As much as I hate Reddit this is just continuation of the UK government steamrolling and destroying the free Internet, ruining the adult experience.

One of the wonders of the Internet was that it was wildly unregulated - if you wanted it and you could disable safesearch you could get it, with the caveat of ISP-enforced content locks on all mobile subscriptions with data under the name of a legal child (under 18), workplace and school security and filters, unremovable Safesearch on most search engines etc. Broadband required an adult. I couldnt wait until I turned 18 so I could finally access many sites for porn, news, gaming, forums and anything containing keywords without being blocked.

In short there is significant existing protection in place and we know that this is simply more evidence of Orwellian enforcement.

The unregulated internet had literal child porn sites that were available to anyone.

I don’t disagree with some of your points but the “wild West” internet shouldn’t exist in society.

okay so, first, were the CSAM websites illegal then? is the issue you see one of enforcement, not how the laws are written?

Yes, it has been illegal for quite some time. I’m guessing you are on the younger side?

I’m the 90s clicking a link, even one with a legit looking url, could be a rather risky proposition. On slashdot and the like many of us would deliberately avoid many random links unless someone else commented about it first.

dude i used usenet

Strange. I would have figured you would have known what was going on then.

the text only music forums i was on in the 90s strangely didn’t have any problems with csam. it’s all where you congregate.

To be honest it probably did. There’s a whole army of broken heroes behind every social media site whose job it is to block and remove that kind of content. If you didn’t see anything, thank the admins.

The problem with the kinds of people who are into that kind of stuff is that they want to shove it under your nose to make you uncomfortable.