Daniel Zekveld is a Policy Analyst with the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada.
This is a concern Canadian governments can and should also take action on.
Other jurisdictions are already doing so, including the U.K., France, Australia, and over two dozen U.S. states. These jurisdictions have typically passed laws requiring age verification to prevent children from viewing online pornography.
Canada’s Senate recently completed its study of Bill S-209, which would require pornography companies to verify the age of potential viewers through a third-party organization. That legislation passed third reading in the Senate to a standing ovation and will now be reviewed and debated in the House of Commons.
As Senator Miville-Dechene, the bill’s sponsor, concluded during the third reading debate, “By passing this bill, we’ll be sending a clear signal that Canada is serious about protecting its children in the digital world.”
Certainly, age verification is not perfect. Some children may be able to access pornography through a virtual private network, to hide their location. But using a VPN adds a barrier and would radically reduce incidents of youth accidentally stumbling across porn.
There are also ways for the government to target the use of VPNs to improve the effectiveness of age-verification for pornography.
The government ought to move Bill S-209 through the House of Commons swiftly and prioritize rules to limit youth access to pornography on social media.
Going on a bit of a tangent here, but how come the enlightened never seem to push for simply banning commercial porn, fixing the problem at the source?
Such a move would kill multiple birds with one stone: It would call the pretend socially conservative’s bluff, invalidate the wannabe authoritarian-dressed-up-as-paternal uniparties’ argument(s), and strip the Zionist entity of a big source of income (Do not look up OF’s dead owner. And certainly do not look up where the company is actually registered/based. That second one will render your irony-meter nonoperational. You have been WARNED).
It’s not because most of the enlightened are just neoliberal cattle, right? right?
Or are we still doing the “sex work positivity” COPE-bullshit, which is not something anyone working in the inherently exploitative and abusive “industry” actually believes in. Just like how no semi-neglected child in the ghetto actually believes in, or feels, the embrace of the so called “village”.
The internet actually deleted most “real people having real sex” years ago. You just didn’t notice. There is a reason I specified “commercial” in my comment.
If you actually show modern, or worse, “post-modern” porn to a non-porn-brained person, he will more likely to be put off by it, than attracted to it.
An imperfect analogy can be made to a similar(ish) direction the so called “music industry” went through. Although, the divergence there is less stark, the direction is less universally off-putting, and no erasure happened to good old (and some new) stuff. And the “real” angle is not fully there, auto-tune and co. aside. But it should be noted that very recently (in the last 3 years), “AI” has already been helping automating the generation of the already boringly derivative content, with both tunes and lyrics. You just didn’t notice because all the anger is strategically directed at the full content generation startups (including instrument play and vocals).
I specifical mean commercial porn. Commercial porn use technology as soon as viable.
Phone? Sex line. Video? Porn video. Live stream? Camgirl. Video Call? Camgirl too. Social media? E-Girl and Onlyfans. VR Porn exist too but not think vr as viable yet. LLM? Sex Chat Bot (i know already had a lot before but llm start wave of girlfriend service etc.)
Only VOD platform close to youtube scale? Pornhub.
My argument that commercial porn so deeply root/infest in all technology, any ban really really difficult. And nowaday politician seem only want easy victory. And go for easy target instead of massive industry.