all curious and unsurveilled teens can only watch porn on the darkweb now
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
189 points (98.0% liked)
World News
54580 readers
2651 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Where the good stuff is
I wanna bet the rich will have some shell companies and lobby so they can anonymously access porn trough those.
Prove my age?
No thanks
I think I'll just wait until this thing... blows over
[ funk guitar plays ]
"Instead of these crude, circumventable policies that create an infrastructure of private companies effectively doing law enforcement, they should just mandate that every operating system provider has to create genuinely functional parental controls apps that meet a set of minimum criteria," Lazar said
Uhhhh no.
Explain your objection. It's a parenting problem, not everyone else's.
My objection is that its my operating system running on my computer
Not yours. MINE.
I can make its logic gates do anything I want, as long as it's not sending CP or malware over the Internet.
Parents already have the tools to block this at the network layer, including in mobile OSes. There’s no need to add age verification at all to anything. The parents control their kids devices, so don’t give them a device they can access this stuff on.
These tools have existed for literal decades at this point. Anyone trying to add something now is just trying to make it easier for the government to spy on you.
A lot of parents sadly lack any kinds of skills to use those tools nor even know that they exist. I'm not inherently against the approach where user agent sends some rough age (allowed R-rating or something) to the website which can then block minors from accessing porn/violence/whatever. If it was just that, locally stored info if the user is minor or adult, it could be a pretty decent approach to even technically less inclined parents to give some limits on what their kids can do.
But as with nearly every 'protect the kids' thing, it's a pretty damn slippery and steep slope. If adult verification requires something more than a local variable that's the point when the whole system becomes a tool for surveillance instead of a helpful thing for parents/schools and all of these "solutions" worldwide seems to be going in that direction.
My jedi powers sense and increase in VPN subscription sales.
but doesn't this just feel like the path to making those age gated or otherwise inaccessible?
So dumb lol
This will only hurt people working in adult entertainment as it will train Australians to steal it all.
Western governments don't care about solving issues, only looking like they do.
If it's illegal anyway, you might as well pirate it.
Last time I checked, the darknet marketplaces have whole sections just for stolen pr0n site username/passwords
I like godnrok's suggestion of having bottle-o's sell cards with proof of age numbers/hashes.
Insane, I came up with the exact same idea when reading the article then scroll down and you’ve linked to someone else saying it too.
No problem giving those codes to minors. I bet such codes would be sold on the net withing 1 minute of the release of such a system.
Remembering that a valid age verification is supposed to be a parent approving their child's use
"Muuuuu-uuum! I wanna have a wank to incest porn! Can you come and verify me?!"
"It's just pushing people into the fringe of the extremes," he said. "It's not stopping you from watching porn."
Bihar’s liquor ban is on a scale unmatched anywhere in the world but, just like 1920s America, illegal bootleggers ensure that the liquor still flow
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-11/india-deadly-prohibition-state-bihar/105010860
In the third world you see people selling VPN access in person at markets. At this point junior can probably just download it themselves, but at some point maybe that opens up as a career opportunity.
If the porn sites just block the country from connecting with a notice as to why, will that piss people off enough to force them to change the law?
Pornhub does this in several US states. When you try to connect you get a message about why it's blocked in your state. So far I don't know of any state that has changed the law back.
After a brief Internet search, I have found that no country or state has entirely pulled out after going all in on age verification. Most of them back out before even starting. So things don’t look very good for Australia.
Like they do for Texas and Utah and I'm sure a few other states.
This might seem drastic but think of the great benefits to society! Such as…. uhm… uuuh. Hey! Look what I can do! 🤹
Privacy violations galore?
and users tapping out, completely. Build your libraries
I am not against porn on any moral or ethical level as long as the content is produced with everyone's consent and some level of protection for everyone involved, or if it's material being shared by adults for fun. Fantastic, more of it. Everyone should enjoy the good things in life and that includes sexuality.
That said, porn addiction is damaging not necessarily just because it alters your perception of relationships, but because anything you do that creates pleasure spikes/associations can have negative effects on your ability to derive pleasure from other things. And if you start getting hooked on porn early in life, these changes to your brain become extremely hard to break and you can set yourself up for chronic issues like depression, anhedonia and anxiety. And yes, also fucked up ideas about sex and relationships.
I don't think a ban is appropriate and I don't trust the agencies that want to manage our age-verification, but I do think something needs to be done that doesn't just hand wave it off as "let the parents do their job" because we don't live in that world. Parents are just children with more bills. Nobody knows how to parent, much less parent properly though difficult topics.
I am admittedly unsure what the right answer here is. A lot of the internet, not even just porn, is very damaging to our minds. Our attention spans are shot, we all just read the worst thoughts from the slimmest margin of people and focus on those edge cases about any idea or topic and it ruins our ability to socialize or engage with others happily. And a lot of young people around the whole world are just deeply stuck in ruts of doom-scrolling, porn, social-media and influencers giving fake advice and selling scams to anyone with access to a credit card.
I feel like with all problems it comes back to capitalism fucking everything up for everyone, but I also know we're nowhere near a point where people are going to start like, creating effective governments so that services and systems can be nationalized safely. I wouldn't trust a nationalized trash-can in the USA, not sure how bad it is in Australia but it's just a matter of time before capital ruins every developed country with a few cents to rub together.
edit: if your impulse is to push back on this, it's kinda telling bro.
Everything is an addiction to those with no self control. Don't project your issues onto the rest of us.
those with no self control
I am literally saying that anything that gives you pleasurable feelings can be addictive, but I'm saying it's not a morality issue. If you think people who get hooked on bad habits "have no self control" then you're part of the problem.
That is a terrible article on an argued topic, dealing with the feelings of morality surrounding porn addiction and not touching on the psychological pleasure/reward cycle that compulsive behavior creates. You misunderstand the actual debate or you're looking for the articles to support your feelings. It's a debated topic but most professionals believe that porn is addictive even if it's not a defined condition.
There is debate about if porn addiction is a real, separate issue than just compulsive behavior, but the vast consensus is that porn is addicting, just that by itself it doesn't count as a separate addiction when people show the same addictive behavior towards things like video games and other things that don't chemically interact with the brain, so the argument is if we should make a blanket category for compulsive behavior for certain media and habits.
It's about the categorization and definitions, not a pass that porn and similar compulsive behavior isn't a danger.
https://www.addictioncenter.com/community/is-porn-addiction-real/
the world’s leading guide on psychological disorders, asserts that pornography, as well as sex addictions, are not psychological disorders.
But does that mean porn isn’t addictive, and that people can’t become addicted to it? Absolutely not. Because the APA or DSM-5 has not “recognized” something does not mean that it isn’t real.
Lots of people are harmed by addictive behavior, about a lot of different things that aren't always written up in a book. I've talked to too many guys who have had problems with this for me to dismiss it just because some wannabe celebrity doctors found they can make bank supporting our bad habits that don't leave physical marks.
Porn addiction isn't a real thing, sparky.
There are thousands and thousands of people who have suffered addiction to behavior that gives them dopamine, from scrolling to video games to porn, if it's not real to you... GREAT, shut up and go away. I'm sure you'll be fine. Don't worry about it.
Hold a photo of the PM up to the camera?