A French court has not only ordered the blocking of the sites, but the implementation of non-existent age verification checks.
The disturbing rise of internet censorship is continuing. There’s obviously a lot of nuance with these cases as well. Sometimes, it’s difficult to really blame a site getting censored (such as the case with Brazil blocking X/Twitter thanks in large part to Elon Musk doing stupid things), but other times, the censorship efforts are quite disturbing (such as the attempts to block TikTok for the crime of not being an American company). So, there is a big spectrum for quite a lot despite what anti-tech voices would have you believe (these are the voices that believe all internet companies are bad and they should be censored, shut down, and the owners arrested and thrown in jail).
When it comes to the case surrounding age verification laws, these cases tend to lead towards the latter side of the spectrum. Generally speaking, the demands is that every one of the websites in question (it’s not just porn sites anymore as Australia is proving right now) should have this mythological technology that accurately verifies everyone’s ages while, at the same time, completely protecting the privacy of the users. The technology that sufficiently does this simply does not exist. It’s at the same level of mythological technology as encryption technology that contains a back door that only the “good guys” can use (as the AT&T case proved so spectacularly when Chinese sponsored hackers broke in). It doesn’t exist.
Yet, for age verification supporters, the only thing that is needed is for people to “nerd harder” and will it into existence simply by believing hard enough. Some out there even go so far as to say that there is such a thing as “good enough” and are willing to deploy extremely shoddy solutions (probably because they feel that if it doesn’t affect them, then it’s not their problem). If you think that is bad, some would even go to the extreme of proclaiming that children are too stupid to understand VPN technology. Therefore, circumvention tools can be ignored in the process. I wish I were joking with that, but that is the level of technological ignorance we are dealing with when it comes to talking about people who support such laws.
Yet, all of this wishful thinking is going to cost the average person quite significantly. This is because a major fundamental flaw with all of these age verification systems is that it demands that users fork over highly sensitive personal information. This is to be collected in a database which, as a general rule, represents a giant “hack me” sign for the many black hat hackers out there to break in and steal. If you want to have highly detailed personal information on someone for the purposes of blackmail, you generally aren’t going to get a better source than a database of everyone who got access to things like porn websites. For those wondering, yes, these systems have been hacked in the past. It ultimately compromises the personal security of the general population.
Yet, despite the significant risk to people’s personal safety, there’s still a push for age verification systems anyway. In France, a court has ruled that multiple porn websites must implement a better age verification system on their sites. The judge in question has ordered the blocking of those websites until such age verification systems have been implemented. From TechCrunch:
The Paris Court of Appeal ordered some pornography websites to be blocked on Thursday over failure to implement robust age verification systems that are capable of preventing minors from accessing the adult content, Politico reports.
Porn sites Tukif and Xhamster were among several adult websites subject to the order. The sites have been given 15 days to implement effective age verification or face the block being extended until they do.
So, in other words, compromise the privacy and personal safety of your users or face a full country-wide ban. This because there is no such thing as “effective age verification”. This is something even French privacy regulator, CNIL, ended up finding. At any rate, it’s pure insanity if you ask me.
What will be interesting to see is how these sites end up reacting to this. In this scenario, I think just saying, “OK, if you want to block us, block us” is actually a pretty reasonable response to this. Obviously, this carries some security concerns given that people will simply start accessing more dodgy porn sites once this blocking is implemented. While that is bad, it’s better than the sites themselves working to compromise the safety of their users. In fact. it’s a somewhat similar response Pornhub took when various US states started implementing impossible to comply with age verification laws. The only difference is that Pornhub simply opted to block those states in the process (as opposed to the state blocking them).
Taking a step back and taking the broader picture in all of this, what is certainly striking is just how much more censorial things have become over the last decade. I think the most amount of censorship you could end up seeing (and it’s unlikely you’d see it) is the blocking of CSAM material. It’s very obviously illegal material which is why free speech proponents didn’t raise much concern around it. What makes even porn sites much more troubling is the fact that free speech protected material is now being subjected to censorship.
Even more troubling is the fact that these censorship activities are spilling over into social media and video games where, again, protected speech is under attack. This is something I had warned about in the past. Few people payed much attention to those warnings and now we are seeing these free speech attacks bleed into other things online – exactly like I had warned would happen. Even 15 years ago, this very scenario would’ve been completely unimaginable. At most, the biggest worry was the possibility (now reality) of mass government surveillance and file-sharing lawsuits. I think it’s safe to say that things have gotten much worse since.
