Peak French stupidity, this isn’t about protecting kids - it’s about building surveillance infrastructure. Back in 2024, critics already called this the foundation for a “Great Firewall of France”. Once you have the legal framework to block websites and force ISPs to implement monitoring, mission creep is inevitable.
The technical approach is laughably naive. They’re essentially creating a centralized system that could easily become a database of citizen sexual preferences. Even with their “double anonymity,” you’re still creating digital fingerprints and metadata trails.
Most importantly, it won’t work. Kids will just use VPNs - the same way adults are already doing. You’re not protecting anyone; you’re just pushing everyone toward circumvention tools while normalizing government control over what adults can access online.
It’s perfectly French because it combines maximum bureaucratic complexity with zero practical benefit, all while creating new opportunities for state overreach. Classic.
once again porn leads technology
I hate how VPN access is the scaffolding holding the building up making things look normal. You can visit all your normal web sites, you can bypass georestrictions, you can be a little less tracked than you might otherwise be. But what happens when they decide to do away with that scaffolding and we all find out they tore down the house behind it while we were enjoying “normalcy”. Too much of making the web functional depends on vpns and adblocking. We shouldn’t have to do this stuff and Chromes adblocking scandle should impact millions of users all around the world unilaterally removing adblocking from the web. I fear for the day we have a US only internet and a global internet, not just on paper, but in actual practice.
this only means that americans dont know about proton vpn
it could also mean that americans already use a vpn service.
Which they should
im in california, browsing the internet using proton as i type this.
Don’t people realize there are hundreds of free porn video sites besides Pornhub? With bigger selection too because the lesser known sites usually don’t get half their content DMCAed.
Paying money for a VPN just to access ONE free porn site? Sigh. I really hate web 3.0
France underestimated the power of horny
Have you met the French? There’s a bunch of English sex words brought in from French! Most notably is ménage à trois, for a threesome. The smoking a cigarette after sex cliché is pretty French too.
ménage à trois
Should be “plan à trois” I believe
wtf, france?
I guess this bodes well for Proton becoming increasingly a Google One products replacement with more users potentially paying
I’m pretty satisfied as a subscriber. Slowly using proton mail for more and more important accounts. Constant usage of the VPN. Trying to use the calendar more but still haven’t broken my Google Calendar habits. Proton Drive I use over google; I just need a Linux desktop application. Proton pass, still haven’t given that a go. Comfortable with KeepassXC and managing the backups myself. Proton Docs, it’s OK. Solid start. Hoping that notes partnership/acquisition eventually replaces Google Keep for me as a cloud notes application. I have pretty strong confidence now in the company regardless of the slow Linux developments
And now they want to keep doing the job of the parents and forbid “social network” to kids 15 and under.
hows proton?
You horny bastards
How about mullvad
Dr. Cox was right: “I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called ‘Bring Back the Porn.'”
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Tumblr the Depraved?
I hate how hard this made me laugh
I still miss og tumblr and my little porn account i had going there.
Does oglaf count as porn?
Asking for a friend.Well, it’s blocked by my porn blocker, so I’d say yes
Scared to click, someone pls provide context
These are comics, often with a nsfw gag, it’s safe to click on, it’s very mild.
Lol, there’s even a warning. The first one I saw was fucking hilarious, thanks for the recommendation!
I had totally forgotten oglaf existed, thanks for the reminder!
Oh, she’s trying!
Bro’s name is Dr. Cocks
Blocking porn has got to be the most “why even bother” thing
Political theater. “Won’t somebody think of the children?” is an easy win for politicians.
deleted by creator
Plus an excuse to collect more data.
Yeah the point is just to soften the populace to the idea. Our fucking PM covered for pedophile priests in a Catholic school 30 years ago, he doesn’t give any fuck about kids.
Except it’s fucking awful to wait for buffering over Tor or a VPN
If you are paying for a VPN and you have buffering problems, change to another VPN, that one is shit.
Could just be their local internet quality. Which, still, not a VPN problem.
Sometimes routing between two IPs is fucked. Had that, and proxying to another location then to the destination again fixed it. Internet 😵
Video over Tor is pretty awful, simply due to the way Tor works; Bandwidth is inherently limited, because it’s shared by everyone using the network. Same reason you should avoid torrenting over Tor.
But if your video is buffering over a VPN, you need to find a new VPN provider. Mine maxes out my gigabit connection.
Are there going to be bandwidth problems with vpns when more countries block porn though?
Like lots of France just joined them, and the rest of us lost a bunch of French exit nodes (at least for porn). The increase in subscribers should help expand bandwidth at big servers, but there’sa limit when we’re talking whole nations.
My VPN’s perfectly fine. To be fair, it’s not a free plan of a VPN that’s heavily throttled, but I can even play multiplayer FPS games with only a few milliseconds of additional delay, and my overall max upload and download speed is almost exactly identical to when I have my VPN off.
Why use Tor? It’s been compromised for years now. Just use I2P. You can torrent with that too.
Can you elaborate on how tor is screwed?
An example: https://youtu.be/XDsLDhKG8Cs
It’s an easy proxy.
It doesn’t do the one thing it’s meant to do.
I mean, neither does the Web by now.
allow region blocked people to circumvent restrictions? AFAIK it still does that.
That’s not the sole purpose of it. The way it does it was what was important. And that method is flawed.
Could be worse. Could be you’re in the early 90s with only a 56k modem.
You’d have good games and no bullshit on your PC.
And great LAN parties.
It’s not about blocking porn.
It’s always about control. Conservatives want to control how you consume sexual content.
It’s not about that either. It’s about connecting photo ID to browsing profiles and deanonymising the internet.
¿Por que los dos?
VPN companies and data brokers have a financial incentive to lobby for intrusive age-verification and restrictions, and prudish politicians are conveniently present in every political system. The porn lobby is powerful, but it seems they’ve been losing this battle recently. Or maybe they’re cutting deals with the data brokers, who knows.
Politically speaking, it’s easy money. You pander to the conservatives with blocking propositions, get votes.
*Who is going to champion the flip side?!"
Me. Porn is fine. Teach your children how to handle it. Teach them that it’s not realistic and some of it is straight-up dangerous. Put a filter on your internet if you’re too scared to talk to your kids about uncomfortable topics.
Man it’s porn, not guns. Children should not be near it!
Oh wait this is France
Anyway, I agree with you. We’re talking about regular ol garden variety porn. Everyone will probably see it at some point. Parents can limit what their kids see until the kids become smart enough to bypass filters. At which point they can probably handle seeing pennis n vagene.
Like Reddit or YouTube with proper keywords didn’t exist
Been there, done that
Reminds me of when my buddies discovered our friend’s YouTube account… He only had one public playlist, and it was 100% full of softcore porn. Nothing else. It was all softcore porn. We gave him a pretty good ribbing for that one, and still make a point of reminding him that better porn sites exist every time it comes up.
Always hide your playlists and subscriptions haha
But softcore has the benefit to help you retain normal libido and to not be dependent of more hardcore stuff
We gave him a pretty good ribbing for that one,
I guess you could say he got ribbed for his pleasure.
Meanwhile in Australia, they just passed a bill requiring social media to verify the age of their users to make sure they’re over 16
Ouch
What a great way to prevent minors from living their lives
I feel like reddit and YouTube are completely different leagues when it comes to porn… Porn is the only reason I haven’t deleted my last reddit account. YT doesn’t even really have real porn…
YT doesn’t even really have real porn
Indeed, but there’s still things to find if you’re a young scared kiddo, and I’d say it’s pretty soft so it’s okay
