While you are downvoted and you are speaking metaphorically, but there is still a lot of scum in this industry and exploited women.
For example, isn't this what Andrew Tate is charged with? Basically tricking girls into joining his crew using the so-called "Lover Boy" strategy and then forcing them to do porn/camgirl/onlyfans?
> age verification for any website that contains 33.3 percent or more pornographic material (a digression: we're seeing a strong opportunity here for sites featuring only 33.2 percent pornographic material).
So what they can just add a bunch of free content that isn't porn and get away with it? Seems like a poorly thought-out law.
Create some files of random numbers "for users that want to leverage those instead of running a local RNG" or some such. Text files (for counting percents), compressed (for local storage). Practically zero network costs.
Or offer to serve "a stream of 'y' answers" for the users who do not want to depend on running a local "yes" utility. Count size uncompressed. Compress with a special "char number_of_repeats" algorithm. I wonder if this is enough to go past the current politician class...
It might get past the politicians but judges in general are not a fan of this kind of "technical" workaround for the spirit of the law. Easier would be just to sponsor a you-tube like competitor/hosting service for video files, especially if the 33% is defined by space not access (if the politicals were smart it would be something like minutes of access time so they don't just get 68% of their SSDs filled with CSPAN).
How is "percentage content" calculated? By number of links? That's easy to game. By byte size? Pornhub would have to become YouTube to balance the amount of porn.
That's what I was thinking too. If the page lists 25 videos per page, have 8 of them be of the content they have, the rest consisting of Ads (makes more money), or "Get Me Outta Here" type links to Rick Roll type videos.
Pornhub would have to become YouTube to balance the amount of porn.
Ya know, with the recent youtube crackdowns on profanity that might not be a bad move for them. They could create a new site as a youtube competitor, that also has all the pornhub content. Just gradually allow the top X amount of pornhub content through as regular content gets added to make sure the percentage stays consistent. I wonder if that would be enough to let them have apps on the play store and roku and whatnot.
Many years ago, I worked next door to a porn shop. A very similar law was passed in our town that would have required the shop to move out to the middle of nowhere.
The owner bought a crate of enamel pins (this [1] kind of thing, but for long-forgotten social events) from some estate wholesaler, numbering maybe 15,000 distinct pins. He put it in front of the register and gave them inventory IDs as-needed when (if?) he sold one.
Could work in reverse, too. If you don’t like a particular BitTorrent indexer, submit enough torrents to pass that threshold and then take a screenshot.
If there’s a way we can get Reddit to >33% I’d love to help. Let’s watch the policymakers struggle when they have to explain when you need to upload your drivers license to view /r/cats.
Nothing helps fight stupid laws more than when they get in the way of regular people doing completely unrelated things.
Meh. They'll just carve an exception for sites that serve user uploaded content to gate specific communities that host porn. Reddit already does this, so it would be trivial for them to add an ID check for NSFW subreddits.
You know...Louisiana's state legislature probably publishes an official record of their proceedings (the Federal equivalent would be the Congressional Record). It'd be a real shame/freaking hilarious if some legislator entered thousands of pages of erotica into the record, pushing an edition of it over the 33.3% threshold.
Why should internet porn be the ONLY exception to requiring age verification?
We already require age verification when you buy drugs, buy guns, vote, buy a drink, buy porn mags from a store, buy cigars, access alcohol websites, access gambling websites, etc
But if you're a 10 year old trying to watch adults fuck each other, that's totally fine (as long as its on a screen of course, but not a window screen, and certainly not in person - a distinction that apparently makes all the difference).
Nevermind that children can't consent to the harm, just as they can't consent to drink alcohol or smoke cigars, or look at porn in a magazine.
Do you have a reason why internet porn should be the ONLY exception to requiring age verification for adult things?
Those are not comparable, primarily because of privacy. People don't care that you know that they voted or had a drink. And in those cases, they don't record who you voted for, what porn mag you bought, etc.
The design seems to be a proportion of “total material”. Perfectly vague-enough to propel both sides in some hypothetical lawsuit to make a good case and also, after they lose, to make an excuse that the law could work as intended if only for a small bookkeeping clarification.
I'm certain that we're going to see plenty of comments about how this is terrible for privacy and it's an attack of free speech but we've had limits on porn forever. People didn't consider it a privacy violation if they were carded for buying a pornographic magazine and I'm certain everyone here would not suggest children should be allowed to purchase such magazines. Why should it be any different online?
Yes it's scary what companies could do with this sensitive information and we should try our best to legislate against abuse of these details. It's possible. Bars have the ability to collect thousands of people's driver's license information and we haven't seen much of a security risk there.
The fact of the matter is porn is accessible to children within seconds and for the last 30 years we have done virtually nothing to try to prevent it. We know that porn is harmful, especially to children, and we have done NOTHING to try to prevent it.
I'm okay with adults being inconvenienced if it means we can protect children. That's a standard we've had in America for generations.
Bars and other places that sell alcohol generally don't keep your ID on file though, that's the big privacy issue. If you go to an adult store and want to buy porn, they look at your picture to make sure it's you, and check the D.O.B. Then they pretty much forget you were there.
"Protect the children" is the perfect cover for so many terribly invasive laws. I personally won't sacrifice my privacy to "protect children", and neither should you, because these children will eventually grow up to be adults who would presumably enjoy a right to privacy.
> The fact of the matter is porn is accessible to children within seconds and for the last 30 years we have done virtually nothing to try to prevent it. We know that porn is harmful, especially to children, and we have done NOTHING to try to prevent it.
The government isn't a parent and shouldn't act like one. Parents and schools can take advantage of any one of the many services which provide content filtering for kids. Once they're old enough the get around those blockers and access things anyway, there isn't anything you or the government will be able to do to stop them from accessing content. See: torrenting movies and TV, sharing plans for 3d printed weapons, child porn still being a massive problem despite being very illegal pretty much globally.
I agree that "Think of the children" is a really annoying talking point but it doesn't make it a _wrong_ talking point. It's often used to push reactionary policy quickly without giving anyone time to think about the repercussions. I'm on HN, I'm a massive advocate for privacy. I self host every single thing I can and use a pinephone.
That said the privacy argument is still not enough for me here. Bars have the ability to store this information they just choose not to. Pornhub also has the ability to choose not to store it. The privacy concerns are worth the risks
Pornography is a dangerous terrible thing. If exposed to it as a child it will likely impact you for the rest of your life.
I'm in the southeast US and only seem to see this viewpoint expressed by those who had highly religious upbringings. I'm curious what the rough equivalent of this moralizing would be in your area, wherever you may be.
> Bars have the ability to store this information they just choose not to.
I can watch and verify that the bar doesn't store it, unless the bouncer is memorizing info. I cannot verify that PornHub doesn't store more than they say they do.
A lot of bars nowadays (at least in both Seattle and Vancouver for the past decade or so) will scan your ID to verify you’re not blacklisted, and share lists around.
They are definitely keeping records on banned people and I wouldn’t be surprised if they stored all scanned records for easy blacklisting post-issue.
> Pornography is a dangerous terrible thing. If exposed to it as a child it will likely impact you for the rest of your life
Addiction to pornography is a dangerous, terrible thing. The main thing that makes pornography dangerous to youngsters is the vacuum of cultural context around sex in America. In cultures with a healthier relationship with sex, porn competes with wholesome constructs, and takes its place as entertainment versus instruction.
> Pornography is a dangerous terrible thing. If exposed to it as a child it will likely impact you for the rest of your life.
I'm going to reiterate all of the other posters' requests for some evidence of this, because your whole position hinges on this one point that you are simply taking for granted.
At some point you don't get carded, because people can tell based on appearance. Not always, of course, and if they can't be sure, they'll card to be on the safe side, but... there are real world limits of how much carding people will do. I do not get carded any more for drinks - I did 30 years ago, but don't now.
If we're talking about setting safety standards for car seats, fine. I also wouldn't really care if the mandated use of car seats was just a recommendation. My kids would still go in a car seat until they're big enough, and I don't particularly care if other people are too careless with their kids to use car seats.
> investigate child abuse
Falls under crime, and could also be perpetrated by the parents themselves. Of course some impartial entity should be doing the investigation.
> regulate school lunches
I would say the government shouldn't be regulating school lunches beyond the normal health standards applied to all food service places. School food got substantially worse in my school district after Michelle Obama's involvement. Many foods which were completely fine were not allowed anymore, yet pizza could be considered a vegetable because it had tomato sauce on it. Maybe this improved the food in some areas, but it definitely made it worse in my area.
> Any commercial entity or third party that performs the required age verification shall not retain any identifying information of the individual after access has been granted to the material.
and
> A commercial entity that is found to have knowingly retained identifying information of the individual after access has been granted to the individual shall be liable to the individual for damages resulting from retaining the identifying information, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees as ordered by the court.
but I agree this is different from being carded at a bar where you can see that they're just checking your ID and handing it back to you. In the case of a porn site, you're left to just trust that they are deleting the records.
You can’t expect parents in this day and age to have the ability to protect their children from this material where smartphones are owned by almost everyone with unlimited internet access. When something becomes a wide societal problem then using the arm of the state can become a valid option to mitigate the issue. This is not about parenting grown-ups, this is about helping parents fix something that they can’t fix themselves at an individual level.
If a grown-up really wants to watch porn, they can use a VPN. It’s not hard, no ID is needed. By adding a hurdle for children to access this material we can protect them from getting harmed by it at a young age. I think setting up a VPN is a small price to pay for if it means increasing the average age of exposure to porn.
We can't expect a grown-up to set up content filters on a child's devices because it's too complicated, but we _can_ expect them to setup a VPN on their own device, and also determine what a trusted VPN provider/application looks like? The group of people who _can_ use a VPN yet _can't_ set up parental controls doesn't exist.
And if you're talking about kids using other devices which a parent doesn't have control over: well, supervise your kids, build a good relationship with them, ask what they're doing with their friends and try to make sure their parents are on the same page.
The amount of pearl-clutching like this in this thread is shocking. The entire world doesn't need to be a plush-lined playpen for children.
You don’t prevent it, simple. Adding invasive privacy measures that apply to all adults won’t stop the kid who wants to find porn and show it to other kids on his phone. We found ways around the content blockers at school all the time.
Extreme porn can be found too easily. It wasn't like that when I was a kid. There were no ways around it. We simply could not even think of all the disgusting fetishes that are only a few clicks away nowadays.
> We know that porn is harmful, especially to children, and we have done NOTHING to try to prevent it.
Citation needed. For every study claiming harm there are a multitude that refute the findings, nearly universally with better controls and a larger dataset.
> if they were carded for buying a pornographic magazine and I'm certain everyone here would not suggest children should be allowed to purchase such magazines. Why should it be any different online?
In one case your age is verified and that's it.
In the other your information is entered into a database that _might_ contain compromising information that may be used to blackmail you (e.g. you might be gay and not wish to disclose that fact to the world).
The first worries me very litte - the second worries me a lot.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the "what about the children" argument especially in this context.
In America violence and weapons are pushed onto "the children" daily. American military make video games to teach warfare tactics to "the children" and desensitize them to gruesome acts of killing. "The children" can bring bullet proof backpacks to school, and learn how to use weapons at a young age.
But god forbid they learn about or see a sex act, which by the way quite literally is what ensures the continuation of the human species. That would be awful.
Saying "what about issue Y" (gun violence) says nothing about issue X (pornography harming children). We ought to oppose evil wherever we see it, not ignore evil because we see a greater evil elsewhere.
By your logic should we allow kids to buy alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs because it inconveniences adults too much? These are tired arguments from adults who are terrified that it might take 30 more seconds to access their hardcore porn.
> By your logic should we allow kids to buy alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs because it inconveniences adults too much?
By your logic, we should allow the government to search our phones, computers, cars, emails, etc before buying alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs because "it might save just one child!".
As someone who grew up in a different part of the world, I had access to alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. There was zero oversight from the state and people were pretty chill about it. My parents gave me the talk about it, let me try it - had my first beer when I was like 11 (imagine the outrage!!!) and nothing happened. I didn't turn into an alcoholic - alcohol does not even appeal to me to this day. Same with cigarettes. I could not afford to buy the drugs. Kids were sharing [low rez] porn on floppy disks in high school. Everyone knew what a dick and a vagina was, took sex ed, there were virtually zero teen pregnancies.
Those aren't remotely the same as what we're talking about. "Think of the children" is a logical fallacy and a tremendously weak argument. Unless you are a fool you know this has nothing to do with children and everything to do with moral policing by a right wing extremist state government.
Don't pretend the left wing is any better about this particular issue, though. It's the libertarian checks-and-balances constructs built into our form of our government that's resisted this sort of totalitarianism, not the principles of mercurial politicians.
In order to foster faithful discussion on this site we enjoy citations. Do you have any for your parent comment? You make many bold claims but do not have any research to back it up.
And when they’re dragged into court by the parents of some kid that got caught watching porn how are they supposed to prove they complied with the law?
In a bar they come in and randomly card people to make sure they’re not serving underage people. I’ve seen it once, just a spot check by the state liquor board or whoever. No need to store any information, if you’re in the bar be expected to be carded at any time.
People got carded for buying porn? Only the ones who didn't look old enough, or everyone?
There's a huge difference between flashing your ID to a bored store worker for two seconds, and giving all your personal data to a huge company to store indefinitely, and that data might once be used against you... wanna run for president? Some pornhub worker can now look at the databse and see that you watched donkey midget porn once, (or in some areas, "even worse", gay or lesbian porn) and can blackmail you with that data.
> see that you watched donkey midget porn once, and can blackmail you with that data
or perhaps we'll just somehow move beyond caring about that sort of stuff? if PH (for example) is hosting it, there's some level of 'legality' they want to adhere to (to stay in business). Something is patently illegal, they'll take it down. So if I'm watching something there... it may be offensive to some, but not illegal.
As a general rule, I really don't care what sort of porn or sports or movies or music a politician consumes. I already have an idea of their governing philosophy based on party affiliation, public statements, voting records. It MIGHT be a problem for people who would be exposed as hypocrites but... even that doesn't seem to have an impact any more - people just double down on party loyalty? Someone voting to remove LGBTQ protections, somehow 'caught' watching lesbian porn... Yawn. That's par for the course now.
Just focusing on the part of whether this law will achieve it's stated aim, it's fairly clear it will not, meaning that the costs in terms of privacy are effectively for nothing.
Firstly people will just go to the sites which have under 1/3 and therefore are not in-scope.
Secondly sites will game the threshold, if they think it'll be to their financial advantage.
Thirdly underage kids will (I would imagine) work out how to bypass these filters pretty quickly, using VPNs et al.
Fourthly, people attempting to bypass these filters might fall prey to malware dressed up as VPN/bypass software.
When an 8 year old boy (the average age that boys are exposed to pornography) googles a pornographic term the whole page is listed with websites dedicated to pornography. Of course a more mature person can get around that but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do the bare minimum to stop literally 8 year olds from being exposed to hardcore pornography
You may be doing a poor job of raising your 8 year old, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is. Bring in an advisor or an au pair or something. Don’t enlist the government to raise everyone else’s children just because you’re struggling.
Yup. This is the US in a nutshell. Going to absurd lenghts to enforce puritanism with zero parenting effort.
If you're a kid and your parent don't give a damn and set you free on the internet you will be exposed to porn.
Why talk to your kids and educate them + maybe do your best to limit their exposure to things you don't agree with when you can clutch your pearls and demand ridiculous things like this?
This will definetly backfire. It's a sad state of afair that reminds me about some dumbass local politicians somewhere that tried to make pi equal 4 since using 3.14 was too hard.
And the bare minimum can (and probably should) be achieved without legislation.
Filter in the browser, at the ISP supplied router, using DNS ... None of it is perfect but also it doesn't require the privacy problems that this does.
Also I have a feeling (although it is just that) that kids aren't getting their porn via google searches. My guess would be social media/chat apps all the time.
A lot of assumptions and unquestioned biases in that little statement.
But I think the bigger point here is the debate about how much and which parenting roles we want government to take on.
I’d argue that religion is far more harmful, especially to children. Teaching magical thinking, false promises of afterlife, and hatred for outgroups can warp peoples’s whole lives.
> That’s a standard we’ve had in America for generations
That isn’t a particularly strong argument, given the other standards we’ve had for generations, like treatment of women and minorities, the inequalities of the justice and financial systems, the corruption and nepotism in our politics. The insane idea that 5 year olds play highly violent video games daily but will somehow be ruined by seeing boobs (or even fucking) is just. . . Wow.
I wouldn't say "promises of afterlife" are false, they're unknowable. Saying there's potentially an afterlife is a non-falsifiable statement; there's no test for it we could actually do to confirm or deny its existence.
Unless you've got an actual test which can definitively prove there's no afterlife, in which case I'm all ears.
I would say almost all religions are false. That's because if you have N different religions that claim different and incompatible things, at least N-1 of them must be wrong.
> A lot of assumptions and unquestioned biases in that little statement.
You're assuming that they have not questioned and looked into things, as it turns out there is good evidence against pornography being healthy.
> I’d argue that religion is far more harmful, especially to children. Teaching magical thinking, false promises of afterlife, and hatred for outgroups can warp peoples’s whole lives.
I will offer a few points for consideration.
1. You assume, and if I was uncharitable I'd say that this is an "unquestioned bias" though I have no reason to believe that to be the case, that all religion is false, this is extremely contested. I've known atheists who would even contest this unqualified statement since they'd argue that even if they deny the ultimate reality of religious claims that the goods taught by religions and the bonds formed are positive goods which outweigh the perceived negatives.
2. I do not see, even granting that all religion is false or even evil, the case that pornography, which regularly promotes incest, abusive behavior, is the result of trafficking and rank with abuse, is worse than the typical religious expression in western countries which would promote charity and discourage evils.
> as it turns out there is good evidence against pornography being healthy
Please cite it if you have it, because discussions on this topic are riddled with garbage "evidence" peddled by fringe activist organizations that lack any genuine expertise in the relevant fields.
Strongly disagree. That theory says that any criticism of anyone is "outgrouping". The word loses all meaning.
I can say that people who, IMO, teach children these harmful falsehoods are doing the wrong thing. WITHOUT saying they should be treated badly as a group, or jailed, or that they have bad hygiene, or anything else.
If we can't disagree with specific behaviors, I don't know what's left.
There's a lot left. "Religion" is not a tightly knit group with a single set of behaviours or teachings. I don't think I can agree that opposing that straw man to end all straw men is the same as disallowing any criticism of anyone.
There is a big difference between flashing a card at point-of-sale and having to register for a permanent record with the state.
When the database leaks — and it will - we know what it will look like: the AshleyMadison leaks. People died.
There are plenty of technical mechanisms that are available to parents and schools (etc) to block access to this material. None of them need involve the state.
In the end, we must treat this like any other substance that children aren’t ready for. Whether we are talking about taking cannabis, alcohol, pornography, or Tide pods, the most effective protection is parents and educators who care and teach children about potentially harmful behaviors.
> We know that porn is harmful, especially to children, and we have done NOTHING to try to prevent it.
The solution is not impractical, ineffective privacy violations; it's education and media literacy.
I assure you that the groups advocating for laws like this are a) motivated by religion; and b) have a long-term plan for extending restrictions like this. "Won't somebody please think of the children" is always just a cover.
I just upvoted this, and thought about posting something similar myself. I am right now buying "how to talk about sex" books for my 11 year old son. My wife and I are super sex positive.
But I look on Pornhub, and the idea that that might be my children's first impression of sex makes me sad. Its fine for adults, but not good for forming accurate impressions of how to connect with another human being.
My favorite book so far, by far, has been "The Hush Factor" by Karen Rayne. It has almost nothing about sex itself, its almost all about communicating with emerging adults (it would really be good for anyone who has a teenager). But its key thesis is that you are trying to help your children develop the capacity to have healthy sexual relationships.
I think the people downvoting this comment probably don't have kids this age (if you do, I'd be curious to hear your perspective). But I love my kids, and I care about all the kids that age and hope they will find good, healthy partners to sleep with eventually.
Even as someone who is quite tech savvy, it’s difficult to control access to this kind of material. This specific effort may be heavy handed, but there is a problem here that I believe is real and deserves attention.
> But I look on Pornhub, and the idea that that might be my children's first impression of sex makes me sad. Its fine for adults, but not good for forming accurate impressions of how to connect with another human being.
I was exposed to hardcore pornography by friends at a young age. It's done incredible damage and has warped my perception of the opposite sex, it's taken years of active effort to combat it. I know many people in a similar situation. Having continued to attempt to quit addictive pornography the effects are real, being off of what I describe as a drug for a long period of time I can consciously identify changes in my perceptions of people. This doesn't get talked about enough, so much harm is being done.
It can be a pretty quick talk, if you contextualize porn as a movie. Real people don't have sex the way the characters do in porn, just like they don't drive like the characters in action movies.
Thanks, this is actually very useful, and I will almost certainly use it.
But, I still think there are real issues here, regarding empowering parents to guide their children to appropriate resources and away from resources they view as negative (it’s not just sex, either, it’s stuff on YouTube as well). The tools just aren’t that good.
One thing I’d really like on YouTube is the ability to accept YouTube’s default recommendations, but then whitelist/blacklist additional channels at my discretion. Currently it’s YouTube’s recommendations, or curate everything yourself, making the latter really hard.
You won't be able to curate everything forever, so in the long run it's easier to get them asking questions (and to ask them questions) about what they're watching. They'll quickly be able to tell what's trash media on their own.
Advertisements were a big problem in our house at first. Every toy was enticing, but the fast cuts and up-tempo music made them look more fun to play with than they actually were. Have you tried asking them about motivation? Like, those YouTube channels you don't want them to watch were made deliberately, but for what purpose?
Making something forbidden doesn't make it any less misleading, you know? It's the ability to question it that takes away that power.
I'm not arguing for online porn here so do not take it as some form of whataboutism. I just wonder if such young kid should have unrestricted access to internet at all. Apart from sites like 4chan even random influencer can create unhealthy perspective on life.
Calling either "harmful" relies on a second (or even third) order effects concept of harm that would absolutely terrify anybody who spends more than a few minutes thinking through the consequences of adopting that concept.
I’ll add to what you said by reiterating what happened not too long ago where PornHub were forced to purge millions of videos because they couldn’t verify that they were consensual. This happened after a large push-back from over two million people due to the publishing and re-publishing of rape footage of underaged women. These videos stood up for weeks and months before someone at PornHub took them down, they of course resurfaced again.
Imagine a child unknowingly watching rape on film. It’s bad for an adult, what about a child?
I don’t think most people really understand how vile and harmful porn is. I also think that regardless of the downvotes, it’s good to speak up against this. The intention is not to convince someone that doesn’t have a conscience, but to inform people who’re just unaware.
I agree with you. I think the response you are getting is from people that have not seen how kids are being exposed to porn at younger and younger ages. We are doing an insane social experiment on the next generation because this kind of access to sexual content has not existed for all of human history.
> people that have not seen how kids are being exposed to porn at younger and younger ages. We are doing an insane social experiment on the next generation because this kind of access to sexual content has not existed for all of human history.
Citations needed.
Personally first saw porn when friends and I found a VHS tape around Grade 5. Many of my friends seem to have had similar experiences with finding VHS, DVD or Magazines around.
What citations are needed? This is obviously materially different than you finding some vhs that you can only watch at specific times when your parents aren't home. Children have unlimited access to every single type of pornography and can watch it whenever they are left alone in their room with a computer or phone.
edit: "Citations needed" is an extremely lazy way to respond to an argument that is extremely counterproductive and almost every time it's used it's done in bad faith to derail the conversation.
Citation needed that children are being exposed to sex younger than ever.
Citation needed that internet porn is more harmful than a magazine or VHS.
I think it’s counterproductive to try to shield young people from everything instead of teach. The same people encouraging things like this are almost a complete overlap with those pushing to eliminate sex ed.
I'm not trying to take any kind of side here, but I just wanted to raise this curious point: Within the span of a few years, and for well over a decade now, we've gone from porn being a few old magazines in your uncle's closet to something any anonymous person with an internet connection can binge-watch 24/7 for the rest of their life. If it has a bad impact on society, that should have been amplified by several orders of magnitude by now, and that impact should be plainly visible for anyone to see. Is it?
This is a level-headed point, and I appreciate that you acknowledge the changing nature of porn, which some commenters in the thread deny, saying that it has "always been there". Are the effects on society visible? Maybe yes. How do we know that it is unrelated to the epidemics in depression, social isolation, reduction in physical/social activity of young adults, etc.
Maybe it is completely unrelated. But before pushing something so radical and artificial on everyone (as you say, possible 24/7 binge on porn) shouldn't the burden of proof that it is not harmful be on those pushing it?
Also, significant number of people report porn-addiction and decreased personal quality of life due to it. If this is the self-assessment of so many people, how can it be dismissed?
The track record of other types of superstimulation at a society level (e.g. sugary food, drugs) is not good.
As someone that did watch porn as a minor (no distinction between child/teenager from the state) with an internet connection. Nothing harmful about it, people usually try to convince you that it is. it's not true.
Aside from the absolute absurdity of this.. especially from one of the states that value "freedom" more than anything else cough cough.
How does this even work legally? If pornhub is not physically located in Lousiana but only accessible from there.. why do they even have to comply with this law? What would be consequences of not doing so? Would the only result be that Lousiana ISPs be forced to block them?
Pornhub just doesn’t want the hassle of a legal fight or PR-centric indictments from grandstanding politicians. Easier to block a state that probably contributes little revenue and (per pornhub stats) just stresses the trans porn servers.
If it's like the UKs proposals then MindGeek (PornHub owner) will have the good to go super private honest, ID portal.
Plus they've lost a strong of these. Mostly from hedge funds that invest in visa/MasterCard turn out to be the source of morality. Like Bill Ackerman [0] already did with PornHub.
PH and other porn sites have pivoted to direct ACH transfers and crypto. Ironically, I can see these efforts becoming one of the biggest contributors towards evangelizing censorship-resistant forms of payments.
Shouldn't Louisiana be responsible for stopping this information from illegally crossing its borders if this is how they want their citizens to behave? Coming soon, The Great Cajunwall
How could CenturyLink possibly know if someone has submitted their ID to PH? Unless you're suggesting Louisiana force CL to block PH, which I'm sure would have all sorts of freedom of speech implications.
Louisiana doesn't value freedom or "freedom". They have more of a percentage of their people incarcerated than any other state in the USA, even more than Iraq.
Of course it doesn't. I'm just being facetious since conservative talking points are all about freedom when most of their policies are the exact opposite.
Related anecdote: My father-in-law died in Louisiana state police custody, in a pretty brutal and depressing way, after breaking no laws but "acting suspiciously" in a casino parking lot. No lawyer would touch the case because he had meth in his system according to the toxicology report, despite the fact he'd been restrained for hours before he died. Apparently it's nigh-impossible to bring a wrongful death suit against police in Louisiana.
Is it an Infringement On Freedom to require age verification before you can purchase alcohol? Or enter a strip club? Or even walk into some bars or many clubs? Or to buy a gun? Or rent a car? Or vote? Or buy porn magazines from a store?
Why is internet porn unique in this respect?
Our society is FULL of porn. It's everywhere. Kids are exposed to it at an average age of 10.
- The question isn't "should we require age verification for adult things" (because we already do)
- The question isn't "should we require age verification for porn" (because we already do for physical porn)
The question is: why should internet porn be the ONLY exception?
You can't have it both ways and just spit out "porn causes harm" but then say "excess of anything is bad".
Sure, excess of porn (like anything else) is bad. But porn itself is not harmful at all. If you are going to say otherwise, you have absolutely nothing to back it up. Yeah, go google some randomly study that says it is and there are a billion more to dispute that.
Plus, if you really think watching porn is "bad", well holy shit then nearly everyone in the world is at great harm because believe it or not almost everyone watches porn.
Because the cost of enforcement is abrogation of privacy and the creation of a new and incredibly powerful new tool for state control over technology and our communication on the internet.
It’s a very short hop from this facility, to requiring that — for example — the same cryptographic state ID be used to hold our encryption keys in escrow.
Every one of the things you’ve listed is a physical interaction. You’re entering a physical location, purchasing a physical good, etc.
Porn viewed online is information not a physical thing - can you think of a precedent for gating access to information behind an id-wall? I can’t.
But the more important thing is - ok, if we agree that kids viewing porn is bad: does this law actually improve that in an appreciable way? I suspect not - In fact as other commenters have pointed out this will probably drive younger viewers to sketchier places that operate outside of this law and others.
"If you outlaw murder people will just find more secretive ways to do it"
Sure, but also less murder will happen, there will be enforcement to minimize it, and murder won't be normalized.
Likewise: less children will be exposed to porn, law enforcement will be empowered to crack down on shady sites, and children watching porn will no longer be normalized (like it currently is)
Why should the porn company and the government be allowed to track what I do in private?
And now to your other silly points..
Alcohol is literally damaging to a developing brain. So there is a completely valid reason that children should not be drinking.
Gun- a child with a developing brain that doesn't understand everyone can literally kill themselves or someone else.
Rent a car.. see gun- car can hurt people.
Strip club- oh no, a naked person! How terrible!
Vote- see developing brain- a 10 year old is generally not informed in the slightest or capable of making a decision that will affect other people
All the shit you list affects OTHER PEOPLE. Watching porn doesn't affect anyone else.
>Our society is FULL of porn. It's everywhere
Gee I wonder why that is... PEOPLE LIKE PORN. We are literally sexual beings- it's the only reason you are alive, because people and other animals before you have been fucking like mad for billions of years. And we like to watch people having sex.
So get off your high horse and deal with reality. You don't like porn? Then don't fucking watch it. You don't want your kids watching porn? TALK TO THEM ABOUT IT and do whatever you feel is necessary.
It wasn't that long ago that real name policy was the topic of discussion. Making everything on the internet require an identity verification is a concept some people have been pushing for, and in term of social credit scores it would make it much easier for some parties to keep track of their citizens. Porn is not the only exception here.
The big question is why privacy should be default, and if it is the default, what criteria should be applied when exceptions are given to the default.
Personally I would hope privacy should be default and exceptions to that rule should only exist if there are democratic chosen laws that overrule it. Then people can vote against or elect new leaders if a law is against the wishes of the people.
when I buy alcohol they look at my id but they don't take down my name. same with a strip club, bar
There is no record of if I'm in to whisky or vodka, whether I bought $2 wine or $75 wine. Whether I had one drink at the bar or 6 drinks. Whether I looked at blondes, brunettes, men or women.
but all of that is recorded online.
In otherwords it's different online because the situation is different. I'd prefer there be no record of if I watched straight or gay, white, black, asian, women only, men only, group, single, or couples, etc....
> If pornhub is not physically located in Lousiana but only accessible from there.. why do they even have to comply with this law?
I'm not sure this is how the question of the applicability of a particular state's laws to website is determined.
AFAIK, a website is considered to be operating in a state if it is directed towards users in that state. For example, if a website targets users in California, it would be considered to be operating in California, even if the website's servers are located in a different state.
More generally, websites need to abide by laws of the states in which they operate, i.e. complying with any relevant regulations and laws related to e.g. sale of goods/services, advertising, privacy, and other consumer protections.
Sometimes it's difficult or impossible to fully comply with the laws of every state in which it operates, due to differences between state laws.
So, I'm sure the way this works is more complex than I'm presenting it, but I do know that physical location is not dispositive.
Let’s play the unintended downstream consequences of misguided policy game…
No fapper in their right mind is submitting their ID to pornhub to have a wank.
This will just drive users to smaller, shadier sites that don’t comply with local regulations.
These sites will contain more harmful or exploitative content, and their increased traffic will incentivize and facilitate a continued cycle of exploitation and abuse.
OK, so the "good" in this case being making it more onerous to access a legal product and making it more likely that said consumers of product will have their personally identifying information stolen due to a particular extreme philosophical bent, got it. I'm going to say I vehemently disagree with your stance on this, but I don't think it's worthwhile for either of us to engage.
Edit 1:
> My views would've been considered normal, rational, and reasonable for almost everyone but the latest generation of porn addicts.
There's been pornography in some way, shape or form as long as there's been media to record it. There's been videos since the invention of film - prudes did their best to shut it down. Want to expand on what your "views" are? Because the ones you've expressed so far have been radical as far back as I'm aware of.
> If you want me to consider your opinion valid, I challenge you to take 1 year without viewing it, and then reconsider.
This seems very on brand to try to force others to take your stance just to engage with you.
Edit 2:
My last response on this as I abhor this "edit to respond" format.
I can't read the article, it's behind a paywall, but your initial argument:
> I’m going to be honest and say that I believe pornography is a level of sexual exploitation that no person, not even the actors involved, should be considered capable of legally consenting to partake in.
Does not in any way, shape, or form align with this argument:
> I believe, at this point, that pornography is actually increasing the subjection of women and increasing misogyny towards them, and there are actually many feminists who agree with me on this view.
In fact that first seems to be infantilizing the performers by literally saying that the women and men taking part aren't capable of making their own decisions. It's absurd that a woman can't be considered capable of consent to being photographed nude, and it's ridiculous to hide that stance behind "porn is misogyny".
This paternalistic bullshit has no place in a free, modern society of any sort. And of course obscenity has 1A protection, that's in large part exactly what it is designed to protect.
"Obscenity" isn't protected by the first amendment (where obscene means, approximately, offensive on a fundamental moral level and without any redeeming artistic qualities). However, what counts as obscene is notoriously fuzzy -- the Supreme Court made up the Miller test[1], which roughly boils down to "would an average person think it's obscene?".
In practice, as this applies to pornography, it's not treated as obscene in most cases, as pornography is very popular and widely consumed, so obviously the average person isn't offended by it.
(I say "most cases", because this is what leaves open the door to banning specific pornography. E.g. child porn, snuff porn, etc. Things that are shocking to the average person.)
>pornography is a level of sexual exploitation that no person, not even the actors involved, should be considered capable of legally consenting to partake in.
> I’m going to be honest and say that I believe pornography is a level of sexual exploitation that no person, not even the actors involved, should be considered capable of legally consenting to partake in.
I hope you extend your views about work that is beyond consent to non-sexual forms of work.
Football players (concussions), kitchen refinishers (silicosis), crab boat workers (death) - they all trade deep risks of physical harm to their bodies for paycheques.
If you don’t, what is it about porn that makes it different? Is it possible your views about sex work have less to do with protecting workers from exploitation and more about passing moral judgement on sex work itself?
I respect that you can post an opinion obviously counter to the vast majority. I think the ability to dissent is incredibly important.
Personally, I categorize porn as a drug (like caffeine or alcohol), and I treat it with the same suspicion I treat other drugs in my life: by using a healthy dose of suspicion. Things that can mess with me physiologically deserve deep scrutiny. And, obviously, social morays will tend toward normalizing those things as there is a lot of money in them, and people are very protective of their drugs.
That being said, drugs affect everyone differently, so it’s vitally important to know your own tolerances and capabilities when using one. And, unless they alter the reasoning of users such that they are substantially more likely to commit a crime, I don’t think there’s a strong case for the drug’s illegality or restriction.
> If you want me to consider your opinion valid, I challenge you to take 1 year without viewing it, and then reconsider.
That's a pretty dang high bar. This is like me saying "if you don't think plain oatmeal is the best breakfast, try eating it every day for a year before I'll consider your opinion valid."
Like, totally fine to disagree with people here, but if your argument is that people need to spend a couple percent of their remaining life following your rules before you'll consider their argument, then don't be surprised when people entirely ignore whether you think their arguments are valid.
Ok fair, but don't be surprised when people vote out politicians who share your opinions. To me, and to the culture, community I live/grew up in, this is a horribly authoritarian, scary, dystopian attitude that has absolutely no place in a free society, period. Thank you for sharing your opinion regardless, but please just understand that some people think adults get to consent to anything (literally anything) as long as it doesn't affect someone else. When an actor gets naked consensually, and when a person watches this moment consensually, there can be no qualifier that can further affect the judgement of this situation. It's not relevant whether this is "obscene", "gross", "objectionable", "less than ideal", "degenerate", "poor taste" etc. (It's not relevant philosophically, of course whether it's relevant legally is a separate question). Two adults made a decision about themselves which had no effect to people not involved in this situation. If you don't like porn don't watch it; if you don't like porn being made, don't be a porn actor. Easy peasy.
I just want to add a comment to the horde, to let you know that I agree with you completely on all these points.
Looking at the other replies, it occurs to me that the debate is often framed solely as a moral issue, but actually, we have considerable evidence of harm, several decades worth. Unfortunately it's difficult to get people to even consider the latter, when they want to focus solely on making their arguments for the former.
Everyone is free to hold their own personal beliefs as long they don't prevent others from holding theirs. Some people will agree with you, others disagree.
There is very little difference in addictive triggers. All of them trigger the reward center in the brain in a very similar ways. Any time they get triggered there is a associated risk of affecting peoples behavior towards more triggering. We could put people into a brain scanner and identify what specific triggers that person reward center, and then ask them to abstain from that trigger for 1 year. The outcome would be very predictable. It would be like asking a cocaine user to abstain, but individualized to each person based on what trigger their reward center. No one is immune, through individuals will have different amount of struggle to ignore their own reward center.
I also have a standing challenge to anyone who want to argue that the profession should be illegal. Write a generic law that makes it illegal but which does not mention the word sex or the concept of it. As an example: It should illegal to consent to work unless a person would be willing to do it without being paid, as otherwise it is exploitation of that person need for money.
The nature of it would require the cajun firewall of freedom. The firewall will need to prevent people from accessing stuff they aren't allowed to, maybe even block vpns.
Pornography has historically been about as accessible as any other form of media. At first it was limited to hand-drawn on paper [1] (just like any other content before the printing press). Woodblock and later cooper-plate printing made it easier to mass produce (just like everything else). Photography was almost immediately used to produce pornography, as was motion picture film. And of course, the internet made it drastically easier to distribute digitally.
In short, pornography has always followed the existing means of media production and distribution.
It is not new, but it is plausible that through wide availability and deliberate exploitation of addictive behaviour ("Mindgeek"?) it has recently reached a state where it may tear society apart.
There is an inherent rate-limiting in trading anything with others. Physical media gets lost/confiscated and you can only re-read the same magazine so many times before you get bored and move on.
Nobody invited you to an endless all-you-can-watch telethon of fresh content. That's where we are today.
Good thought. Louisiana could simultaneously legalize prostitution and incentivize people to go out and interact with actual other humans instead of sitting at home watching porn.
If porn is an inherent moral wrong, inherently and inextricably sexually abusive to all its participants (not just women), then it should be illegal full-stop, not just hidden behind privacy-destroying ID checks that grant the state unprecedented control over internet communication.
Law is not for codifying morality. It's a compromise to operate as a society. Prohibition doesn't work and causes more harm than good, even if people think the thing that's prohibited is "immoral"
I happen to agree, and think that prohibition of porn would lead to horrific outcomes.
Just consider the original prohibition, how it bolstered organized crime, and the kind of abuses likely to occur when the prohibited good is pornography instead of alcohol.
So women don't watch porn and there are no men being exploited?
It's fine to hate porn but it is definitely abusive to all genders not just women and certainly not just straight women.
When you try to argue otherwise, you hurt your own cause. The reasoning is that now you are up against multiple differing opinions on multiple topics. Porn prohibition is incredibly unpopular and who knows what consequences it may incur. Perhaps porn is greatly limiting rape cases? A brief internet search provided plenty of evidence in favor of "who knows?"
> No fapper in their right mind is submitting their ID to pornhub to have a wank.
How come so? People literally pay for porn content with their credit cards which is a form of identification too. I don't see a problem with showing your id for accessing quality content.
Yeah, they can try all they want but they aren't stopping a teenage boy from finding smut. Pornhub has, at least lately, developed a veneer of trying to be responsible as far as exploitation is concerned. The ones that are trying to play by the rules will be punished.
I realize not everywhere is like this, but the internet kind of makes the point moot anyway.
I can get a prepaid CC attached to any address I want using cash at a cameraless location. Or I can alter my gait and put on a mask and ignore cameras.
When used(value of $2 or less) the card makes for a superb trial abuse method for things like Netflix.
I feel like this will eventually become an "everybody poops"-type thing. Kind of like how it's expected that people will share nudes with their partner, thus if they've had multiple partners, former partners are expected to have some. Lots of people watch porn.
I'm more concerned with the precedent that this sets. Given the "interstate" nature of online commerce, I would think that this law is not enforceable, but given the current makeup of SCOTUS, it might stand for the next 50-100 years. Once a ruling goes through allowing for this type of regulations, I would expect a patchwork of laws to effectively de-anonymize the entire internet.
Since VPNs can be used to ignore these regulations, the next step is to write laws that regulate VPNs. Thus, the government will have a one-stop-shop for finding all of the "bad" things a person is doing. Since payments for like 99.9% of users will be easily traceable to an individual, this will turn VPNs into a honeypot of sorts. Sure, hardened criminals can find ways around this, but I don't think small-town police are too concerned with going after criminals that are out of their league, this is more about projecting power over the locals.
Why? Most VPN services accept crypto and other forms of payment.
They can share accounts with their friends, use their parents credit cards, get their own debit cards (I had one a 14), or even using a pre-paid CC (I've not tried it, but I think it works). It's so easy to get access to a VPN as a minor.
Also, the biggest selling point of VPNs is the ability to watch streaming services in other countries. So it's not a hard sell to parents.
> Given the "interstate" nature of online commerce, I would think that this law is not enforceable
What legal distinction do you draw to separate enforceability of this law from any other law regarding a business providing a service in a different jurisdiction than headquartered?
>I'm more concerned with the precedent that this sets.
International Shoe was decided decades before the internet was invented. I don't really see the novelty of this scenario when the website in question offers a paid subscription service to customers in Louisiana.
I agree it's 100% silly conservative BS, but let's be honest: Pornhub are absolutely terrible at complying with laws.
Anyone who uploads something illegal (childporn, non-fantasy rape videos, or stolen nudes) must be held accountable. And if they can't find who is accountable, then Pornhub should be accountable.
The other thing they will not do, is have a rating system for porn. Extreme porn should not be promoted to the front page. I'm not talking about when the UK considered facesitting to be "extreme". It could be determined by a neutral panel or whatnot. Then uploaders can set a rating, users can suggest a different rating, and users can change their rating filter. That way, teens exploring porn don't go from a casual gonzo, to something really extreme, in just a few clicks. It's better UX too, because I've talked about this with people, and many do watch porn, but they hate stumbling on something they consider gross (sorry to generalize, but women in particular tend to be more sensitive, and somewhat understandably since it's usually gross towards women).
Instead, PornHub repeatedly argue that everyone has their kinks. They do, but it's not a valid excuse for doing nothing.
Not an unreasonable suggestion, but definitely going to run into unreasonable people who want everything to be rated "bad" (as you've seen with the UK nonsense)
Pornhub should redirect traffic from Louisiana to a page that includes names and contact information of the politicians that sponsored the legislation.
That's a very risky move on their part for something I'm not sure is even _actually_ bad from their perspective.
"Oh, we just _have_ to have this system in place that makes you identify, we don't collect your data _right now_ but now that we know who you are anyway and you're no longer anonymous - why not sign up to our subscription service?"
Is making the website more work to use for free users which makes them stay around less and thus convert (later) less bad or is the extra data worth it?
It is bad for them, as most people likely will go somewhere else then, before providing ID. Porn sites aren't exactly rare content and hard to find on the internet.
I'm not so sure. It was never really anonymous if you weren't paying with crypto. And even if you were, it was still non anonymous if you bought your crypto off Coinbase or another legit exchange.
Realistically there's not much to be had by obtaining information on PH's customers. "Hey! This guy... watches porn! Can you believe it!?" Reminds me of this gif [1]. I guess if someone is a hardcore anti-porn Mormon or something, then it might be leverage. But for the vast majority of people, I doubt consumption of adult media is a big reputation hit.
How are they even going to enforce this? There's probably millions of porn sites out there, and 99% of them are not even going to be aware of this law and not care if they do, especially in the case of foreign owned sites. This really just punishes the biggest sites that are aware and try to play by the rules (e.g. pornhub.) Why go to a site that requires verification when you can choose one of hundreds of thousands that won't.
Who knows, this might be 3d chess by lobbyist. They might be carving out a porn lobby, where porn sites have to shell out money to the crooked system to stop these laws.
And in doing so, they get to make a public argument for the moral justification of monetary damages. The cynic in me expects Puritanical groups in America want those damages to reflect a judgement on deviance or pronouns.
Enforcement is not the job of the politicians. They just write the "Save the Children" laws and then go out and pat themselves on the back to their constituents.
Are there really millions of porn sites out there? Doesn't MindGeek own like the majority of porn traffic online? Even given the volume of sites I'd easily bet the vast majority of traffic goes to a relatively small number of sites.
Adding these laws that can be easily bypassed (in this case by using a VPN or providing someone else's ID) only encourages corruption and moves money to extra parties (in this case, VPNs most likely).
Instead - why not invest that money/time in making education about a healthy sexual life available and to people?
In general, approaches that are "let's prevent minors from doing X by telling them not to while still making it easy to do anyway" are bad, make kids feel talked down to and push them to understanding sexuality through porn which is what they're trying to avoid.
Gives private parties (including parents) ability to sue for damages, versus criminal penalties. Not sure how it plays with interstate commerce clause, etc.
Also gives similar rights to sue if ID information is retained or used for anything beyond confirming age.
No, it's not a hack against the 1st amendment. Any private party action is constrained by the 1ST amendment. It's a well resolved question.
The unanswered question is what the limits are to out of state state power? It's a billion dollar question.
Private lawsuits can seek relief that otherwise would be beyond the state's power under the 1st Amendment. For example, speech itself can be penalized by a court if it violates a non-disclosure agreement.
Cool, I'm sick and tired of Christians forcing their beliefs on me. I'm sure that if a law were passed allowing me to take private action and sue people for being Christian that would be fine since it's not the government taking action on religion?
This is significantly different than the Texas abortion law. That law allowed anyone in Texas to sue if they were aware of an abortion, essentially deputizing the entire populace as bounty hunters.
If this law only allows those who actually can argue that they suffered damages (i.e. minors or their parents) to sue, than it's not really much different than other civil tort laws.
It also requires any affected sites to verify users' ages directly with the government. They have to use the "LA Wallet" service, which means the Louisiana state government will have a record of everyone who uses it to access a porn site.
Somewhere on HN I’ve seen one of the programmers for LA Wallet. I wonder if they would do an AMA about the state warehousing of access ID and time stamp records?
This law will not survive the 1st amendment challenge.
The unanswered question is what the limits are to out of state state power? It's a billion dollar question. What are the limits to a state enforcing its power out of state?
How do you even calculate damages for such a civil lawsuit? I thought damages have to be quantified: You hit my car, and it costs me $1,000 to repair it, so damages are $1,000. Someone goes to PornHub for a wank, and who's wronged? How much did it cost the wronged party?
How does this work in the context of 'private' mode? This is something I assume a lot of folks would use for adult content. Do they have to verify each time? I've no doubt some people make accounts and stay 'logged in' to PH and similar sites, but I suspect a much larger set of folks browse in private mode without an account.
Once a gov id is linked to a user id then I'd only expect to need a user id to login again in private mode. I'm assuming they store it in case the gov needs to audit people's porn preferences.
I don't understand why people think this is a bad thing except unless they think children should be watching porn?
We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
If there was a guy on your block constantly trying to lure children into his house to show them porn, or even a guy on your block who was flashing himself at your children, you would find that objectionable (I hope). But it's okay for pornhub to do this because it's online? Why?
I think this is good. I know that's probably a dissenting opinion here.
I think in this case, Pornhub isn't "luring" your kids to do anything. In any case, the parents can always put up a website blocker. If the kid continues to try and get on the website and even finds a way to disable the blocker, is that PornHub "luring" ?
Pornographic content is too accessible. It's impossible for the parents to police this, there will always be one kid with negligent parents that will expose other children to this crap. We are talking 10 year olds here, it's already happening.
We can create cases where blockers aren't effective till we're blue in the face. At some point, the measures taken to prevent this start to do more harm to other parts of the population than good.
My belief is we've slowly let parents get away with not actually parenting and moved that job over to the government and other institutions.
There's many more ways to tackle this that may be more effective and actually seek to educate.
How about start with some educational content on why porn is bad for young minds and how to talk to your child about it in a mature way?
It's like nobody wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room and have a civil and mature discussion about it with their children because it's awkward or uncomfortable.
Because privacy matters. You really trust that Pornhub won't be storing the info of people who access it, including specific content tied to users, and that they couldn't have a security breach?
If you want to protect children, you could perhaps have a trusted third party token broker which would neither reveal to the sites who owns the token, nor the site to the broker what content is accessed.
In what world is using porn once in a ~30 day period bleak?!?
That is all that is saying, that they used it once. That's... not a lot. So someone has wanked once in the last month. That's.... ok? (Also love the continued sexism that woman don't have a sex drive and we just conveniently ignore them with these statistics)
FFS we are sexual creatures. Most species are. Sex is perfectly natural and we really need to remove this stigma around it.
Yes true but as a parent it’s not as easy as you suggest. In particular it’s extremely difficult for less educated and poorer parents to block porn access.
Exactly. I met a poor mother at a gas station in tears about how her child had been corrupted by porn that he saw on his phone. People just don’t know how bad it is.
She had nobody else to talk to and I happened to be standing there. I filled up her car because she was stuck, and she started crying and telling me about this. I was surprised too but it really affected how I think about this issue.
Hey if you guys want to go down that libertarian rabbit hole with me I'm with you!
But it feels a little bit strange to me that people are on board with the idea that the government should be protecting me from buying antibiotics without getting themselves involved, but they don't think they should be protecting my children from being sexually harassed on the internet by pornographers.
If that's the modality we are going to switch to, where it becomes my responsibility to protect myself and my family from bad actors then fine. I accept the compromise. Please direct me to the place I can buy whatever medications I want without the government knowing or caring, and the place where I can attach unregulated firearms to my unregistered drones to hunt bears on my property.
But again it seems pretty odd to me that there is nobody up in arms about the fact that my kid needs to show ID and get my permission to get antibiotics, but you guys are all up in arms because he, a 12 year old, can't go online and be monetized into watching incest gangbang porn so that mindgeek can make a few cents off of ads for escort services and dick pills.
I’m opposed to both, but I’m not sure that’s even relevant.
Compared to a bored store clerk eyeballing your ID in person, digital, cryptographically enforced, centralized state identity verification on the internet is a powerful new tool for state censorship and control.
The same “save the children” imperative could have been achieved by requiring that porn sites set a header designating themselves as porn, and letting the private market voluntarily add support to their parental controls for filtering that content.
Nothing about this problem requires abrogating both privacy rights and parental responsibility.
Who's sexually harassing anyone here? You go on pornhub to look at porn, nobody ends up at pornhup by mistake. To say pornhub is harassing is like dropping yourself into a volcano and being mad that its hot.
For something to be harassment it has to be unwanted.
Do you extend this thinking to other forms of child sexual abuse? For instance: if a child meets an adult in person for sex, do you justify this by saying that "nobody ends up meeting somebody for sex by mistake"?
It's not bad for adding friction for children's access to porn.
It's bad because it creates an enormous privacy concern for adults who are forced to identify themselves in a traceable way when for consuming legal, but often very socially taboo content. We might say that these sites should never store the information, but the reality is that it's such a honeypot of potential blackmail that no one should trust it not to be stored.
> We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
Pornography is not an essential product or service. You can live your life without it. Many people do.
If there ends up being a privacy risk to consuming online porn, due to having to hand your personal details over to a pornographer to access it, and you choose of your own volition to do this anyway, then really it's your own fault.
I don't think people (in general) think children *should* be watching porn, it's more the combination of these factors:
1. This law won't prevent anyone with any amount of motivation from watching porn
2. This law will create an avenue for personal details to be compromised, certainly with association to "porn" in general and possibly to actual content
3. This is coming from Louisiana which would rather legislate an issue than educate children on how to handle these issues properly
Okay now do firearms! I don't think people should own fully automatic weapons, it's more a combination of these factors:
1: Gun laws don't prevent bad guys from buying guns anyway.
2: Gun laws create an avenue for personal details to be compromised with association to "guns".
3: Guns laws typically come from Californians, who instead of trying to deal with the people dying in the street of a fentanyl overdose, busy themselves trying to annoy hobbyists in Texas with their stupid lack of understanding about how firearms are made or used.
I've said in other places: if people want to actually build out a libertarian world where the state leaves me alone then good.
The frustration I have is that people seem upset at the idea of the the state working to make it harder for people to abuse kids online, and but happy about the idea of the state making it harder for me to protect my family from violent people in real life.
> Gun laws don't prevent bad guys from buying guns anyway.
If this was true, the United States wouldn’t be an enormous outlier in gun violence compared to countries which have them. We have a subtly different problem: borderless gun laws don’t work when you can bypass them with a single day or less worth effort.
There’s a related problem: the constant effort devoted to removing restrictions makes it easier for everyone involved in that process up to the person actually committing the crime. In Europe simple possession is a crime so you see far fewer people selling to criminals.
This quickly gets into the zone of absolving parents of their responsibilities to oversee their children's education and rearing in the manner that they choose (porn is bad vs. porn is not for you until you're older, etc)
How much media in our society is "not for children" but are still easily accessed by children? And how much of that happens because parents aren't paying attention?
Porn is just an easy target, especially in America.
I'm not saying we should do nothing, but I don't think this is effective action.
It's actually impossible to effectively manage this with laws and centralized legislation (I would argue this is performative more than anything else), and the more of this we have, the more of a false sense of security you give parents, and the less responsibility they feel they need to have in guiding and supporting their children and helping them learn the reality of the world around them.
> I don't understand why people think this is a bad thing except unless they think children should be watching porn?
It's a very bad take for you to assume that the opposition is from people who want children to watch porn.
Protecting children is primarily parents' responsibility, not everyone else's. It's okay if it doesn't cost anything (like putting tricky caps on bottles of hazardous things), but when there's a clash (privacy vs protecting children), it's better to land on the side of freedom and personal responsibility.
Hell, you probably shouldn't be giving kids access to the internet anyway. Tik Tok might be just as damaging as Pornhub for them.
Edit: in other words, if you're worried about your child rolling off the bed you should buy a crib. Government shouldn't be mandating that all beds need to be cribs, in case children might sleep in them.
drugs, guns, voting, strip clubs, gambling websites, buying alcohol, buying cigarettes, renting a car, or even buying porn mags?
Why is internet porn the only exception?
It's obviously harmful: we don't let kids go to strip clubs or invite them to view irl orgies for this reason. They can't even buy physical porn or view porn in stores without age verification. What about it being digital makes it ok?
Not sure which people you're referring to by "they", but if you mean me:
Internet porn is the exception because of privacy reasons. For some of those examples they don't store records (voting, buying alcohol, etc), and in the case where they do (gambling websites, renting) that's not something that's a huge privacy concern.
It's like the difference between having security cameras in a lobby vs a bathroom stall. They would both prevent crimes, but the invasion of privacy isn't worth it.
You don't have to watch internet porn, it isn't an essential activity. Many people never watch it.
It's nothing at all like using a bathroom stall, an activity that everyone does, because we all need to defecate as part of our bodily functions, and spaces to do this in. In the hypothetical situation of installing cameras in stalls, the privacy impact affects essentially everyone.
Conversely, if the cost of electing to watch online pornography is that you have to share your personal data with the pornographers, then that is a choice you have made, and it's your responsibility to deal with any privacy consequences. If you don't like it, don't do it.
So your problem here is the implementation? Have them do verification through a government-owned endpoint, pass laws with steep fines and jail time for all involved if they store ID info, etc
You have to submit a fraction of this same info to open a brokerage account. A solution exists and it's worth pursuing.
Imagine you submit your ID and a data breach happens, or Louisiana subpoenas the information and makes it public. Now imagine you live in Louisiana (a pretty conservative state) and suddenly everyone knows you like to watch every type of porn, such as those seen as more taboo like male/male or male/trans. You are suddenly a target for violence in a place where such violence is most likely to occur, because of your state government's actions.
Nobody's saying kids should be watching porn. In a perfect world, this is a good law. We live in reality, though; data breaches happen routinely, and governments can do unethical, harmful, legal things. You should always examine laws in how they can be enforced in the worst way, and what the next logical step might be for legislators with ill intent towards any kind of minority group.
> We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
No country in the world has the identification infrastructure to implement this in a rights-neutral way, as far as I know. To do it, your ID would have to be a sort-of rolling public/private key pair that others can use to verify information with, such as DOB and driving eligibility. We would then have to track what entities are querying your ID and what info they got so that we can audit who's getting our Id info and make sure they have the appropriate access.
> We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
I'm not sure this follows. For people that really care a lot about both issues, perhaps.
For me, I care much more about privacy and preventing government overreach than making porn harder to access.
As such, I'm not going to be the one trying to figure out how to accomplish this without these effects. I'm going to focus on saying "Don't introduce those effects, regardless of your motivations."
> but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
Nope. I think it's perfectly fine to raise issues and tell someone to go off and fix their proposal without my assistance.
It's not like there's some time sensitive pressure that I help collaborate to get some minimal solution in place as fast as possible. Kids have been looking at internet porn for the last 25 years and this law won't meaningfully curb that, regardless of how perfect age verification tech ever gets.
This is great news, I’ve been wanting to see this for a long time. Kids are exposed to pornography extremely young now and it can ruin their lives. If it were up to me
I would hold the companies criminally liable for it, but this is a good start.
This is such an insane and obvious misrepresentation. It's about the second order effects that come from said protection. When you give people information or power, you must assume that everyone with said pwoer is using it as maliciously as possible (and knowing Louisiana, that can likely happen). Should the government have a log of every single person who has ever seen gay porn? Do you really think that information will be used responsibly?
So would you support legislation that legally requires the companies to verify the age of its users in some other way? By the way, checking ID is the way this is done for all other age-restricted activities already. But maybe you have a better idea?
Please oh wise devout spiritual leader, explain how porn has warped my mind.
When you think of sex, do you think of those innocent portrayals in movies where people save themselves until marriage and then whenever they have sex it is the most gentle (and boring) experience where they slowly move until they are done and then have a magical baby?
Yeah, that's not natural. That is how religions have wanted you to think about sex because they barely even approve of it except to create a baby.
If anything most porn is more realistic of our animalistic wants than the bs we have been fed on tv.
So please, tell me what you mean by "porn" doesn't represent sex. Because I have to say, for all the porn I have watched my wife and I have enjoyed most of it.
Evidently you think having sex to have a baby is not natural, but you and your wife watching porn actors have sex on a TV is natural. If that’s not warped I don’t know what is.
Let's try this again. Sex is supposed to be raw and wild. Not what religious people want to push as pure and innocent.
So my question to you again- what about "porn" is not natural sex? Even though the question is kind of stupid in itself because porn means a lot of things. But you are the one that said it.
Porn is exaggerated, often violent and extremely degrading. It’s a product made by actors and producers for money. Nothing more than prostitution on camera. Pornographers know this perfectly well, I don’t see why you’re having a hard time grasping it.
>Porn is exaggerated, often violent and extremely degrading
Wait.. this is your whole point? Your argument is based on... that?
"extremely degrading" is completely arbitrary- and many people enjoy being degraded or to degregate someone to some degree during sex. That's literally why people watch it. But I guess that's just too real of a concept for you to grasp. As I said in my other post, the scenes during a romance movie where the girl lays on her back and everyone has gentle boring sex is NOT reality. Porn is closer to reality than that.
And you do realize that almost EVERY type of every media you see/read is exaggerated?
Ever watch a romance movie before? Ever read a romance novel? That's not how shit works in real life. Should we ban that as well because teenage girls are going to watch it and think that's how things work?
Which is why all you need to do is TALK with your children openly about sex and just put a few things in the right context. Just like you should talk to them about anything (violence in movies, romance in movies) and put it in the right context.
It's ridiculous how afraid of sex you are. Grow up and stop trying to limit people with your prudishness.
Sorry to trigger you but you’re really proving my point here. You’ve admitted it’s degrading and you say that you (sorry I mean “many people”) like that about it. Evidence of a mind warped by porn. Not to mention the industry is rife with human trafficking and abuse. You should try stopping your porn use and see how it heals your mind. You can thank me later.
First, comparing porn to candy is absurd. Porn is way more destructive psychologically. Second, the stuff is everywhere - a kid can pick up a friend’s iPad and get scarred for life by what these companies are putting out. No one parent has the power to stop it, so it makes sense for the state to do so.
You really think candy is more destructive for a kid than pornography? One can scar them for life, the other dissolves and goes away. You are not being realistic at all
Do you feel the same way about other forms of child sexual abuse? Like for instance if a kid gets abused only one time is that about the equivalent in your mind to them eating one piece of chocolate on the scale of things which can have long term effects on their life?
The funny part is that you actually think this will have any real impact.
There are a billion other porn sites, and even I would argue watching all the thirst traps on TikTok or Instagram are way more "harmful" than straight out porn.
So this will do absolutely nothing except allow sites like Pornhub to literally know the exact person viewing what videos now. Yeah, that's just wonderful.
The funny part is that even this tiny bit of legislation to protect kids from porn has you up in arms. I would like to see way way more legal action against the porn industry than this, but at least it makes them liable for damages if they ruin a kid’s innocence.
>The funny part is that even this tiny bit of legislation to protect kids from porn has you up in arms
It's because ADULTS have to literally prove their identity to watch porn because of your "protect the children" campaign. And that means both the porn site and the state can DIRECTLY track exactly what you are doing.
And also.. what exactly are you "protecting" kids from... seeing sex? The most natural things human do? Fucking ludicrous.
You have to prove your age, just like with any other age restricted activity. And why are you putting protect the children in scare quotes? It’s exactly what the law is doing. And if you think pornographic sex is natural then you are deeply confused.
One thing I didn’t see addressed in the article is how they know you live in LA, or, even in the USA (in the case of Mike Lee’s wanting to take this national)? It’s not like ip addresses are conclusive proof of where you are located.
I don't know about the implementation here but it's too easy for young people to access pornography. I know teachers and I hear horror stories of 10 year old boys being caught in the bathroom watching elderly porn. It just seems impossible for kids to grow up without the over sexualization of everything nowadays. Porn stars are becoming video game streamers because they know their target demographic is young teens. We are doing an insane social experiment with the next generation.
Good! As a former hedonist, I also used to defend pornography with the zealousness of the inquisition - which many of these comments show. Dig beneath the surface, and you'll see the rot. This isn't even speaking of the poor teenagers who have ED in their teen years from destroying their endocrine systems, or being mutiliated by dopamine addiction.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039517/
Meanwhile, you can read the studies showing upticks of sexual violence among children and TEENAGERS assisted by this "freedom" of pornograpy with no limits.
Understanding a Context of Risk: Pornography and Child Sexual Abuse
https://osf.io/kf4uv/download/?format=pdf
One of the most troubling patterns emerging in the research relates to the increasing number of younger children (under the ages of 12-14) involved in perpetrating child sexual assault. Clinical and legal studies are reporting greater numbers of preteen children demonstrating interpersonal problematic sexual behaviors that intrude on the physical space and security of other children (Friedrich et al., 2006; Swisher et al., 2008).
<>
Most relevant to the purpose of this paper is the role of exposure to sexually explicit media as one of the explanatory variables in child sexual abuse. A meta-analysis of 22 studies demonstrates that exposure to pornography, particularly violent pornography, is significantly associated with increased rates of sexual aggression in the general population (Wright et al., 2016). Given that the average age of first exposure to pornography is age 11 (Wolak et al.,
2006), it is important to begin to consider what role, if any, pornography may play in child sexual abuse, particular if perpetrated by children. Several studies have included sexually explicit media as a contributing factor for child-perpetrated sexual abuse.
The Association Between Exposure to Violent Pornography and Teen Dating Violence in Grade 10 High School Students
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751001/
Exposure to pornography in general has been linked with adolescent dating violence and sexual aggression, but less is known about exposure to violent pornography specifically. The current study examined the association of violent pornography exposure with different forms of teen dating violence (TDV) using baseline survey data from a sample of Grade 10 high school students who reported being in a dating relationship in the past year (n = 1694)
A Meta-Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jcom.12201
Is pornography consumption correlated with committing actual acts of sexual aggression? 22 studies from 7 different countries were analyzed. Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant. The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor.
Presenting ID is fine when verification is done by a trusted third party that doesn't retain the information and simply passes an authorization token on. It becomes a problem when the ID is parsed and PII is tracked / monetized / exploited.
Then choose your actions wisely. Is that urge to tug one out to pornographic crime scenes really so vital that you're willing to share your PII with some sketchy website? For decent guys, certainly not.
409 comments
[ 6.9 ms ] story [ 266 ms ] threadFor example, isn't this what Andrew Tate is charged with? Basically tricking girls into joining his crew using the so-called "Lover Boy" strategy and then forcing them to do porn/camgirl/onlyfans?
That is what I read anyhow: https://www.insider.com/andrew-tate-tiktok-explains-loverboy...
So what they can just add a bunch of free content that isn't porn and get away with it? Seems like a poorly thought-out law.
Or offer to serve "a stream of 'y' answers" for the users who do not want to depend on running a local "yes" utility. Count size uncompressed. Compress with a special "char number_of_repeats" algorithm. I wonder if this is enough to go past the current politician class...
Ya know, with the recent youtube crackdowns on profanity that might not be a bad move for them. They could create a new site as a youtube competitor, that also has all the pornhub content. Just gradually allow the top X amount of pornhub content through as regular content gets added to make sure the percentage stays consistent. I wonder if that would be enough to let them have apps on the play store and roku and whatnot.
Thanks :D
The owner bought a crate of enamel pins (this [1] kind of thing, but for long-forgotten social events) from some estate wholesaler, numbering maybe 15,000 distinct pins. He put it in front of the register and gave them inventory IDs as-needed when (if?) he sold one.
[1] https://i.etsystatic.com/25263485/r/il/04c3f8/3721109924/il_...
Talk about a conservative nanny state why don't you.
Nothing helps fight stupid laws more than when they get in the way of regular people doing completely unrelated things.
Or maybe you'll need to upload 5 cat pictures (to keep it <33%) to view /r/nsfw
We already require age verification when you buy drugs, buy guns, vote, buy a drink, buy porn mags from a store, buy cigars, access alcohol websites, access gambling websites, etc
But if you're a 10 year old trying to watch adults fuck each other, that's totally fine (as long as its on a screen of course, but not a window screen, and certainly not in person - a distinction that apparently makes all the difference).
Nevermind that children can't consent to the harm, just as they can't consent to drink alcohol or smoke cigars, or look at porn in a magazine.
Do you have a reason why internet porn should be the ONLY exception to requiring age verification for adult things?
Yes it's scary what companies could do with this sensitive information and we should try our best to legislate against abuse of these details. It's possible. Bars have the ability to collect thousands of people's driver's license information and we haven't seen much of a security risk there.
The fact of the matter is porn is accessible to children within seconds and for the last 30 years we have done virtually nothing to try to prevent it. We know that porn is harmful, especially to children, and we have done NOTHING to try to prevent it.
I'm okay with adults being inconvenienced if it means we can protect children. That's a standard we've had in America for generations.
[Citation needed]
Dataset needed.
"Protect the children" is the perfect cover for so many terribly invasive laws. I personally won't sacrifice my privacy to "protect children", and neither should you, because these children will eventually grow up to be adults who would presumably enjoy a right to privacy.
> The fact of the matter is porn is accessible to children within seconds and for the last 30 years we have done virtually nothing to try to prevent it. We know that porn is harmful, especially to children, and we have done NOTHING to try to prevent it.
The government isn't a parent and shouldn't act like one. Parents and schools can take advantage of any one of the many services which provide content filtering for kids. Once they're old enough the get around those blockers and access things anyway, there isn't anything you or the government will be able to do to stop them from accessing content. See: torrenting movies and TV, sharing plans for 3d printed weapons, child porn still being a massive problem despite being very illegal pretty much globally.
That said the privacy argument is still not enough for me here. Bars have the ability to store this information they just choose not to. Pornhub also has the ability to choose not to store it. The privacy concerns are worth the risks
Pornography is a dangerous terrible thing. If exposed to it as a child it will likely impact you for the rest of your life.
No- it isn't.
Tell me you are an american without telling me you are an american...
I can watch and verify that the bar doesn't store it, unless the bouncer is memorizing info. I cannot verify that PornHub doesn't store more than they say they do.
They are definitely keeping records on banned people and I wouldn’t be surprised if they stored all scanned records for easy blacklisting post-issue.
Addiction to pornography is a dangerous, terrible thing. The main thing that makes pornography dangerous to youngsters is the vacuum of cultural context around sex in America. In cultures with a healthier relationship with sex, porn competes with wholesome constructs, and takes its place as entertainment versus instruction.
I'm going to reiterate all of the other posters' requests for some evidence of this, because your whole position hinges on this one point that you are simply taking for granted.
Then I guess the government has no right to mandate the use of car seats, investigate child abuse, or regulate school lunches.
If we're talking about setting safety standards for car seats, fine. I also wouldn't really care if the mandated use of car seats was just a recommendation. My kids would still go in a car seat until they're big enough, and I don't particularly care if other people are too careless with their kids to use car seats.
> investigate child abuse
Falls under crime, and could also be perpetrated by the parents themselves. Of course some impartial entity should be doing the investigation.
> regulate school lunches
I would say the government shouldn't be regulating school lunches beyond the normal health standards applied to all food service places. School food got substantially worse in my school district after Michelle Obama's involvement. Many foods which were completely fine were not allowed anymore, yet pizza could be considered a vegetable because it had tomato sauce on it. Maybe this improved the food in some areas, but it definitely made it worse in my area.
> Any commercial entity or third party that performs the required age verification shall not retain any identifying information of the individual after access has been granted to the material.
and
> A commercial entity that is found to have knowingly retained identifying information of the individual after access has been granted to the individual shall be liable to the individual for damages resulting from retaining the identifying information, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees as ordered by the court.
but I agree this is different from being carded at a bar where you can see that they're just checking your ID and handing it back to you. In the case of a porn site, you're left to just trust that they are deleting the records.
If a grown-up really wants to watch porn, they can use a VPN. It’s not hard, no ID is needed. By adding a hurdle for children to access this material we can protect them from getting harmed by it at a young age. I think setting up a VPN is a small price to pay for if it means increasing the average age of exposure to porn.
There's even a super nice support article on how to do it all, from Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304
And if you're talking about kids using other devices which a parent doesn't have control over: well, supervise your kids, build a good relationship with them, ask what they're doing with their friends and try to make sure their parents are on the same page.
The amount of pearl-clutching like this in this thread is shocking. The entire world doesn't need to be a plush-lined playpen for children.
Back when I was a kid I had no way to access extreme porn. Porn mags were quite tame compared to modern porn sites where pretty much anything goes.
Citation needed. For every study claiming harm there are a multitude that refute the findings, nearly universally with better controls and a larger dataset.
In one case your age is verified and that's it.
In the other your information is entered into a database that _might_ contain compromising information that may be used to blackmail you (e.g. you might be gay and not wish to disclose that fact to the world).
The first worries me very litte - the second worries me a lot.
In America violence and weapons are pushed onto "the children" daily. American military make video games to teach warfare tactics to "the children" and desensitize them to gruesome acts of killing. "The children" can bring bullet proof backpacks to school, and learn how to use weapons at a young age.
But god forbid they learn about or see a sex act, which by the way quite literally is what ensures the continuation of the human species. That would be awful.
A double-negative is not a positive.
> But god forbid they learn about or see a sex act, which by the way quite literally is what ensures the continuation of the human species.
Sex, which ensures the continuation of the human species, is not the same as watching porn. No porn is needed for human-beings to know what to do.
Come on! You know this argument is bullshit.
Lol yes a standard used to violate and restrict rights. It's literally a meme: "Think of the Children!"
By your logic, we should allow the government to search our phones, computers, cars, emails, etc before buying alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs because "it might save just one child!".
Don't pretend the left wing is any better about this particular issue, though. It's the libertarian checks-and-balances constructs built into our form of our government that's resisted this sort of totalitarianism, not the principles of mercurial politicians.
Thanks for the vomit fest.
And when they’re dragged into court by the parents of some kid that got caught watching porn how are they supposed to prove they complied with the law?
In a bar they come in and randomly card people to make sure they’re not serving underage people. I’ve seen it once, just a spot check by the state liquor board or whoever. No need to store any information, if you’re in the bar be expected to be carded at any time.
There's a huge difference between flashing your ID to a bored store worker for two seconds, and giving all your personal data to a huge company to store indefinitely, and that data might once be used against you... wanna run for president? Some pornhub worker can now look at the databse and see that you watched donkey midget porn once, (or in some areas, "even worse", gay or lesbian porn) and can blackmail you with that data.
or perhaps we'll just somehow move beyond caring about that sort of stuff? if PH (for example) is hosting it, there's some level of 'legality' they want to adhere to (to stay in business). Something is patently illegal, they'll take it down. So if I'm watching something there... it may be offensive to some, but not illegal.
As a general rule, I really don't care what sort of porn or sports or movies or music a politician consumes. I already have an idea of their governing philosophy based on party affiliation, public statements, voting records. It MIGHT be a problem for people who would be exposed as hypocrites but... even that doesn't seem to have an impact any more - people just double down on party loyalty? Someone voting to remove LGBTQ protections, somehow 'caught' watching lesbian porn... Yawn. That's par for the course now.
Firstly people will just go to the sites which have under 1/3 and therefore are not in-scope.
Secondly sites will game the threshold, if they think it'll be to their financial advantage.
Thirdly underage kids will (I would imagine) work out how to bypass these filters pretty quickly, using VPNs et al.
Fourthly, people attempting to bypass these filters might fall prey to malware dressed up as VPN/bypass software.
If you're a kid and your parent don't give a damn and set you free on the internet you will be exposed to porn.
Why talk to your kids and educate them + maybe do your best to limit their exposure to things you don't agree with when you can clutch your pearls and demand ridiculous things like this?
This will definetly backfire. It's a sad state of afair that reminds me about some dumbass local politicians somewhere that tried to make pi equal 4 since using 3.14 was too hard.
Filter in the browser, at the ISP supplied router, using DNS ... None of it is perfect but also it doesn't require the privacy problems that this does.
Also I have a feeling (although it is just that) that kids aren't getting their porn via google searches. My guess would be social media/chat apps all the time.
A lot of assumptions and unquestioned biases in that little statement.
But I think the bigger point here is the debate about how much and which parenting roles we want government to take on.
I’d argue that religion is far more harmful, especially to children. Teaching magical thinking, false promises of afterlife, and hatred for outgroups can warp peoples’s whole lives.
> That’s a standard we’ve had in America for generations
That isn’t a particularly strong argument, given the other standards we’ve had for generations, like treatment of women and minorities, the inequalities of the justice and financial systems, the corruption and nepotism in our politics. The insane idea that 5 year olds play highly violent video games daily but will somehow be ruined by seeing boobs (or even fucking) is just. . . Wow.
I wouldn't say "promises of afterlife" are false, they're unknowable. Saying there's potentially an afterlife is a non-falsifiable statement; there's no test for it we could actually do to confirm or deny its existence.
Unless you've got an actual test which can definitively prove there's no afterlife, in which case I'm all ears.
You're assuming that they have not questioned and looked into things, as it turns out there is good evidence against pornography being healthy.
> I’d argue that religion is far more harmful, especially to children. Teaching magical thinking, false promises of afterlife, and hatred for outgroups can warp peoples’s whole lives.
I will offer a few points for consideration.
1. You assume, and if I was uncharitable I'd say that this is an "unquestioned bias" though I have no reason to believe that to be the case, that all religion is false, this is extremely contested. I've known atheists who would even contest this unqualified statement since they'd argue that even if they deny the ultimate reality of religious claims that the goods taught by religions and the bonds formed are positive goods which outweigh the perceived negatives.
2. I do not see, even granting that all religion is false or even evil, the case that pornography, which regularly promotes incest, abusive behavior, is the result of trafficking and rank with abuse, is worse than the typical religious expression in western countries which would promote charity and discourage evils.
Please cite it if you have it, because discussions on this topic are riddled with garbage "evidence" peddled by fringe activist organizations that lack any genuine expertise in the relevant fields.
Saying this is also outgrouping people.
I can say that people who, IMO, teach children these harmful falsehoods are doing the wrong thing. WITHOUT saying they should be treated badly as a group, or jailed, or that they have bad hygiene, or anything else.
If we can't disagree with specific behaviors, I don't know what's left.
Please provide peer-reviewed studies from non-biased research firms / organizations detailing the harm porn is causing.
When the database leaks — and it will - we know what it will look like: the AshleyMadison leaks. People died.
There are plenty of technical mechanisms that are available to parents and schools (etc) to block access to this material. None of them need involve the state.
In the end, we must treat this like any other substance that children aren’t ready for. Whether we are talking about taking cannabis, alcohol, pornography, or Tide pods, the most effective protection is parents and educators who care and teach children about potentially harmful behaviors.
The solution is not impractical, ineffective privacy violations; it's education and media literacy.
I assure you that the groups advocating for laws like this are a) motivated by religion; and b) have a long-term plan for extending restrictions like this. "Won't somebody please think of the children" is always just a cover.
But I look on Pornhub, and the idea that that might be my children's first impression of sex makes me sad. Its fine for adults, but not good for forming accurate impressions of how to connect with another human being.
My favorite book so far, by far, has been "The Hush Factor" by Karen Rayne. It has almost nothing about sex itself, its almost all about communicating with emerging adults (it would really be good for anyone who has a teenager). But its key thesis is that you are trying to help your children develop the capacity to have healthy sexual relationships.
I think the people downvoting this comment probably don't have kids this age (if you do, I'd be curious to hear your perspective). But I love my kids, and I care about all the kids that age and hope they will find good, healthy partners to sleep with eventually.
Even as someone who is quite tech savvy, it’s difficult to control access to this kind of material. This specific effort may be heavy handed, but there is a problem here that I believe is real and deserves attention.
I was exposed to hardcore pornography by friends at a young age. It's done incredible damage and has warped my perception of the opposite sex, it's taken years of active effort to combat it. I know many people in a similar situation. Having continued to attempt to quit addictive pornography the effects are real, being off of what I describe as a drug for a long period of time I can consciously identify changes in my perceptions of people. This doesn't get talked about enough, so much harm is being done.
But, I still think there are real issues here, regarding empowering parents to guide their children to appropriate resources and away from resources they view as negative (it’s not just sex, either, it’s stuff on YouTube as well). The tools just aren’t that good.
One thing I’d really like on YouTube is the ability to accept YouTube’s default recommendations, but then whitelist/blacklist additional channels at my discretion. Currently it’s YouTube’s recommendations, or curate everything yourself, making the latter really hard.
Advertisements were a big problem in our house at first. Every toy was enticing, but the fast cuts and up-tempo music made them look more fun to play with than they actually were. Have you tried asking them about motivation? Like, those YouTube channels you don't want them to watch were made deliberately, but for what purpose?
Making something forbidden doesn't make it any less misleading, you know? It's the ability to question it that takes away that power.
I dispute this assertion. I think there's much more evidence that religion is harmful.
Calling either "harmful" relies on a second (or even third) order effects concept of harm that would absolutely terrify anybody who spends more than a few minutes thinking through the consequences of adopting that concept.
Imagine a child unknowingly watching rape on film. It’s bad for an adult, what about a child?
I don’t think most people really understand how vile and harmful porn is. I also think that regardless of the downvotes, it’s good to speak up against this. The intention is not to convince someone that doesn’t have a conscience, but to inform people who’re just unaware.
Citations needed.
Personally first saw porn when friends and I found a VHS tape around Grade 5. Many of my friends seem to have had similar experiences with finding VHS, DVD or Magazines around.
What citations are needed? This is obviously materially different than you finding some vhs that you can only watch at specific times when your parents aren't home. Children have unlimited access to every single type of pornography and can watch it whenever they are left alone in their room with a computer or phone.
edit: "Citations needed" is an extremely lazy way to respond to an argument that is extremely counterproductive and almost every time it's used it's done in bad faith to derail the conversation.
Citation needed that internet porn is more harmful than a magazine or VHS.
I think it’s counterproductive to try to shield young people from everything instead of teach. The same people encouraging things like this are almost a complete overlap with those pushing to eliminate sex ed.
Maybe it is completely unrelated. But before pushing something so radical and artificial on everyone (as you say, possible 24/7 binge on porn) shouldn't the burden of proof that it is not harmful be on those pushing it?
Also, significant number of people report porn-addiction and decreased personal quality of life due to it. If this is the self-assessment of so many people, how can it be dismissed?
The track record of other types of superstimulation at a society level (e.g. sugary food, drugs) is not good.
You mean like school shootings?
How does this even work legally? If pornhub is not physically located in Lousiana but only accessible from there.. why do they even have to comply with this law? What would be consequences of not doing so? Would the only result be that Lousiana ISPs be forced to block them?
Plus they've lost a strong of these. Mostly from hedge funds that invest in visa/MasterCard turn out to be the source of morality. Like Bill Ackerman [0] already did with PornHub.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.co.za/amp/bill-ackman-pornhub-mi...
Similar to how VPN became popular due to geoblocking streaming content.
WhatsApp added encryption to avoid tricky legal positions.
Why is internet porn unique in this respect?
Our society is FULL of porn. It's everywhere. Kids are exposed to it at an average age of 10.
- The question isn't "should we require age verification for adult things" (because we already do)
- The question isn't "should we require age verification for porn" (because we already do for physical porn)
The question is: why should internet porn be the ONLY exception?
You can have a cigar and not be harmed.
You can have a drink and not be harmed.
Excess is harmful in everything, including porn.
I have nothing against any of the items in your list, this is purely for the conversation.
That is your opinion. It has no basis in reality.
>Excess is harmful in everything, including porn.
You can't have it both ways and just spit out "porn causes harm" but then say "excess of anything is bad".
Sure, excess of porn (like anything else) is bad. But porn itself is not harmful at all. If you are going to say otherwise, you have absolutely nothing to back it up. Yeah, go google some randomly study that says it is and there are a billion more to dispute that.
Plus, if you really think watching porn is "bad", well holy shit then nearly everyone in the world is at great harm because believe it or not almost everyone watches porn.
Is there any harm in children going to strip clubs?
Is there any harm in an adult jacking off in front of a child?
Why does a digital screen between the child and the scene make it any less harmful?
Because the cost of enforcement is abrogation of privacy and the creation of a new and incredibly powerful new tool for state control over technology and our communication on the internet.
It’s a very short hop from this facility, to requiring that — for example — the same cryptographic state ID be used to hold our encryption keys in escrow.
Porn viewed online is information not a physical thing - can you think of a precedent for gating access to information behind an id-wall? I can’t.
But the more important thing is - ok, if we agree that kids viewing porn is bad: does this law actually improve that in an appreciable way? I suspect not - In fact as other commenters have pointed out this will probably drive younger viewers to sketchier places that operate outside of this law and others.
Sure, but also less murder will happen, there will be enforcement to minimize it, and murder won't be normalized.
Likewise: less children will be exposed to porn, law enforcement will be empowered to crack down on shady sites, and children watching porn will no longer be normalized (like it currently is)
Because of privacy.
Why should the porn company and the government be allowed to track what I do in private?
And now to your other silly points..
Alcohol is literally damaging to a developing brain. So there is a completely valid reason that children should not be drinking.
Gun- a child with a developing brain that doesn't understand everyone can literally kill themselves or someone else.
Rent a car.. see gun- car can hurt people.
Strip club- oh no, a naked person! How terrible!
Vote- see developing brain- a 10 year old is generally not informed in the slightest or capable of making a decision that will affect other people
All the shit you list affects OTHER PEOPLE. Watching porn doesn't affect anyone else.
>Our society is FULL of porn. It's everywhere
Gee I wonder why that is... PEOPLE LIKE PORN. We are literally sexual beings- it's the only reason you are alive, because people and other animals before you have been fucking like mad for billions of years. And we like to watch people having sex.
So get off your high horse and deal with reality. You don't like porn? Then don't fucking watch it. You don't want your kids watching porn? TALK TO THEM ABOUT IT and do whatever you feel is necessary.
The big question is why privacy should be default, and if it is the default, what criteria should be applied when exceptions are given to the default.
Personally I would hope privacy should be default and exceptions to that rule should only exist if there are democratic chosen laws that overrule it. Then people can vote against or elect new leaders if a law is against the wishes of the people.
when I buy alcohol they look at my id but they don't take down my name. same with a strip club, bar
There is no record of if I'm in to whisky or vodka, whether I bought $2 wine or $75 wine. Whether I had one drink at the bar or 6 drinks. Whether I looked at blondes, brunettes, men or women.
but all of that is recorded online.
In otherwords it's different online because the situation is different. I'd prefer there be no record of if I watched straight or gay, white, black, asian, women only, men only, group, single, or couples, etc....
> If pornhub is not physically located in Lousiana but only accessible from there.. why do they even have to comply with this law?
I'm not sure this is how the question of the applicability of a particular state's laws to website is determined.
AFAIK, a website is considered to be operating in a state if it is directed towards users in that state. For example, if a website targets users in California, it would be considered to be operating in California, even if the website's servers are located in a different state.
More generally, websites need to abide by laws of the states in which they operate, i.e. complying with any relevant regulations and laws related to e.g. sale of goods/services, advertising, privacy, and other consumer protections.
Sometimes it's difficult or impossible to fully comply with the laws of every state in which it operates, due to differences between state laws.
So, I'm sure the way this works is more complex than I'm presenting it, but I do know that physical location is not dispositive.
...also owned by MindGeek.
No fapper in their right mind is submitting their ID to pornhub to have a wank.
This will just drive users to smaller, shadier sites that don’t comply with local regulations.
These sites will contain more harmful or exploitative content, and their increased traffic will incentivize and facilitate a continued cycle of exploitation and abuse.
B. Criminally investigate noncompliance.
Edit 1:
> My views would've been considered normal, rational, and reasonable for almost everyone but the latest generation of porn addicts.
There's been pornography in some way, shape or form as long as there's been media to record it. There's been videos since the invention of film - prudes did their best to shut it down. Want to expand on what your "views" are? Because the ones you've expressed so far have been radical as far back as I'm aware of.
> If you want me to consider your opinion valid, I challenge you to take 1 year without viewing it, and then reconsider.
This seems very on brand to try to force others to take your stance just to engage with you.
Edit 2:
My last response on this as I abhor this "edit to respond" format.
I can't read the article, it's behind a paywall, but your initial argument:
> I’m going to be honest and say that I believe pornography is a level of sexual exploitation that no person, not even the actors involved, should be considered capable of legally consenting to partake in.
Does not in any way, shape, or form align with this argument:
> I believe, at this point, that pornography is actually increasing the subjection of women and increasing misogyny towards them, and there are actually many feminists who agree with me on this view.
In fact that first seems to be infantilizing the performers by literally saying that the women and men taking part aren't capable of making their own decisions. It's absurd that a woman can't be considered capable of consent to being photographed nude, and it's ridiculous to hide that stance behind "porn is misogyny".
In practice, as this applies to pornography, it's not treated as obscene in most cases, as pornography is very popular and widely consumed, so obviously the average person isn't offended by it.
(I say "most cases", because this is what leaves open the door to banning specific pornography. E.g. child porn, snuff porn, etc. Things that are shocking to the average person.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
What, exactly, is wrong with boobs? Porn itself? What part of it is exploitative for the viewer? For the consenting and paid actor?
Why?
Exploitation by whom?
Football players (concussions), kitchen refinishers (silicosis), crab boat workers (death) - they all trade deep risks of physical harm to their bodies for paycheques.
If you don’t, what is it about porn that makes it different? Is it possible your views about sex work have less to do with protecting workers from exploitation and more about passing moral judgement on sex work itself?
Personally, I categorize porn as a drug (like caffeine or alcohol), and I treat it with the same suspicion I treat other drugs in my life: by using a healthy dose of suspicion. Things that can mess with me physiologically deserve deep scrutiny. And, obviously, social morays will tend toward normalizing those things as there is a lot of money in them, and people are very protective of their drugs.
That being said, drugs affect everyone differently, so it’s vitally important to know your own tolerances and capabilities when using one. And, unless they alter the reasoning of users such that they are substantially more likely to commit a crime, I don’t think there’s a strong case for the drug’s illegality or restriction.
That's a pretty dang high bar. This is like me saying "if you don't think plain oatmeal is the best breakfast, try eating it every day for a year before I'll consider your opinion valid."
Like, totally fine to disagree with people here, but if your argument is that people need to spend a couple percent of their remaining life following your rules before you'll consider their argument, then don't be surprised when people entirely ignore whether you think their arguments are valid.
Eventually people listened to weed users about weed legalization, and the sky did not fall in.
> that pornography is actually increasing the subjection of women and increasing misogyny towards them
I think in this case that a lot of non-nude but overtly misogynist content of the Andrew Tate variety should be banned instead?
Looking at the other replies, it occurs to me that the debate is often framed solely as a moral issue, but actually, we have considerable evidence of harm, several decades worth. Unfortunately it's difficult to get people to even consider the latter, when they want to focus solely on making their arguments for the former.
There is very little difference in addictive triggers. All of them trigger the reward center in the brain in a very similar ways. Any time they get triggered there is a associated risk of affecting peoples behavior towards more triggering. We could put people into a brain scanner and identify what specific triggers that person reward center, and then ask them to abstain from that trigger for 1 year. The outcome would be very predictable. It would be like asking a cocaine user to abstain, but individualized to each person based on what trigger their reward center. No one is immune, through individuals will have different amount of struggle to ignore their own reward center.
I also have a standing challenge to anyone who want to argue that the profession should be illegal. Write a generic law that makes it illegal but which does not mention the word sex or the concept of it. As an example: It should illegal to consent to work unless a person would be willing to do it without being paid, as otherwise it is exploitation of that person need for money.
Sex is bad and addictive. If you want me to consider your opinion valid, I challenge you to take 1 year without doing it, and then reconsider
In short, pornography has always followed the existing means of media production and distribution.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turin_Erotic_Papyrus
By analogy, sweet fruits and honey have been around and universally enjoyed since the dawn of time.
Yet, guzzling down gallons of high-fructose-corn-syrup each day is relatively new and has made half of the population obese.
Swapping magazines and VHS tapes.
It's not a new thing.
Caused some overly-inflated expectations in the bedroom sure. Destroyed society? Nah
Kids can access extreme porn with a few clicks easily. Something is definitely wrongh here.
Nobody invited you to an endless all-you-can-watch telethon of fresh content. That's where we are today.
Just consider the original prohibition, how it bolstered organized crime, and the kind of abuses likely to occur when the prohibited good is pornography instead of alcohol.
It's fine to hate porn but it is definitely abusive to all genders not just women and certainly not just straight women.
When you try to argue otherwise, you hurt your own cause. The reasoning is that now you are up against multiple differing opinions on multiple topics. Porn prohibition is incredibly unpopular and who knows what consequences it may incur. Perhaps porn is greatly limiting rape cases? A brief internet search provided plenty of evidence in favor of "who knows?"
When I was a kid I didn't have access to extreme porn. Porn magazines/VHS tapes weren't as extreme as modern porn sites.
How come so? People literally pay for porn content with their credit cards which is a form of identification too. I don't see a problem with showing your id for accessing quality content.
I can get a prepaid CC attached to any address I want using cash at a cameraless location. Or I can alter my gait and put on a mask and ignore cameras.
When used(value of $2 or less) the card makes for a superb trial abuse method for things like Netflix.
I'm more concerned with the precedent that this sets. Given the "interstate" nature of online commerce, I would think that this law is not enforceable, but given the current makeup of SCOTUS, it might stand for the next 50-100 years. Once a ruling goes through allowing for this type of regulations, I would expect a patchwork of laws to effectively de-anonymize the entire internet.
Since VPNs can be used to ignore these regulations, the next step is to write laws that regulate VPNs. Thus, the government will have a one-stop-shop for finding all of the "bad" things a person is doing. Since payments for like 99.9% of users will be easily traceable to an individual, this will turn VPNs into a honeypot of sorts. Sure, hardened criminals can find ways around this, but I don't think small-town police are too concerned with going after criminals that are out of their league, this is more about projecting power over the locals.
Why?
Because my friend likes theirs. (Mentally: Because it has a built-in vpn.)
They can share accounts with their friends, use their parents credit cards, get their own debit cards (I had one a 14), or even using a pre-paid CC (I've not tried it, but I think it works). It's so easy to get access to a VPN as a minor.
Also, the biggest selling point of VPNs is the ability to watch streaming services in other countries. So it's not a hard sell to parents.
What legal distinction do you draw to separate enforceability of this law from any other law regarding a business providing a service in a different jurisdiction than headquartered?
>I'm more concerned with the precedent that this sets.
International Shoe was decided decades before the internet was invented. I don't really see the novelty of this scenario when the website in question offers a paid subscription service to customers in Louisiana.
No, you sound like you took 1 + 1 and arrived at 2.
That is precisely what will happen. It will also undoubtedly increase piracy.
I don't buy that anyone is this stupid. They must have a (bad)poll telling them this is the best action to maintain power.
Anyone who uploads something illegal (childporn, non-fantasy rape videos, or stolen nudes) must be held accountable. And if they can't find who is accountable, then Pornhub should be accountable.
The other thing they will not do, is have a rating system for porn. Extreme porn should not be promoted to the front page. I'm not talking about when the UK considered facesitting to be "extreme". It could be determined by a neutral panel or whatnot. Then uploaders can set a rating, users can suggest a different rating, and users can change their rating filter. That way, teens exploring porn don't go from a casual gonzo, to something really extreme, in just a few clicks. It's better UX too, because I've talked about this with people, and many do watch porn, but they hate stumbling on something they consider gross (sorry to generalize, but women in particular tend to be more sensitive, and somewhat understandably since it's usually gross towards women).
Instead, PornHub repeatedly argue that everyone has their kinks. They do, but it's not a valid excuse for doing nothing.
Not an unreasonable suggestion, but definitely going to run into unreasonable people who want everything to be rated "bad" (as you've seen with the UK nonsense)
Here they are:
https://legiscan.com/LA/sponsors/HB142/2022
"Oh, we just _have_ to have this system in place that makes you identify, we don't collect your data _right now_ but now that we know who you are anyway and you're no longer anonymous - why not sign up to our subscription service?"
Is making the website more work to use for free users which makes them stay around less and thus convert (later) less bad or is the extra data worth it?
Even PornHub benefits from it, they benefit from appearing to not want your data.
Realistically there's not much to be had by obtaining information on PH's customers. "Hey! This guy... watches porn! Can you believe it!?" Reminds me of this gif [1]. I guess if someone is a hardcore anti-porn Mormon or something, then it might be leverage. But for the vast majority of people, I doubt consumption of adult media is a big reputation hit.
1. https://media.tenor.com/zvWORVx2xzcAAAAC/jurassic-park-no-on...
It'll be a tough wank...
https://youtu.be/Nrty2XITqTE
Instead - why not invest that money/time in making education about a healthy sexual life available and to people?
In general, approaches that are "let's prevent minors from doing X by telling them not to while still making it easy to do anyway" are bad, make kids feel talked down to and push them to understanding sexuality through porn which is what they're trying to avoid.
Gives private parties (including parents) ability to sue for damages, versus criminal penalties. Not sure how it plays with interstate commerce clause, etc.
Also gives similar rights to sue if ID information is retained or used for anything beyond confirming age.
The distinct difference being that he targeted those families with his comments to begin with by saying they were actors, etc.
If this law only allows those who actually can argue that they suffered damages (i.e. minors or their parents) to sue, than it's not really much different than other civil tort laws.
We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
If there was a guy on your block constantly trying to lure children into his house to show them porn, or even a guy on your block who was flashing himself at your children, you would find that objectionable (I hope). But it's okay for pornhub to do this because it's online? Why?
I think this is good. I know that's probably a dissenting opinion here.
My belief is we've slowly let parents get away with not actually parenting and moved that job over to the government and other institutions.
There's many more ways to tackle this that may be more effective and actually seek to educate. How about start with some educational content on why porn is bad for young minds and how to talk to your child about it in a mature way?
It's like nobody wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room and have a civil and mature discussion about it with their children because it's awkward or uncomfortable.
Cause if you don't, then you're going to look quite silly with those arguments.
If you want to protect children, you could perhaps have a trusted third party token broker which would neither reveal to the sites who owns the token, nor the site to the broker what content is accessed.
Because the US is mostly addicted to porn. There was one study that found that 91.5% of men had reported using porn in the past month. It's bleak.
Just like how "using alcohol in the past month" != "alcoholic".
See how ridiculous that sounds?
See how ridiculous debating a subjective term like "addiction" is? Would you like to debate what "beauty" means next?
That is all that is saying, that they used it once. That's... not a lot. So someone has wanked once in the last month. That's.... ok? (Also love the continued sexism that woman don't have a sex drive and we just conveniently ignore them with these statistics)
FFS we are sexual creatures. Most species are. Sex is perfectly natural and we really need to remove this stigma around it.
This is the weirdest anecdote.
But it feels a little bit strange to me that people are on board with the idea that the government should be protecting me from buying antibiotics without getting themselves involved, but they don't think they should be protecting my children from being sexually harassed on the internet by pornographers.
If that's the modality we are going to switch to, where it becomes my responsibility to protect myself and my family from bad actors then fine. I accept the compromise. Please direct me to the place I can buy whatever medications I want without the government knowing or caring, and the place where I can attach unregulated firearms to my unregistered drones to hunt bears on my property.
But again it seems pretty odd to me that there is nobody up in arms about the fact that my kid needs to show ID and get my permission to get antibiotics, but you guys are all up in arms because he, a 12 year old, can't go online and be monetized into watching incest gangbang porn so that mindgeek can make a few cents off of ads for escort services and dick pills.
Compared to a bored store clerk eyeballing your ID in person, digital, cryptographically enforced, centralized state identity verification on the internet is a powerful new tool for state censorship and control.
The same “save the children” imperative could have been achieved by requiring that porn sites set a header designating themselves as porn, and letting the private market voluntarily add support to their parental controls for filtering that content.
Nothing about this problem requires abrogating both privacy rights and parental responsibility.
For something to be harassment it has to be unwanted.
It's bad because it creates an enormous privacy concern for adults who are forced to identify themselves in a traceable way when for consuming legal, but often very socially taboo content. We might say that these sites should never store the information, but the reality is that it's such a honeypot of potential blackmail that no one should trust it not to be stored.
> We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
If there ends up being a privacy risk to consuming online porn, due to having to hand your personal details over to a pornographer to access it, and you choose of your own volition to do this anyway, then really it's your own fault.
1. This law won't prevent anyone with any amount of motivation from watching porn
2. This law will create an avenue for personal details to be compromised, certainly with association to "porn" in general and possibly to actual content
3. This is coming from Louisiana which would rather legislate an issue than educate children on how to handle these issues properly
1: Gun laws don't prevent bad guys from buying guns anyway.
2: Gun laws create an avenue for personal details to be compromised with association to "guns".
3: Guns laws typically come from Californians, who instead of trying to deal with the people dying in the street of a fentanyl overdose, busy themselves trying to annoy hobbyists in Texas with their stupid lack of understanding about how firearms are made or used.
The frustration I have is that people seem upset at the idea of the the state working to make it harder for people to abuse kids online, and but happy about the idea of the state making it harder for me to protect my family from violent people in real life.
If this was true, the United States wouldn’t be an enormous outlier in gun violence compared to countries which have them. We have a subtly different problem: borderless gun laws don’t work when you can bypass them with a single day or less worth effort.
There’s a related problem: the constant effort devoted to removing restrictions makes it easier for everyone involved in that process up to the person actually committing the crime. In Europe simple possession is a crime so you see far fewer people selling to criminals.
How much media in our society is "not for children" but are still easily accessed by children? And how much of that happens because parents aren't paying attention?
Porn is just an easy target, especially in America.
I'm not saying we should do nothing, but I don't think this is effective action.
It's actually impossible to effectively manage this with laws and centralized legislation (I would argue this is performative more than anything else), and the more of this we have, the more of a false sense of security you give parents, and the less responsibility they feel they need to have in guiding and supporting their children and helping them learn the reality of the world around them.
It's a very bad take for you to assume that the opposition is from people who want children to watch porn.
Protecting children is primarily parents' responsibility, not everyone else's. It's okay if it doesn't cost anything (like putting tricky caps on bottles of hazardous things), but when there's a clash (privacy vs protecting children), it's better to land on the side of freedom and personal responsibility.
Hell, you probably shouldn't be giving kids access to the internet anyway. Tik Tok might be just as damaging as Pornhub for them.
Edit: in other words, if you're worried about your child rolling off the bed you should buy a crib. Government shouldn't be mandating that all beds need to be cribs, in case children might sleep in them.
drugs, guns, voting, strip clubs, gambling websites, buying alcohol, buying cigarettes, renting a car, or even buying porn mags?
Why is internet porn the only exception?
It's obviously harmful: we don't let kids go to strip clubs or invite them to view irl orgies for this reason. They can't even buy physical porn or view porn in stores without age verification. What about it being digital makes it ok?
Internet porn is the exception because of privacy reasons. For some of those examples they don't store records (voting, buying alcohol, etc), and in the case where they do (gambling websites, renting) that's not something that's a huge privacy concern.
It's like the difference between having security cameras in a lobby vs a bathroom stall. They would both prevent crimes, but the invasion of privacy isn't worth it.
It's nothing at all like using a bathroom stall, an activity that everyone does, because we all need to defecate as part of our bodily functions, and spaces to do this in. In the hypothetical situation of installing cameras in stalls, the privacy impact affects essentially everyone.
Conversely, if the cost of electing to watch online pornography is that you have to share your personal data with the pornographers, then that is a choice you have made, and it's your responsibility to deal with any privacy consequences. If you don't like it, don't do it.
Instead of arguing for your right to view pornography anonymously, you may want to examine the harms it causes, and decide whether this is something you're comfortable being complicit in: https://nordicmodelnow.org/2022/08/13/pornography-as-crime-s...
You have to submit a fraction of this same info to open a brokerage account. A solution exists and it's worth pursuing.
Nobody's saying kids should be watching porn. In a perfect world, this is a good law. We live in reality, though; data breaches happen routinely, and governments can do unethical, harmful, legal things. You should always examine laws in how they can be enforced in the worst way, and what the next logical step might be for legislators with ill intent towards any kind of minority group.
> We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?
No country in the world has the identification infrastructure to implement this in a rights-neutral way, as far as I know. To do it, your ID would have to be a sort-of rolling public/private key pair that others can use to verify information with, such as DOB and driving eligibility. We would then have to track what entities are querying your ID and what info they got so that we can audit who's getting our Id info and make sure they have the appropriate access.
Because it's invasive, ripe for abuse, and contrary to our basic values as a nation.
I'm not sure this follows. For people that really care a lot about both issues, perhaps.
For me, I care much more about privacy and preventing government overreach than making porn harder to access.
As such, I'm not going to be the one trying to figure out how to accomplish this without these effects. I'm going to focus on saying "Don't introduce those effects, regardless of your motivations."
Nope. I think it's perfectly fine to raise issues and tell someone to go off and fix their proposal without my assistance.
It's not like there's some time sensitive pressure that I help collaborate to get some minimal solution in place as fast as possible. Kids have been looking at internet porn for the last 25 years and this law won't meaningfully curb that, regardless of how perfect age verification tech ever gets.
Or I don't know, let parents parent without involving government in regulating indulgences.
Porn is not objectively bad.
Take from that what you will.
I can say that it was probably a lot less bad to see Phoebe Cates topless than Clint Eastwood killing a bunch of people when I was a kid.
When you think of sex, do you think of those innocent portrayals in movies where people save themselves until marriage and then whenever they have sex it is the most gentle (and boring) experience where they slowly move until they are done and then have a magical baby?
Yeah, that's not natural. That is how religions have wanted you to think about sex because they barely even approve of it except to create a baby.
If anything most porn is more realistic of our animalistic wants than the bs we have been fed on tv.
So please, tell me what you mean by "porn" doesn't represent sex. Because I have to say, for all the porn I have watched my wife and I have enjoyed most of it.
Let's try this again. Sex is supposed to be raw and wild. Not what religious people want to push as pure and innocent.
So my question to you again- what about "porn" is not natural sex? Even though the question is kind of stupid in itself because porn means a lot of things. But you are the one that said it.
So please explain my pure friend.
Wait.. this is your whole point? Your argument is based on... that?
"extremely degrading" is completely arbitrary- and many people enjoy being degraded or to degregate someone to some degree during sex. That's literally why people watch it. But I guess that's just too real of a concept for you to grasp. As I said in my other post, the scenes during a romance movie where the girl lays on her back and everyone has gentle boring sex is NOT reality. Porn is closer to reality than that.
And you do realize that almost EVERY type of every media you see/read is exaggerated?
Ever watch a romance movie before? Ever read a romance novel? That's not how shit works in real life. Should we ban that as well because teenage girls are going to watch it and think that's how things work?
Which is why all you need to do is TALK with your children openly about sex and just put a few things in the right context. Just like you should talk to them about anything (violence in movies, romance in movies) and put it in the right context.
It's ridiculous how afraid of sex you are. Grow up and stop trying to limit people with your prudishness.
The state can't be a substitute for good parenting.
Candy is more destructive physically. It's everywhere. No one parent has the power to stop it, so it makes sense for the state to do so.
There are a billion other porn sites, and even I would argue watching all the thirst traps on TikTok or Instagram are way more "harmful" than straight out porn.
So this will do absolutely nothing except allow sites like Pornhub to literally know the exact person viewing what videos now. Yeah, that's just wonderful.
It's because ADULTS have to literally prove their identity to watch porn because of your "protect the children" campaign. And that means both the porn site and the state can DIRECTLY track exactly what you are doing.
And also.. what exactly are you "protecting" kids from... seeing sex? The most natural things human do? Fucking ludicrous.
>ruin a kid’s innocence
The word you are looking for is "ignorance".
Meanwhile, you can read the studies showing upticks of sexual violence among children and TEENAGERS assisted by this "freedom" of pornograpy with no limits.
Understanding a Context of Risk: Pornography and Child Sexual Abuse https://osf.io/kf4uv/download/?format=pdf One of the most troubling patterns emerging in the research relates to the increasing number of younger children (under the ages of 12-14) involved in perpetrating child sexual assault. Clinical and legal studies are reporting greater numbers of preteen children demonstrating interpersonal problematic sexual behaviors that intrude on the physical space and security of other children (Friedrich et al., 2006; Swisher et al., 2008).
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Most relevant to the purpose of this paper is the role of exposure to sexually explicit media as one of the explanatory variables in child sexual abuse. A meta-analysis of 22 studies demonstrates that exposure to pornography, particularly violent pornography, is significantly associated with increased rates of sexual aggression in the general population (Wright et al., 2016). Given that the average age of first exposure to pornography is age 11 (Wolak et al., 2006), it is important to begin to consider what role, if any, pornography may play in child sexual abuse, particular if perpetrated by children. Several studies have included sexually explicit media as a contributing factor for child-perpetrated sexual abuse.
The Association Between Exposure to Violent Pornography and Teen Dating Violence in Grade 10 High School Students https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751001/ Exposure to pornography in general has been linked with adolescent dating violence and sexual aggression, but less is known about exposure to violent pornography specifically. The current study examined the association of violent pornography exposure with different forms of teen dating violence (TDV) using baseline survey data from a sample of Grade 10 high school students who reported being in a dating relationship in the past year (n = 1694)
A Meta-Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jcom.12201 Is pornography consumption correlated with committing actual acts of sexual aggression? 22 studies from 7 different countries were analyzed. Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant. The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor.