Cultural attitudes toward porn may be liberalizing, but the belief that minors shouldn't have unfettered access to it remains broadly shared. Parents are the natural guardians of their children's internet habits, but many report feeling powerless against the innumerable work-arounds and relentless societal pull toward unrestricted internet use. A new study by researchers at Stanford, NYU, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State followed the implementation of a law in Louisiana that required any website publishing a substantial amount of pornographic content to take reasonable steps to verify the age of users before giving them access. The researchers found that while search traffic to Pornhub'which complied with the law'dropped by 51 percent, traffic to its noncompliant rival, XVideos, rose by 48.1 percent. This is a classic tale of tech regulation: lots of friction while the primary aim remains unfulfilled. But one of the researchers, Zeve Sanderson, the executive director of...
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