1) I've browsed the internet happily for many a year without having pornography 'shoved in my face'. If they find it, they were almost certainly looking for it.
2) If they're looking for it (see above) then an imperfect filter just means they don't find the known, safe sites.
3) Yes, it does. It is your right as a parent to decide what's appropriate for your child. It's not your right as a parent to force other people in households without children to report to a government-friendly list about their sexuality.
4) Well, such restrictions can still exist online. Paid porn sites can prevent the underage getting access. But really, why do we do this? Why is a young teenage girl or boy to be prohibited -- by law rather than parental consent -- from seeing sexual content? You say the internet should fall in line with these restrictions, but maybe those restrictions should be done away with.
I definitely got porn shoved in my face as a young teenager when I used to browse around looking for cracks for videogames that I'd borrowed or downloaded.
Then Chrome / Firefox came along with popup blockers, and Steam came along with a better way of downloading games... porn doesn't get shoved in my face anymore.
1) You are an adult with years of life experience behind you. It's trivial for you to avoid. Ditto myself. Nor are you subject to the playground peer pressures. But a young child who get's texted or messaged or facebooked a link, perhaps obsfuscated by an url shortener, is gonna be taken unawares.
2) Of course if you actively go out of your way to find it, you'll be able to. Just as you can work around any restriction in life. It's just about reducing the prevelence and "de-normalising" it.
3) So you support free access cos you don't want to admit you're into porn? And I am expected to support your desire for privacy even though it's at the expense of my children's safety?
Not sure why ticking a box to opt-in in such a big deal anyway. It's not like your ISP isn't logging your requests and doesn't know you're visiting pron sites. Plus I thought liberals like yourself supported openness and transparency?
4) Yes, sites should be behind a paywall - hard core anyway. And they should be prohibited because much hard core is absolsutely unsuitable for young eyes. Boobs fine. But girls getting bukkaked or inserting crap up their behinds is not on.
Violence is far worse, frankly sex (and inserting things up a women's behind, if she's into that) is pretty normal (ask the Romans about that last bit) -- why are you trying to denormalise it?
Now, y'know, I can totally get someone coming at it from a "porn addiction (if you will) has negative effects, so I'd like to help my children avoid those possible negative effects", but that requires ongoing communication and education (well, that's how my parents did it anyway, and I never ran into the problems some of my friends and others have reported). That's assuming that "porn addiction" or desensitisation is a real thing (unproven so far, but anecdotally I'm a believer).
> But a young child who get's texted or messaged or facebooked a link, perhaps obsfuscated by an url shortener, is gonna be taken unawares.
They'll be taken unaware, take one look, go "ewww", and close the window. My four year old is already doing that when he sees someone kissing. It grosses kids out, there's no indication anywhere as far as I am aware, that the occasional exposure to sexual imagery causes harm.
> It's just about reducing the prevelence and "de-normalising" it.
What you will achieve, in my experience, is to reduce the normality of what they find. Back when BBS's was our source of porn, because it even "normal" porn of a single man and woman having normal sex was illegal where I grew up, the BBSs were overflowing with bestiality, child porn and every nasty kink known to man, because as an illicit source there was no reason for them to put limits on what was being uploaded. As a result, avoiding the really horrible stuff was made harder by lumping all the porn together.
> So you support free access cos you don't want to admit you're into porn?
If you can not see the difference between voluntarily admitting to enjoying porn and being forced to disclose something that parts of society see as deeply shameful (or we wouldn't even have this debate) to your ISP where it is made easily available in a single dataset that does not require anyone to do additional logging, then I am questioning whether it is worth even debating you further.
> It's not like your ISP isn't logging your requests and doesn't know you're visiting pron sites.
If you can't see the difference between specifically specifying a preference, and their ability to log traffic from someone in the household, then I don't know what to say.
> And they should be prohibited because much hard core is absolsutely unsuitable for young eyes. Boobs fine. But girls getting bukkaked or inserting crap up their behinds is not on.
Do you have any evidence that any of this is harmful? Why this specifically? What about specific political opinions? I mean, personally I find conservative politics extremely harmful (yet, before you ask, no, I am not going to shield my son from coming across conservative websites); what about specific religious views? Violence? Where do you draw the line, and on what basis? And why exactly are things you want to allow better/less harmful to kids than the porn you want blocked?
2) If they're looking for it (see above) then an imperfect filter just means they don't find the known, safe sites.
3) Yes, it does. It is your right as a parent to decide what's appropriate for your child. It's not your right as a parent to force other people in households without children to report to a government-friendly list about their sexuality.
4) Well, such restrictions can still exist online. Paid porn sites can prevent the underage getting access. But really, why do we do this? Why is a young teenage girl or boy to be prohibited -- by law rather than parental consent -- from seeing sexual content? You say the internet should fall in line with these restrictions, but maybe those restrictions should be done away with.