this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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Privacy

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The Spanish government has a plan to prevent kids from watching porn online: Meet the porn passport.

Officially (and drily) called the Digital Wallet Beta (Cartera Digital Beta), the app Madrid unveiled on Monday would allow internet platforms to check whether a prospective smut-watcher is over 18. Porn-viewers will be asked to use the app to verify their age. Once verified, they'll receive 30 generated “porn credits” with a one-month validity granting them access to adult content. Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits.

You have to request more porn credits from the government if you need more? Don't want the government to be tracking this data of you. This is a privacy issue

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[–] [email protected] 184 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Politicians keep trying to helicopter parent the entire populations of countries.

Making sure your kids don't go places online before they should, and have conversations with them about it once they reach an age where it happening is inevitable, is something every, single, parent, should do.

Not the fucking state.

And this has to be one the weirdest implementations of porn surveillance I've ever seen.

[–] [email protected] 96 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Exactly! Government granted 'porn credits' sounds absolutly insane as a serious idea...

Porn "Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits" is one wild sentence.

A porn "enthusiast", requesting the government for porn credits, to watch porn? What?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 123 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Wow good job Spain.

I guess this works because email doesn't exist.

I guess this works because file sharing applications and websites don't exist.

I guess this works because VPN's free and paid don't exist.

I guess this works because Tor, i2p, Freenet, and Yggdrasil don't exist.

I guess this works because torrenting doesn't exist.

I guess this works because black markets don't exist.

I guess this works because chat applications don't exist.

To be a fly on the wall of these government meetings where they talk about this shit would surely be the funniest fucking thing in the world.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I want to be at the meeting a year from now where they realize only two people have ever signed up 'Yay we fixed porn!'

Buy who am I kidding they brought VPN shares before this was introduced

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You are right, it's really stupid.

But it's also stupid not to consider, that it's not the real reason they made this in the first place.

They want to track you, and porn is the first excuse. If this is a success you might need this passport for alot of other things.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

Thank you for contributing!

You've used the last of your political observation credits for the month. If you'd like to request more, please visit yourcountry.gov citizen portal and fill out the application. Your wait time will be 3-5 business days. We apologize for the wait but we are currently receiving a high volume of applications.

-govbot

[–] [email protected] 78 points 5 months ago (1 children)

On the plus side Spains teenagers are about to become extremely computer literate.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 5 months ago (4 children)

So teens learn about Tor & VPNs. This stuff doesn't work. The higher you put the skills to get access, the more they will learn. Nothing motivates teens more than access to adult stuff. Maybe this is really a tech literacy policy.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 months ago

Learning to circumvent my parent's fumbling attempts to keep me off of early nineties bulletin board porn made me the man I am today.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yup, all you're doing is teaching them to cover their tracks

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 5 months ago

This government intrusion is brought to you by Surfshark.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 5 months ago
[–] MajorHavoc 46 points 5 months ago (2 children)

"Enthusiasts will be able to request extra credits."

Well that's a relief. For a minute there, I was worried.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

They made this to send people from legal sites to illegal sites.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago

Government giving you porn credits sounds hilarious.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This ensures traceability through the public key as content providers will consistently receive the same public key when the credential is presented

What a ridiculous system. For some reason I expected that their efforts to offer an illusion of privacy would be better than the obfuscatory bullshit they've leaned on here in order to enable "traceability."

I hope it goes down so badly in Spain that the rest of Europe is once and for all convinced that such schemes to restrict and monitor the web browsing habits of every citizen are ineffective for their stated purpose, needlessly invasive of privacy and freedom, destructive of democracy, and can serve only as a prelude to totalitarianism.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago

Hmm. Driving porn viewers who value their privacy underground couldn't possibly have any negative consequences I can think of.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Porn passport = Wanking license

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Also known as "pajaporte" in Spanish (paja = wank)

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Instead of educating kids, it's much easier to... not, and invade their privacy instead.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago

...invade everyone's privacy instead.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Hola señores, necesito más créditos de la pornografía porque sus madres tienen tetas grandes.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Kids can torrent my dude. Been doing it since I was like 13, and that's only because before that I was using limewire, then frostwire, then bearshare, then I found torrents because TPB took over. I've been pirating since I was like 9.

That is to say: This dumb ass bullshit isn't even going to work.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago

Yo what the fuck guys can you not

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (4 children)

No one expects the Spanish Imposition.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What the fuck is going on with these porn laws wtf

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (3 children)

No one wants to tell the government they're watching porn, especially in a Catholic country like Spain.

It's intended to reduce porn use, often to fuel conservative hate-driven ideology movements. Sexually frustrated people are more eager to endorse violence against marginalized groups.

It's pure sociological manipulation.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

When you are out of porn credits before the end of the month, you can go to the good ol' simulator:

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago

How many here want to bet that VPN companies lobbied the Spanish Government for this?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (8 children)

On behalf of teen me and adult me, fuck off

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

At least it will raise tech literacy among youth. If it isn’t as easy and would require some thinking that’s already better than 99% of homework.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It will be fun for one unashamed porn addicted user to keep making so many requests to this service that they break it.

"Javier, it's been 30 minutes since your last credit application."

"MORE CREDITS. CAN'T TALK."

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago

If your worst-case scenario for lax online identity is that kids might watch porn... I don't give a shit if kids watch porn.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

This is a privacy issue but it's a much much much less of a privacy issue than what the EU wants to do with that mandatory internet ID thing. This Spanish concept shows that you don't need complete mass surveillance like other governments try to convince everyone in.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Spain is officially hoping that their system will serve as a model for the rest of Europe, and then the rest of the world, so that everyone can work together to enforce the rules. Otherwise their citizens might just evade it by, for example, going to web sites that are not in Spain.

That is why they give it such a grand name as "digital wallet." It's meant to become the basis for that European digital id you refer to, and used for much more than is happening with this initial trial balloon.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago

I don't think porn is a good thing, but the fact that even if you're an adult with a pass you are limited is pretty bizarre. this is on top of the fact that you are already giving up your privacy to view it.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago

It's easier to just use a VPN and pretend to be from anywhere else...

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago

Surely this will work.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I'm not sure why this is the focus rather than legislating that router/access point manufacturers create robust and simple to use parental controls and then running public service campaigns that educate parents on how to use them.

Not that I really care that much since I don't watch porn. I just don't think putting adult content behind a verification system that applies to everyone makes sense when the idea is to prevent kids, who generally have at least one person who controls the networking equipment and should be monitoring their devices/activity, from seeing it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

The fact that they don't go for any of the ways to manage access to porn that are more effective and less invasive of privacy suggests that the point is, as always, surveillance and not protecting children from porn.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What gets me about this is that, while it would still be bad, they could have mostly avoided the privacy nightmare here with some kind of Zero Knowledge Proof scheme, but the tracking is obviously part of the point.

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