Not necessary, Uganda has been levying social media taxes on end-users since 2018 by automatically adding it to your cell phone bill if you access a social media website. About 2.7¢ per day of usage.[1]
Virtually everyone gets their internet from an ISP that is regulated in the country that the user lives in. There are no technical barriers to implementing a permitting system in the United States.
Linking connections to real people is self-enforcing when there is a usage-based tax.
Do you happen to know what the answer of this scheme to "I have a wireguard connection to another country, you can't see my traffic" is? I know that enough of the population would never bother so it wouldn't significantly harm it as a revenue scheme, but if your goal is avoiding identification rather than taxation then the stakes could be high enough to make the effort worthwhile.
People have bothered with downloading low-quality Mp3s from Napster, figuring out video codex and modding game consoles to get free video games. If the need is dire enough, the users will figure it out, no matter how high the friction is.
Those with enough technical chops will figure out how to do it by themselves, those with enough intelligence will find resources on the internet, the rest will ask a friend or pay a local IT person to get it set up for them.
Tying usage to connection seems feasible, but age verification (and the hypothetical usage permit) is trying to tie usage to a specific person. You could probably pretend they correspond 1:1 for cellular, but what about wired connections to households with more than one person living in them?
Today it's age gating porn, but the next move will be age gating sites that talk about LGBTQ issues by moving the 'obscenity' definition to be anyone they don't like. Left to their own devices and unopposed, they'll declare discussion of birth control and interracial marriage to be adults-only.
True, but I'm also not convinced that a ten year old being able to be face to face with hard-core BDSM and incest fetish porn within 40 seconds of opening a web browser is healthy.
I don't like this but don't have another solution other than the porn industry self-policing which isn't promising.
Isn’t that the same argument as “Parents should keep kids away from cigarettes” by tobacco companies who were simultaneously marketing to children?
And parents aren’t in control of children 24/7. Schools tend to provide tablets and laptops everywhere, and how much trust should parents have that things like a content filter are adequate to keep children from asking objectionable pornography, hate sites teaching misogyny and so forth?
Another way of looking at it, is that when you put the responsibility of protecting a child from harmful content on the parent, you're deciding to only protect the children with the right kind of parent.
The post does not present a solution to that problem. Governments around the world, especially in Europe, have legislated the solution, and the solution they have picked is a privacy nightmare. This post solves the privacy problem, which is strictly better than the status quo. We (Google) do not decide what should or should not be regulated.
Teen pregnancy rates are down since the mass adoption of the internet, a kid learning a few years early that there exist sexualities other than the default one will affect them much less than losing internet privacy and anonymity for life.
Now take an intentionally extreme opposite (as a thought experiment): if we put death penalty to people who participate in distributing or in relaying such content, could all of that be solved without the “internet pass” and IDing your internet history ?
Adults should be allowed to look at porn. I don't think it's necessarily good for people, but adults are also allowed to binge drink and smoke and eat ultra-processed foods and a lot of other things that are worse for you than porn.
CP is an edge case but that's because it's almost impossible to make CP without abusing children and you could view CP as an incitement to violence -- as incitement to abuse children.
Parents should ultimately monitor what their kids do. I have a pi-hole that subscribes to lists with millions of porn domains, but I'm a technical person. Non-technical parents are helpless, and kids can easily access it at friends' houses etc. The industry has not empowered non-technical parents to do this, probably because there's a conflict of interest. Lots of parents would use such options to keep kids off social media, and like all addictive things social media wants to hook them early. (I think kids should be off social media too, but it's not quite as nuts as letting them watch fetish porn.)
Porn is different now too. It's worse in a way. Like everything else it's subjected to a pressure to get "edgier" to maximize engagement. So today's porn is loaded with simulated incest, simulated rape, extreme BDSM, etc., things that young children are not equipped to properly contextualize. (Some adults aren't either, but at least with adults you can say it's their fault not the porn's fault. The line cuts differently with children which is why children can't smoke, get tattoos, buy alcohol, get credit cards, etc.) If you want to see the consequence of young kids (mostly boys) being raised with unfettered porn access go visit any women-coded space on the Internet (like Reddit) and search for threads discussing why so many men want to choke their girlfriends. Where did this sudden choking fetish come from?
You mean like the SF city government? This is stuff that a lot of people enjoy doing and taking photos of. The headquarters of a lot of startups are in what used to be the leather neighborhood.
Not necessary, Uganda has been levying social media taxes on end-users since 2018 by automatically adding it to your cell phone bill if you access a social media website. About 2.7¢ per day of usage.[1]
Virtually everyone gets their internet from an ISP that is regulated in the country that the user lives in. There are no technical barriers to implementing a permitting system in the United States.
Linking connections to real people is self-enforcing when there is a usage-based tax.
[1] https://www.africanews.com/2018/04/13/uganda-s-social-media-...
Do you happen to know what the answer of this scheme to "I have a wireguard connection to another country, you can't see my traffic" is? I know that enough of the population would never bother so it wouldn't significantly harm it as a revenue scheme, but if your goal is avoiding identification rather than taxation then the stakes could be high enough to make the effort worthwhile.
The political answer to circumventing laws is usually some form of punishment. This is often much easier than weird technical solutions.
2 replies →
> enough of the population would never bother
People have bothered with downloading low-quality Mp3s from Napster, figuring out video codex and modding game consoles to get free video games. If the need is dire enough, the users will figure it out, no matter how high the friction is.
Those with enough technical chops will figure out how to do it by themselves, those with enough intelligence will find resources on the internet, the rest will ask a friend or pay a local IT person to get it set up for them.
1 reply →
> Do you happen to know what the answer of this scheme to "I have a wireguard connection to another country, you can't see my traffic" is?
WG traffic is easily identifiable and able to be blocked, it's what happens in countries that ban VPNs.
4 replies →
Tying usage to connection seems feasible, but age verification (and the hypothetical usage permit) is trying to tie usage to a specific person. You could probably pretend they correspond 1:1 for cellular, but what about wired connections to households with more than one person living in them?
VPN or TOR?
Today it's age gating porn, but the next move will be age gating sites that talk about LGBTQ issues by moving the 'obscenity' definition to be anyone they don't like. Left to their own devices and unopposed, they'll declare discussion of birth control and interracial marriage to be adults-only.
And maybe also uniquiness guarantees, so that people can finally stop debating whether the internet is "dead"?
Thats why we need to go even further: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/06/28/zkid.html
Yep. This is completely kakistocracy-technofeudalism complex enablement.
True, but I'm also not convinced that a ten year old being able to be face to face with hard-core BDSM and incest fetish porn within 40 seconds of opening a web browser is healthy.
I don't like this but don't have another solution other than the porn industry self-policing which isn't promising.
For kids with a guardian, the answer is enabling and empowering the guardian to control what the child can access.
Somehow we've inappropriately shifted responsibility away from parents/guardians in some areas like internet access.
In other areas, like letting your kid go outside by themselves, we've criminalized reasonable caregiver actions.
It's a wild world.
Isn’t that the same argument as “Parents should keep kids away from cigarettes” by tobacco companies who were simultaneously marketing to children?
And parents aren’t in control of children 24/7. Schools tend to provide tablets and laptops everywhere, and how much trust should parents have that things like a content filter are adequate to keep children from asking objectionable pornography, hate sites teaching misogyny and so forth?
4 replies →
Another way of looking at it, is that when you put the responsibility of protecting a child from harmful content on the parent, you're deciding to only protect the children with the right kind of parent.
3 replies →
> reasonable
I think the real issue is that the definition of "reasonable" is subjective and often changes with time/culture/people in charge at the moment.
[dead]
Well, you don't have another solution. That doesn't immediately mean that the one presented in the post is the correct one. Far from it.
The post does not present a solution to that problem. Governments around the world, especially in Europe, have legislated the solution, and the solution they have picked is a privacy nightmare. This post solves the privacy problem, which is strictly better than the status quo. We (Google) do not decide what should or should not be regulated.
1 reply →
This is a parenting problem, not a technology and everyone else problem.
Teen pregnancy rates are down since the mass adoption of the internet, a kid learning a few years early that there exist sexualities other than the default one will affect them much less than losing internet privacy and anonymity for life.
The parents bare the responsibility. Don't baby-proof the Internet, the same way we are not baby-proofing the streets, subways or anything else.
Now take an intentionally extreme opposite (as a thought experiment): if we put death penalty to people who participate in distributing or in relaying such content, could all of that be solved without the “internet pass” and IDing your internet history ?
Maybe, but even this is broken with the internet being international. You'd need a system much more advanced than even the GFW.
4 replies →
Adults should be allowed to look at porn. I don't think it's necessarily good for people, but adults are also allowed to binge drink and smoke and eat ultra-processed foods and a lot of other things that are worse for you than porn.
CP is an edge case but that's because it's almost impossible to make CP without abusing children and you could view CP as an incitement to violence -- as incitement to abuse children.
Parents should ultimately monitor what their kids do. I have a pi-hole that subscribes to lists with millions of porn domains, but I'm a technical person. Non-technical parents are helpless, and kids can easily access it at friends' houses etc. The industry has not empowered non-technical parents to do this, probably because there's a conflict of interest. Lots of parents would use such options to keep kids off social media, and like all addictive things social media wants to hook them early. (I think kids should be off social media too, but it's not quite as nuts as letting them watch fetish porn.)
Porn is different now too. It's worse in a way. Like everything else it's subjected to a pressure to get "edgier" to maximize engagement. So today's porn is loaded with simulated incest, simulated rape, extreme BDSM, etc., things that young children are not equipped to properly contextualize. (Some adults aren't either, but at least with adults you can say it's their fault not the porn's fault. The line cuts differently with children which is why children can't smoke, get tattoos, buy alcohol, get credit cards, etc.) If you want to see the consequence of young kids (mostly boys) being raised with unfettered porn access go visit any women-coded space on the Internet (like Reddit) and search for threads discussing why so many men want to choke their girlfriends. Where did this sudden choking fetish come from?
2 replies →
You mean like the SF city government? This is stuff that a lot of people enjoy doing and taking photos of. The headquarters of a lot of startups are in what used to be the leather neighborhood.
What web browser are you using?! I think this says more about you than about the internet if this is what you're seeing.