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This of course runs into the problem that the government doesn't have a regulator for the Internet. The FCC could maybe be pressed into the role, but it's not entirely clear what mandate they could have over what is effectively a giant privately held network. The government doesn't run the root nodes nor any of the nodes between you and the porn. They do run large networks, but those are merely attached to the internet, not integral to it.

There is the other issue that people are rightfully concerned about the creation of morality police, as they have a long and sordid history of suppressing minority communities for reasons that aren't in the public good. Everyone agrees that child porn videos should be banned/prosecuted, but after that it gets down to where to draw the line and that's an endless source of conflict. Some people will claim that homosexual content is just as damaging as child exploitation while others will say that banning homosexual content is damaging to the community. They will not find a working compromise.




Also: which government? I also don't want US regulators controlling UK content because historical accident has put payment oligopolies under US jurisdiction.


These are good points. But the problem, as discussed in this article and the comments, is we already have defacto morality police: the credit card monopolies.

Given we’re going to have content police in some form (we clearly do need them to an extent), shouldn’t they be as transparent and accountable as possible?

We should have the equivalent of bodycam footage when a decision is made—a paper trail showing who signed off and what the rationale was. There should be a process for appeals. Decisions shouldn’t be political or religiously motivated.

Being cut off from the financial system is as much an imposition on a person’s rights as being fined or arrested by the government. Sure, it needs to happen sometimes, but there should be protection against being targeted in an arbitrary or abusive way.


> Everyone agrees that child porn videos should be banned/prosecuted

What? No.

That particular crusade has caused very real harms for very nebulous gains. Everyone may agree that funding child porn videos should be banned, but it isn't even clear that stopping the free distribution of the videos themselves is a net positive (e.g. theories about said videos being an outlet for pedophiles, reducing their risk).


> This of course runs into the problem that the government doesn't have a regulator for the Internet.

The thing needed here is a regulator for payment services, not one for the internet. That's a much narrower scope.


I know the current Supreme Court of the US is grossly biased in their decisions on such questions so it’s not clear what organization in the US would actually be capable of enforcing this fairly.




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