Ehh... Application of a addiction model is somewhat controversial for pornography (the ground seems divided on whether it's a compulsion or an addiction). Social media, however, is no less controversial (it's just the media likes to hype this more).

I will say - the point of a porn site is to sell user data and deliver ads, whereas the point of social media is to keep the user scrolling by any means possible. By its design, the latter cultivates addiction as a clear goal (the goal to scroll is artificially imposed), whereas the case for the former is less clear (the goal to masturbate isn't something porn created). In essence, one creates a drive and then sates it, whereas another sates an existing drive.

Honestly, I think, at the moment, we're on the "violent video games cause violence" stage of the research. In other words, not enough data to decide so the media has decided for us.

I think the oscillation described people's activity time. Over the course of a day, people who would register for a VPN are much more likely to do so during the evening, because during the day they are busy with work. So you observer on a daily basis a peak like this.

Such charts are very common with services used daily. For example, social media usage in a given region often has a peak during the morning, a big peak during lunch time, and in general goes up after work time.

Of course not everyone works at the same time, but a majority of people have more or less the same work times, so we observe the peaks.

Can you elaborate on how tor is screwed?

I don’t really give it much thought, I load pornhub, click a recommended video, do my business and then close the private tab (yes I know this doesn’t hide your activity but it does stop pornhub showing as a search suggestion.). I’m not a connoisseur it’s a means to an end.

Because it's simple and it works. When most people want to watch porn they don't spend an hour researching their best option, they just go somewhere they know and watch something there.

The law in question would require all porn sites to verify the age of its users

Isn't that already the case on a lot of the internet?

Reminds me of the running joke I had with a French bloke in a place were I worked in about how Jacquie-Et-Michelle (NSFW) was an unmissable part of French Culture, which none of our other colleagues seem to - or at least admitted to - get.

Dont stand between the French and porn apparently.

The only way the sovereign nation of France can ban VPN companies not based in France is to block the IP address of every single entry point of every single VPN company and keep doing so as they add new entry points (I bet the response on the VPN company side would be to start having some kind of dynamic VPN server thing).

And then, as somebody else already pointed out, any technically inclined person can just rent a VPS anywhere in the World and fire up their own VPN server on it.

I remember when the French used to respond to this shit with fire instead

Good ol' Anja und Katja definitely helped me out in my teenage years.

allow region blocked people to circumvent restrictions? AFAIK it still does that.

Man it's porn, not guns. Children should not be near it!

Oh wait this is France

Anyway, I agree with you. We're talking about regular ol garden variety porn. Everyone will probably see it at some point. Parents can limit what their kids see until the kids become smart enough to bypass filters. At which point they can probably handle seeing pennis n vagene.

After the big purge of some years ago, PornHub has became useless. The good real videos are elsewhere.

xHamster is my go to!

I think this law requires you to upload a photo of your ID and says that it's the website's fault if underage people use it and they face a hefty fine. It's a lot more than the standard "click to pinky promise that you're definitely 18" because PornHub already has that.

To each their own!

They understand just how hard it would be to comply. And that's the point. Make it hard enough to meet the requirements to not make worth a business' while to comply. And the politicians can say "We didn't ban PornHub. They blocked you from access."

It's a common tool both the left and right use to control behaviors. Governments around the world do this all the time.

At first I suspected this was the French government demanding that 40% of the videos be made in europe using the French language.

Which is weird since I often don't hear much spoken dialogue in most porn films other than fake moans and and orgasms. Also my focus tends to be elsewhere...