# Age verification is coming, freedom is vanishing **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/age-verification-is-coming-freedom-is-vanishing/28909 **Category:** General **Tags:** article **Created:** 2025-07-05T12:08:16Z **Posts:** 24 ## Post 1 by @TwoBibleTree — 2025-07-05T12:08:16Z France, UK, EU, and some US states have pushed age verification on adult websites (porn), it will shortly be required for you to share your ID, phone number, or any legal documentation that shows you are an adult to access every adult website. We are told these new regulations are put in place to protect children, when in reality everyone will lose their freedom (and personal data security) in the process. Here is the article: [The Scam of Age Verification - PORNBIZ.COM](https://pornbiz.com/post/17/the_scam_of_age_verification) Please, do not ask me ho I found this article, we’re all human. --- ## Post 2 by @micdan — 2025-07-05T12:17:35Z > [@TwoBibleTree](#): > > Please, do not ask me ho I found this article, we’re all human. That sounded even more suspicious lol --- ## Post 3 by @crossroads — 2025-07-05T12:20:46Z I expect to see surge in usage of VPNs, torrents and pirated content. --- ## Post 4 by @seuaaa — 2025-07-05T13:27:37Z Yes, this is all about control of citizens. > [@crossroads](#): > > I expect to see surge in usage of VPNs, torrents and pirated content. Take a guess which tech will be outlawed next. VPN services in France are already ordered to censor access to certain sites (sports streaming for now). --- ## Post 5 by @TsengGames — 2025-07-05T13:36:06Z I can see why pushing age verification for pornography is important, recently internet pornography is a massive issue and I believe there should be reasonable measures to combat it, but I don’t see a reason why you will have to share all that information. This is kind of a huge overreach, especially on France, which has a history of being very strict about data protection. --- ## Post 6 by @Hiddn — 2025-07-05T13:47:59Z Not that sad. Maybe in this way, fewer kids will fall into the abyss of pornography :folded_hands: --- ## Post 7 by @yes — 2025-07-05T13:51:44Z Today it’s porn, tomorrow it’ll be something else. --- ## Post 8 by @Hiddn — 2025-07-05T14:06:28Z can’t say no. They just look for reasons, actually :cry: --- ## Post 9 by @anon32558482 — 2025-07-05T14:07:52Z One of the USA states tried this a year or two ago. Pornhub refused to load for any IP from that state. VPN usage went way up. --- ## Post 10 by @anon65804091 — 2025-07-05T17:07:21Z Onion services don’t enforce age verification. Do major porn sites not use them? Do they block Tor? Tor sounds like an easy, legal, and free way to get around this issue. --- ## Post 11 by @rlogin — 2025-07-05T23:29:52Z Fleeing from repressions is not a viable solution. While Tor is legal today, there is no guarantee that it will remain so in the future. See seuaaa’s post: > [@seuaaa](#): > > Take a guess which tech will be outlawed next. VPN services in France are already ordered to censor access to certain sites (sports streaming for now). Moreover, the tumultuous history of darknet markets has shown that maintaining a popular hidden service in the long term is nearly impossible: eventually, your servers will be deanonymized. Traffic analysis, the longstanding issue for Tor, has become increasingly reliable and easier to perform over the past decade. A Global Passive Adversary is no longer just a hypothetical threat. In fact, it is very real, [with a name, a brand, and even a board of executives.](https://www.team-cymru.com) What’s needed are organizations dedicated to promoting online anonymity. We desperately need a movement akin to the Pirate Parties of the 2000s. I elaborate on this issue a bit here: [What organizations are dedicated to promoting online anonymity? - #5 by rlogin](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/what-organizations-are-dedicated-to-promoting-online-anonymity/28519/5) --- ## Post 12 by @TwoBibleTree — 2025-07-06T10:14:43Z That’s a great point. I think what we do on this website: protecting ourselves and implementing privacy-respecting services and apps in our lives is a good start. But at the end of the day, it is just fleeing from the main problem which is that new laws in the west are making us less safe and less private. You can be the smartest guy in china, you will still be subject to the law and have no privacy whatsoever. Because you live in that country, and society impacts you whether you like or not. Maybe the privacy people should try to take their cause up to the lawmakers instead of digging and hiding even deeper into the ground. That’s what Edward Snowden said in one of his many interviews: “the only thing that restricts the gov or companies are policies”, not the OS you install on your computer. Just saying, I’m just like you guys, just trying to get by. --- ## Post 13 by @beantaco — 2025-07-10T02:00:35Z > [@TwoBibleTree](#): > > Maybe the privacy people should try to take their cause up to the lawmakers instead of digging and hiding even deeper into the ground. A few other posts here suggest taking up the cause of privacy to lawmakers. People have been doing this for decades, yet the situation has seemingly gotten much worse. I don’t wish to discourage people who do this, but how effective is this in practice? My observations of bad laws (either malicious or just poorly considered) being forced through legislatures in disregard of civil society’s concerns time and time again tell me this is futile. States don’t act in the best interests of their people, they act to accumulate power and control. > [@rlogin](#): > > Fleeing from repressions is not a viable solution. While Tor is legal today, there is no guarantee that it will remain so in the future. See seuaaa’s post: > > Take a guess which tech will be outlawed next. VPN services in France are already ordered to censor access to certain sites (sports streaming for now). Just as I thought, fleeing to friendlier jurisdictions is unviable in the long term. For now we have VPN services and Tor but these may eventually be taken away from us. New systems of control, and bans on solutions that circumvent them, will eventually spread worldwide. Additionally, migration is restricted by borders and is economically and socially costly, making it difficult at best for most people. In summary, I don’t see what a good solution to “freedom is vanishing” is. --- ## Post 14 by @anon32558482 — 2025-07-10T09:03:21Z > [@anon65804091](#): > > Onion services don’t enforce age verification. Do major porn sites not use them? Do they block Tor? Tor sounds like an easy, legal, and free way to get around this issue. Many porn sites stream video. Is that even possible over Tor? --- ## Post 15 by @KathyM — 2025-07-10T17:35:41Z Pornography ban 2.0: all non-party approved information is filthy degenerate smut. Submit identification card for accessing “Of Thee I Sing - Barack Obama”. Pornography bans are never about protecting kids. You want kids snorting less porn then fucking talk to them about healthy relationships, treating partners nice, consent etc. --- ## Post 16 by @KathyM — 2025-07-10T17:41:15Z Waiting 8 minutes for pixelated jpegs to improve as the ArpaNet creators intended --- ## Post 17 by @em — 2025-07-10T18:25:23Z Not just for adult websites, sadly. But also for dating apps, social media, and likely much more down the road. This is one of the biggest threat to privacy online. Here are 2 Privacy Guides articles (and article section) that discuss this issue: - [Age Verification Wants Your Face, and Your Privacy](https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/05/06/age-verification-wants-your-face/) - [Identity verification endangers the most vulnerable](https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/06/24/queer-dating-apps-beware-who-you-trust/#identity-verification-endangers-the-most-vulnerable) --- ## Post 18 by @crossroads — 2025-07-10T19:59:59Z But where’s the limit? I mean, small mastodon instance or forums like this one are social networks. If those are also required to implement age verification, it would go out of control, and will be used to get private data for malicious purposes and scams. If not, than I would expect bunch of distributed services as a workaround. I can host a forum or peertube instance and say adult content is forbidden. So it’s not adult site officialy, but maybe I have no resources to moderate it in real time, and users can upload whatever they want, until it’s reported though. --- ## Post 19 by @123 — 2025-07-10T20:31:58Z They knew how to implement age verification properly in 1987 :grinning_face: : > **[Leisure Suit Larry 1 - PART 1: How Old Are You? | CHAD & RUSS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=79&v=OmWVfqtCP50&feature=youtu.be)** > > SUBSCRIBE to Immortal Dog:https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=immortaldogIn this Let's Play series for Leisure Suit Larry 1: In The Land of ... --- ## Post 20 by @Alarcahuu — 2025-07-10T22:55:47Z Pornhub posts child abuse and encourages child trafficking. It can go die in a hole. But the broader privacy concerns are valid. I’m waiting to see if I’ll still be on social media in Australia next year. --- ## Post 21 by @waybackdrm — 2025-07-10T23:03:34Z everyone is already complaining about Privacy, many ways to by pass age verification that I see and know of. Like with piracy, many ways to still do it even if the governments don’t want people to do it. Many big tech companies are already be de accounted because of there intrusion on privacy. Sadly if you log onto the Internet, your privacy is not yours. Sure one can do many things to safe guard it, etc. But when it comes down to it, the privacy on the internet is Not. --- ## Post 22 by @rlogin — 2025-07-12T01:58:25Z > [@beantaco](#): > > People have been doing this for decades, yet the situation has seemingly gotten much worse. I don’t wish to discourage people who do this, but how effective is this in practice? Let’s take a moment to reflect on the past. Decades ago, the majority of internet traffic was unencrypted, making browsing habits and communications easily visible to your ISP, your ISP’s ISP, the government, and everyone in between. It’s no surprise that the NSA was wiretapping everything at Room 641A. If we look back another decade, we find that secure encryption was heavily restricted by the government. Remember that Zimmerman faced criminal investigation for releasing PGP. Commercial VPNs for widespread use were still years away, and Tor was being tested in a limited network ran by the researchers. The best options for “private browsing” at that time were “elite” proxies, which didn’t necessarily encrypt traffic or avoid logging browsing history, but at least didn’t forward your real IP address to the destination. Alternatively, users could rely on dubious web proxies, like [Anonymizer.com](http://Anonymizer.com). In fact, the first efforts at age verification happened decades ago! What’s happening today is very troubling, but we are still undeniably in a far better position than we were back then. The advancements made over the decades have built upon each other making a foundation that helps to somewhat counteract the recent threats to privacy and anonymity. Here’s the thing, and this applies to every ideological struggle: your rights can’t be taken for granted. You can’t treat them as a done deal that you can forget about after defeating a law or winning a court ruling. It’s a never-ending tug of war between the government and the people. Complacency can lead to regression as laws can be challenged or overturned, or ignored, and the moment you stop advocating for your side, you risk losing. --- ## Post 23 by @beantaco — 2025-07-13T02:30:23Z > [@waybackdrm](#): > > Like with piracy, many ways to still do it even if the governments don’t want people to do it. Of course there will be some people who will circumvent states’ rules, piracy in your example. However, for how long will they be able to keep it up, and how useful will it be? People who break laws to protect their rights are in constant danger of the state, and must keep that secret from people who don’t, and thus face isolation. Further, privacy is fundamentally different from acts like piracy. Privacy is a human necessity and a societal necessity that requires _all_ (in a loose sense) to enjoy. If only _a few_ people have privacy, it won’t be very useful for them, and they will stand out in a dystopian society unless they maintain isolation. The only to be private in a total surveillance society is be private alone. --- ## Post 24 by @beantaco — 2025-07-13T02:56:21Z > [@rlogin](#): > > What’s happening today is very troubling, but we are still undeniably in a far better position than we were back then. The advancements made over the decades have built upon each other making a foundation that helps to somewhat counteract the recent threats to privacy and anonymity. I agree we are in a better position _in some ways_, but respectfully I strongly disagree we are _overall_ in a better position now. I believe the advancements we now enjoy are far outweighed by the threats that have emerged over the same timeframe. It was the case that people didn’t worry, and arguably didn’t need to worry, about their internet traffic being intercepted, stored, analyzed, profiled, etc. The need to encrypt internet traffic always existed, but became urgent when we discovered the NSA is wiretapping everything, and became increasingly urgent as people migrated their lives to the digital world. Fortunately, encrypting internet traffic and messages is one of the advancements we now enjoy. However, the erosion of privacy is not just about internet traffic, and not just about the NSA and ISP’s. Just to name a few changes for the worse: - Surveillance capitalism emerged around the 2010’s, and internet use has become de-facto mandatory, thus exposing the masses to unavoidable internet surveillance. - Society is transitioning from cash to totally-surveilled payment systems, leading to the eventual total loss of financial privacy. - Surveillance via cameras, other sensors, face recognition etc in meatspace has gone from non-existent or benign to intrusive and unavoidable. - Some measures to counteract the above concerns are being criminalized, while others, Tor for instance, are losing effectiveness as the arms race evolves. > [@rlogin](#): > > Here’s the thing, and this applies to every ideological struggle: your rights can’t be taken for granted. I agree if we stop fighting then we will lose. I meant to say it appears like we will lose whether we fight or not, now that states and corporations have far too much power, it’s just a matter of by how much. Privacy is foundational for all other social causes. Without privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc, nobody can effectively fight for any cause that threatens the interests of those in power.