The UK wants to block porn, but they can't get it up

The UK government’s controversial attempt to impose an age block on pornographic content drags on, with the news coming today that they had not adequately notified the EU of the planned changes, which would cause a delay of a minimum of 6 months. There is so much irony there I’m not even going to bother to comment on it, instead I wanted to write about why I (perhaps unsurprisingly) don’t think it’s a good idea.

Firstly, incentivising grown adults to give their personal data to porn companies is stupid, especially as they are notorious for eg obfuscating how to cancel subscriptions and similar. Nobody is going to buy a ‘porno pass’ from a newsagent, especially not my generation of snowflake millenials. I’m sure there will be a huge number (ie appreciably close to 100%) of people over 18 who choose to watch pornography, who find a way to circumvent any new restrictions brought into place…

… because they are so easy to do so. VPNs of various different shapes and sizes are gaining traction and becoming more and more commonplace. Tor is free, a couple of clicks to install, and will easily allow you to spoof your IP as being anywhere-but-Britain. NordVPN has been rampantly sponsoring YouTubers for months now - exactly the kind that kids watch. If someone underage wants to watch porn, they will find a way to do so, and I doubt it will take much effort (this is ignoring the fact that sites like Reddit/Twitter, which host a staggering volume of adult content, would be unaffected by the new rules anyway, nor presumably would search results). If the country has a problem with youngsters and sex, which I suspect it probably does, a porn ‘ban’ is entirely the wrong way to go about fixing it - in fact it is little more than an easy way to point the finger and pass the buck.

Porn is terrible for sex education. But you know what else is? The actual British sex education system. That’s where the real problem lies, and what needs rectifying. Instead of trying to prevent teenagers from accessing sexually explicit material because they don’t understand the implications and effects it has, let’s educate them on those things. Overhauling an obselete system will of course take a lot of time and effort, but an ISP ban is a spectacularly naive attempt at a quick-fix, and frankly, we can do better.