~~~
mantap
In the long term plaintext SNI is going away. I'm not convinced that France
can implement such a system much faster than TLS WG can thwart it.

Also while some US cloud providers might cooperate I doubt that in particular
Cloudflare would. It only takes one.

~~~
enitihas
In the long term things are hard to predict. If we look from 2010, E2E
encryption wasn't there, or atleast not in a form usable by the masses. E2E is
now here, and is as easy as using Signal. However, you see countries making
laws against it. I doubt they will let eSNI pass through. And eSNI will be
much easier to block, since you don't need to block it for consumers, you just
need to impose big fines on businesses using it, since any such business will
need to earn money somehow from their customers in the country. Unlike E2E,
you don't have to worry about some random person forking signal and running
their own servers. And video on internet is expensive enough that only an
entity with good bank balance can do it, thus easy to punish with economic
fines.

------
torgian
Oh so using sex to implement fear and uncertainty and despair ( FUD ) among
the populace? Think of the children! By the way, here’s a firewall to block
whatever websites we don’t like. Oh and you’re being monitored 24/7 now. But
not now. In like, five years.

~~~
astrobe_
I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but the 'D' usually stands for Doubt
(sometimes Deception).

~~~
ur-whale
Not in this case, since it's about filtering porn. /s

------
photon12
There's a meta-issue with pushing regulatory requirements that are trivial to
bypass: you effectively normalize bypassing regulations and effectively create
a culture where regulatory bypass is seen as "not a big deal" even if that
wasn't your original intent.

People have been using VPNs because they think region-locking streaming
content is something where the risk-reward calculus is fairly obvious, and
from what I can see that's a fairly normalized cultural trend.

If you do the same thing with porn, you are now adding another layer of depth
to the emergent cultural phenomena.

If you think there needs to be a serious conversation about porn access and
psychology, implementing restrictions trivial to bypass only serves to reduce
the legitimacy of agents trying to make the case for such education.

Edit: you also see this phenomenon with respect to COVID mask mandates

------
FeistyOtter
It's a continuation of an ongoing trend nowadays to elevate to a government
level issues that should be solved in the family. Instead french government
should spend its efforts on actual society problems that affect every child,
like fixing french school system. But then they have to spend brain power and
money while fighting entrenched interest groups, so as always, low hanging
fruit is easier to pick.

~~~
loulou24
I wonder if we could pinpoint when this awful trend got started (in France and
elsewhere).

~~~
justnotworthit
My guess is that most people believe that their own family is functional, but
that other people's families are creating delinquents.

------
lemoncookiechip
Honestly, this is completely ridiculous and makes absolutely no sense
whatsoever. It'll not only disturb people's lives if it goes on ahead, but
could also have the potential risk of identity theft increasing depending on
how it is implemented.

And the saddest part of all, is that this is completely pointless. It's
extremely easy to circumvent, including for those with little to no tech
knowledge, not to mention you can find hardcore pornography on platforms such
as Twitter by typing 3 letters "Sex" and one click, plus all the hundreds of
thousands of keywords that will lead you there, including such words as
"Amateur", "Schoolgirl"...

They learned nothing from the UK.

~~~
Mangalor
If a 9-year-old types into Google, they will easily find porn.

But, maybe it shouldn't be so easy. And yes, once they're in middle school and
high school they'll just figure out alternatives, but I don't think it's
unreasonable to put up some dead simple barriers to protect innocence.

Just because it was easy for those of us growing up in the 90s and after
doesn't mean all children have to be exposed like that.

------
VladimirGolovin
They tried it in Russia with Telegram. All they did is teach the entire
country how to use VPNs.

~~~
lord_sauron
And blocked most of AWS in the process, I understand ...

------
Barrin92
I wonder why they're using credit cards or leave it to the platforms to figure
out verification mechanisms. In Germany the national ID card has age
verification mechanisms built in[1]. This also has the advantage of not
handing personal information over to the porn websites as all the veriifcation
is done by the official eID server.

Given that the article also addresses future standardized European solutions
this seems like a pretty reasonable step forward.

[1][https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic-...](https://www.personalausweisportal.de/EN/Citizens/Electronic-
Identification/Electronic-Identification_node.html)

~~~
randomchars
I couldn't find much information, but in this case, doesn't the government
directly have access to the sites you used this feature on?

~~~
Barrin92
I suppose they would know which provider requests the authentification.
However in one document I found the process is described as 'ephemeral' which
I suppose suggests they don't store these requests.

~~~
randomchars
And would you trust them not to store them? I certainly wouldn't.

------
doublerabbit
Children should be deterred from looking at pornography. Watching pornography
of normal acts with male or female anatomy I doubt will cause issues. But what
about other nasty content? It's easy to fall down a rabbit hole and such
content is available with just three words in google.

The internet is not a safe place and when a child watches obscene content that
very well starts to warp their mind and perception. They hunt for further
gratification and this can lead in to more murky content. Pornography can be
malicious and internet pornography addiction is real too.

I am in favor of restricting content however for the reason that there really
is nasty content which young children are discovering and it's leading them to
grow up corrupt. If there was a way to divide the two but you can't, however
the way it is it's either all or nothing.

Filter it, let a child hack around the filter expanding their computer skills
and reward it. That it self is far more positive then being able to view all
the content that is available. Innocence can be lost prematurely and that's
disastrous for the child if it is lost.

Pornography nowadays isn't like it was during the MTV years which many will
compare from.

~~~
chii
who is to decide what is obscene and what is not?

~~~
Nasrudith
Me. I declare censorship an absolute obscenity in a free society. There now
that we have rendered that stupid question meaningless we can move on as a
society.

------
mtnGoat
It's been a while since I worked in adult, but I recall when Germany did
something similar, no one outside their jurisdiction had to follow the rules,
so no one did. Additionally it just required the user to enter an ID number
the site owner had to validate against a government API, that charged per
request. This was flawed because... Kids could find/share the ID card numbers
and bad actors could run up your bills by dictionary attacking the validation
form. It was a need and was utterly unenforceable.

The solution is parents need to be parenting. Where there is a will, there is
a way (and that's directed to both sides).

------
speedgoose
I guess DNS over HTTPS will become popular much faster in France.

~~~
enitihas
It won't help alone without encrypted SNI.

~~~
5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E
eSNI can't come soon enough.

~~~
Spivak
Sure but eSNI only works for this on the theory that large CDNs are too big to
block. It’s domain fronting as a service.

The problem is that if you’re too big to block you’re big enough that
governments can drag you into court.

------
xfitm3
Blocking content is absolutely pointless, and ironically increases demand.
Circumventing controls and doing something you shouldn't is exciting.

Personally I don't have a problem with porn and I'd rather not see this used
as a way to weasel in real id verification systems into websites which I think
is the real motivation here.

Next it will require real id for comment forums to quell "hate speech", and
then eventually to identify dissenters and other utopian pursuits.

~~~
loulou24
Governments taking the role of parents.

~~~
wizzwizz4
Parents aren't technically competent enough to do this kind of thing properly.
Governments, on the other hand… aren't technically competent enough either.

------
Softcadbury
This will never work, there are too many websites and too many ways of getting
around this limitation.

BUT, there are plenty of parental control softwares for computers and phones,
I think this is the only valid solution. So instead of passing some stupid
laws, we just have to teach parents.

Otherwise, it's like trying to replace all knifes by platic ones; no we let
parents teach kids it's dangerous.

~~~
enitihas
I don't think people making these laws care of 1-5 % people using a
workaround. If 95% people are blocked, I think they are good.

~~~
randomchars
I think you get the percentages wrong: 95% of kids who want to watch porn will
easily find a workaround.

~~~
enitihas
Unless 95% of kids can get a VPN, I doubt how kids can find a workaround for
SNI based blocks.

~~~
Nextgrid
There would be informal distribution networks via groups on various messaging
apps or general-purpose cloud storage services. This might spell the end for
the major "tube" sites if they can't make enough ad revenue, but this is
definitely not going to be the end of porn.

------
terminalcommand
The thing that cracks me most is that they suggested to mandate the use of
e-government authentication tools for accessing adult content.

If they want to fight this, the most effective way would be a nation-wide ban
of VPNs, ip blocking and deep packet inspection to discover and ban other
tunnels/VPNs. Sure, you can rent your own server and run shadowsocks on it but
it will complicate the process.

In Turkey, I feel like most VPNs are actively banned, it’s a roulette
basically to get a working one. The only reliable solution is to rent your own
server and setup your own VPN. I think in China, they can also find out and
block those.

------
tpmx
Do you remember when France banned encryption software from being used by non-
government entities in the 90s? I do.

[https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to-
recons...](https://slashdot.org/story/99/01/15/0044246/france-to-reconsider-
its-cryptography-laws)

> Until 1996 one had to ask permission to use any form of encryption, or pay a
> 6000-500000 FF fine with 2-6 months of prison if found out. Currently
> encryption that the french authorities can break is legal, but this is not
> secure enough to encourage e-commerce.

(1999)

~~~
jackjeff
Yeah. My university had the choice of either breaking the law, get hacked or
not providing remote SSH access to students. They broke the law...

~~~
tpmx
To us other europeans, those years were kind of formative to us about viewing
France as a relic to be laughed about.

What great french internet startups have ended up expanding outside their
country in a meaningful way?

~~~
Nasrudith
That also explains a whole lot of French tech jealousy politics and their many
stupid failed ventures. They always were moronic control freaks essentially
and won't change, the only solution is to replace the damn fools.

~~~
tpmx
Everything can be solved with a multi billion euro EU-funded project!

------
bovermyer
Ignoring the subject matter of the article, one phrase in particular stood out
to me - "digital sovereignty."

This is the first time I've heard that phrase. I've never conceived of the web
being carved up into territory by governments before. However, when I think
about it now, the Web _is_ being fought over by governments - China, India,
the USA, etc.

That makes me a little sad.

~~~
Nasrudith
Always remember the true meaning of sovereignty. If the universe was really a
MMO server and the PVP flag was switched off and magically nobody could kill
or steal, detonating a bomb only endangered the bombmaker if it was in a blast
radius, and even drunk drivers could only harm themselves it would be a
catastrophy for sovereignty.

------
jaclaz
Only for the record, the (of course, and as often happens not possible in
practice) Italian norm has nothing to do with credit cards and age
verification by the content provider.

It says essentially that phone, TV and internet providers must by default
prevent access to some type of contents and that this access can only be
unblocked by the subscriber of the contract through an explicit request.

I.e. it is more like a form of Parental Control", and of course the basic
issue (since the "not suitable to minors" includes not only pornography, but
also violence and other objectionable content) deciding which is which is
either impossible or needing to implement some sort of automatic filters that
inevitably will tag objectionable contents as "fine" or viceversa block access
to perfectly suitable content, in this latter case with obvious consequences
to freedom of expression.

~~~
desas
The UK has a similar system - agreed between the four main ISPs and the
government, rather than legally binding. The code of practice says that
subscribers must be forced to make a choice between a filtered or unfiltered
internet connection.

------
kwhitefoot
Why are only porn sites regarded as harmful? What about violence? What about
sites peddling snake oil?

~~~
falsaberN1
"Core values".

------
mensetmanusman
It is so interesting to see various country approaches to the flow of
information, i.e. internet regulation.

At its foundation, the idea amounts to ‘there exists information that is
dangerous and it is our job to protect them (the people).’

Based on the range of human abilities, few could argue against the idea that
‘there exists dangerous information’ (that is dangerous to some people).

In the U.S. those on the left are asking corporations to protect people by
banning ‘dangerous information’

In China, the CCP has spend a large percentage of their GDP and has defined
almost all information not related to consumerism and good manners as
‘dangerous’

In France, this.

If everyone were perfect, there would be no dangerous information, because
people would be able to read things in perfect context. That will never
happen.

------
thrwaway69
If you are a parent - use [https://nextdns.io](https://nextdns.io) AFTER
having a conversation to filter porn. Why let government do it? Why not state
funded child education and parenting centres if you can't even do this or
educate yourself about it?

As an underage person, I would just run wireguard on the router with open wrt
if I wanted to bypass filter.

Being brutally honest, if your kid is at high risk of porn addiction or is
already addicted - you have failed miserably at parenting. You really want to
look at other aspect to life to evaluate and fix the problem. Porn addiction
is a result of some other problem in 95% cases.

------
BrandoElFollito
I am French and this is the first time I hear of that.

After checking the sources, there is indeed a law passed, it needs an extra
vote end July and then it is up to the site to cooperate.

Otherwise the can be blocked after a trial.

Which means in clear text that this is a law passed so that someone can put a
checkmark on a list.

The funny thing is that there wqs a proposal to use FranceConnect, or uber
serious portal allowing unified login to serious sites (tax, health,...).
Having a porn site using this would be memorable.

------
arnaudsm
We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds.

If this law fails to educate on pornography, at least it'll educate youngsters
on DNS. I'm ok with both scenarios.

~~~
andybak
> We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds.

There's a fair amount to unpack here.

"We tend to forget" seems to indicate this is proven and beyond dispute. I'm
not sure that is true.

"damage" is a very strong word that implies permanent harm - almost at the
cellular level. Not everyone would accept that "damage" is even the right way
to frame this. It's part of a complex social and behavioural pattern that is
very hard to pick apart.

"young minds" \- how young? Is it dependent on countering with good sex
education or is the "damage" something that would resist all countermeasures?

~~~
claudiawerner
You can probably find more information than I did with a Google Scholar search
for the effects of porn on adolescents and children - though this is a very
hard thing to "prove beyond dispute" for several reasons - people react to
media in very different ways, effects may only be activated by pre-existing
patterns of behaviour and attitudes, there is a large influence from
religiosity, among other things; and of course, it'd be unethical to expose
children to porn in a lab setting. The best you're going to get is controlled
suveys and questionnaires, from researchers working at a school, for example.
Consider that we know cannabis and alcohol can have a detrimental effect on
young people, but we're obviously not able to watch them smoke or drink it in
a controlled environment. All that said (and note that the authors of the
first paper are probably the foremost scholars of porn effects research in
psychology):

"Additionally, there is meta-analytic evidence to indicate that viewing more
pornography and viewing extreme pornography is associated with the sexual
objectification of women and more aggressive attitudes (Hald et al., 2010)[0].
Some longitudinal findings link sexual aggression and use of violent
pornography, for example, one study of 10-15 year olds in the US found that
those who intentionally viewed violent X-rated materials were nearly six times
more likely than others to report sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra et al.
2011)[1]."[2]

The research on effects of porn is chequered and often has methodological
problems, replication problems, and unfortunately assumes one kind of
mainstream porn (leaving out, say, erotica, fanfiction overwhelmingly written
and read by teens, online erotic roleplaying, etc.) - that said, from my own
amateur reading around the topic, there is a strong pointer to substantial
negative effects which are usually (though not always) mediated, much in the
same way alcohol consumption effects are.

[0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes
supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non-
experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328

[1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J.
(2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior
among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37,
1–18.

[2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view
pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit
viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of
Culture, Media and Sport.

~~~
GoblinSlayer
Violent people watch violent porn, who would have thought. Then increase
vanilla porn to offset violent porn, maybe this way people will be more
exposed to non-violent content.

~~~
claudiawerner
This is not what the research is showing. It's showing that increased exposure
to _any_ porn has effects on attitude (measured in a lab setting; outside the
lab, we need to be careful with mixing up correlation and causation), but the
effects are more pronounced with violent porn. There's also the Coolidge
Effect to take into account.

~~~
Eli_P
> that increased exposure to any porn has effects on attitude

What does your research say about the fixation of that attitude? Is it like,
forever and ever? How those effects compare to watching martial arts, war
footage from the news, movies etc?

Isn't it just a Pavlovian response training thing? Before the age of 25 people
are more susceptible to learn or relearn, and some are just born (and
exacerbated by insane upbringing instead of proper diagnosis and meds) with
predilections.

> but the effects are more pronounced with violent porn

Sure, and if they had a fist fight behind a school, a kiss, a cigarette, a
caffeinated drink and listened to violent music in a short time they'd
probably had a heart attack.

Your conclusion reminds of witch-hunt-approving arguments like, violent games
make kids violent. Which is moot, Take for example Children's Crusades[1] in
13 century, which was induced by religion and politics. Or, I know some
parents who watched a documentary about how a talented musician was raised
with beatings, so they took that literally, you know what I mean? Sick ideas
find a fertile ground.

Btw did you watch that Black Mirror episode "Arkangel", seems related. Or The
Alienist by Caleb Carr, the book and series, about underage male prostitution
in 19 century, the plot is based on real life, sort of.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Crusade)

~~~
claudiawerner
>Your conclusion reminds of witch-hunt-approving arguments like, violent games
make kids violent. Which is moot, Take for example Children's Crusades[1] in
13 century, which was induced by religion and politics. Or, I know some
parents who watched a documentary about how a talented musician was raised
with beatings, so they took that literally, you know what I mean? Sick ideas
find a fertile ground.

I can see and understand the concern, and some results can fuel moral panics
and witchhunts, but they don't need to lead to there necessarily. Finding that
porn has effects on attitude and aggression, and long-term, increased, or more
violent use can have greater effects does not provide an _ought_ from the
_is_. It can provide some scientific and empirical basis for such an argument
(for example, an argument to ban porn), but we shouldn't reject science
because of the normative conclusions it might lead us to.

You may be interested in a book[0] from a little while ago which examines the
debate quite closely, with lots of empirical data which supports both sides of
the argument. From what I've read, behavioural scientists and policy-makers
largely do not consider the evidence "against" porn to be all that decisive in
supporting a ban.

In other words... the proper strategy should be to get the data, scrutinise
the data, and then decide what action we will take (if any) based on the data.
The book mentions a comparison with the effects of alcohol, which is quite
apt. Many people who would argue for porn to be banned, I imagine, would not
have the same opinion on alcohol, especially given the history of the
Prohibition.

[0] [https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/debating-
pornography/](https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/debating-pornography/)

------
davidjhall
For some reason, I thought of the Leisure Suit Larry age verification system
which asked questions that only an 18 year old ( at the time, with no internet
) could answer: [https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-
quiz.ht...](https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html)

------
Algent
Something interesting about being forced to use the "FranceConnect" OpenID
service for adult websites is it's what we use in France to connect official
taxes, health insurance, retirement and car registration website. It also use
social security number as login depending on which website you bounce from.

~~~
mgbmtl
That sounds scary if used by companies who rely on advertising and, when they
get hacked, extortionists.

------
MattGaiser
We could do all that and kids would still watch porn. They would just share
the downloaded video files.

~~~
loulou24
So more hassle.

Which could be the difference between teenage curiosity and the beginning of a
debilitating addiction (depending on the transfer speed).

------
jackjeff
I wonder to what extent a state can block a website.

ESNI - HTTPS - cloudflare

That’s all it takes to bypass the porn filters in the UK and other websites
banned by the high court such as the Pirate Bay.

It only takes one geek kid to figure it out and they’ll all know it.

------
csunbird
Yes, it is entirely safe to post PII to sites that are known to be targeted by
hackers heavily and daily, to extract data that can be used to blackmail
people. The adult websites are never hacked before right?

/sarcasm off

~~~
pnw_hazor
Proponents of these types of laws are anti-porn. If fear of sharing the
required PII with porn sites reduces the number of visitors to those sites,
all the better in their mind.

The 'save-the-children' vibe is a smoke screen for banning porn.

------
octygen
More thrill to get the content, more dopamine hit once you get to the goal,
the more likely it is to be more addictive. If it's not forbidden, it's not
nearly as exciting.

------
eric1293
France would like to ban the Internet in general. They ban everything: Amazon,
google, Uber, websites, ...

~~~
jamil7
Maybe they're still sour that minitel[0] never took off outside of France.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel)

------
helixhelix
Tor with obfs4 gets around this.

------
oxAAAFFB
I just arrived in France. What should I see?

------
loulou24
Putting aside for a moment the (important) issue of privacy.

I'm wondering if people here would react the same if "adult websites" was
replaced with "added sugar".

Would people use arguments like

\- kids will always find ways to become diabetic!

or

\- I use to eat plums, I never had problems.

~~~
enitihas
I think the main difference is that far too many people eat sugar, and even
more importantly, far too many people can proudly admit in public that they
eat sugar.

~~~
loulou24
Far too many people watch porn excessively too.

People just don't realize it _precisely_ because we don't talk about it,
people around don't notice it and you can keep the same pair of trousers
(unlike when you drink too much soda).

I think that in a few years, opinion will shift and we'll consider porn as a
public health problem.

~~~
Nasrudith
When will we consider prudes a public health issue? Their shaming is unhealthy
and when they get power cause generations of harm. Worse they have no care for
it so long as they get their righteous indignation high! Given the sheer toll
of prohobition judgementalness is the most insidious and deadly of all of the
vices.

~~~
loulou24
Shaming? prudes? judgmental?? What on earth are you talking about?

Look, an increasing number of people (not just me) are realizing how
detrimental to their life this little habit has been. Many wish they realized
it sooner. And when they realize they are far from being alone [1], they
naturally tend to think the effect of porn might be understated in our
society.

I'm not judging anyone, if people enjoy it and it doesn't affect negatively
their lives, good for them. And if I'm wrong and people like me end up being
just a minute minority, then Great News!

But I really don't understand why I get downvoted for this and I understand
even less this rambling about 'prudes'.

[1]: [https://forum.nofap.com/index.php](https://forum.nofap.com/index.php)

------
milsorgen
What is the controversial part, if I may be so bold as to ask?

~~~
Hermel
It might for example require reddit to ask you for your credit card before it
lets you see an nsfw subreddit. And then again the same procedure on the
target site. Not everyone is comfortable with giving adult websites their
credit card information. (I for sure would not be.)

~~~
randomchars
And at the same time you'd give your NSFW internet usage patterns to your
credit card company. I image they'd love it, even more information to sell
about you!

------
throwawayiionqz
There should be much smarter moves to work with porn sites towards better sex
education.

Force porn websites to do age verification on their models (most high traffic
site currently do).

For all videos and especially those that display acted scenes where consent is
unclear, prominently display next to the video in English+local language that
the video actors and actresses are performing willingly consentual sex acts,
even if the video scenario suggests otherwise for some fantasy's sake.

------
zxcvbn4038
I wonder if people will abandon France as fast as they abandoned Tumblr when
they banned adult content? Or 70 million people download Tor.

~~~
tasogare
I did it. In fact, for a lot of people who got an higher education the main
question for after graduation is not _what will you do_ but _where will you
go_ (where being implicitly abroad). This is of course not because of porn
sites, but the general negative and insecure (economically, etc.) climate. The
ship is sinking and people are asking for more of the things that precisely
made it this way. This is painful to see.

~~~
Tade0
Hailing from a former communist state from which quite a few people emigrated
to France I wonder what are your options as a French person?

What countries are France's France, or in other words, places where salaries
are easily 2-3x as high and the general standard of living is proportionally
better?

~~~
atxbcp
Canada, US, UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Japan, etc... Salaries don't have to
be 2-3x as high (past a certain level it doesn't matter all that much), salary
isn't the main reason why french people emigrate.

~~~
desas
London is the city with the sixth biggest French population. There are more
French people living in London than in Bordeaux or Strasbourg for example.

~~~
jjgreen
... and it's still hard to find a decent _pain au chocolat_ here

~~~
johncoltrane
Did you mean _chocolatine_?

~~~
jjgreen
I'm not getting involved in _that_ fight

