And we begin another chapter in the assault on access to information combined with morality laws. Exactly what we need as we march towards converting towards a Christian Fundamentalist Autocracy....
And we begin another chapter in the assault on access to information combined with morality laws. Exactly what we need as we march towards converting towards a Christian Fundamentalist Autocracy.
I fully expect these 'age verification laws' to be used to block sites wholesale that have little to do with porn.
It’ll be anything that LGBT content could conceivably be hosted on. So things like Tumblr and Archive of their Own will be targeted, and the social media companies will have pressure put on their...
It’ll be anything that LGBT content could conceivably be hosted on. So things like Tumblr and Archive of their Own will be targeted, and the social media companies will have pressure put on their moderation/trust-and-safety policies to police the content. The internet as we know it might not survive the expansion of this logic frankly. More “normie” activity will be driven underground to the dark web, which means comparatively “innocent” kinds of things will be much closer to not-so-innocent sorts of things, which can include solicitation and scams but also malware.
A lot of people can follow step-by-step guides to get out of their walled gardens but, if they needed a step-by-step guide they likely do not have the foundational technical skills to be able to survive outside the walled garden on their own. It dramatically opens up their risk profile as well as that of everyone they interact with (if you get emails from them, if you’re the family tech support line, etc.)
Of course, that makes sense. Florida has basically been the test case for that, in schools anyway. It's always so politically convenient to have an internal enemy you can dehumanize and work your...
Of course, that makes sense. Florida has basically been the test case for that, in schools anyway. It's always so politically convenient to have an internal enemy you can dehumanize and work your way to some 'final solution' for. The conflict it produces serves as such an excellent diversion from other things.
Yep, that's the modus operandi of the concerted school library book bans that have been happening over the past few years: anything LGBT is pornographic and is challenged. At least one did the...
Yep, that's the modus operandi of the concerted school library book bans that have been happening over the past few years: anything LGBT is pornographic and is challenged.
At least one did the same with Maus. And we all know there's only one reason someone would want to ban Maus: because they're Nazi fuckers who want to suppress the history of what the Nazis did.
I would not discount just straight up stupidity and trying to shelter their kids from ugly things, which is relatively common as well. I think that's more probable than them being straight up nazis.
And we all know there's only one reason someone would want to ban Maus: because they're Nazi fuckers who want to suppress the history of what the Nazis did.
I would not discount just straight up stupidity and trying to shelter their kids from ugly things, which is relatively common as well. I think that's more probable than them being straight up nazis.
That would not surprise me. If you want to run a repressive regime, blocking and controlling information access is a must. Can't have the masses able to educate themselves or communicate privately...
That would not surprise me. If you want to run a repressive regime, blocking and controlling information access is a must. Can't have the masses able to educate themselves or communicate privately with one another.
I feel a bit weirded out how people are failing to see the positive of this. I mean, have you been to porn sites? Children should not have unlimited access to that material. Even if this doesn't...
I feel a bit weirded out how people are failing to see the positive of this. I mean, have you been to porn sites? Children should not have unlimited access to that material. Even if this doesn't block the most technically proficient kids from doing so, it's still a net positive.
"Harmful to Minors" is so vague that it can be applied to anything. OK, sure, porn is "harmful to minors," I guess. How about social media? Seems like there's some consensus to social media being...
Exemplary
Each state’s legislation has unique provisions, but the overarching principle remains similar: websites with material deemed "harmful to minors" must verify users’ ages through approved technology or databases.
Kansas, for instance, enacted a law effective July 1 mandating websites where at least 25% of content is classified as "harmful to minors" implement age verification. Proponents argue these measures protect children. Florida’s HB3 requires 33.3%.
"Harmful to Minors" is so vague that it can be applied to anything. OK, sure, porn is "harmful to minors," I guess. How about social media? Seems like there's some consensus to social media being harmful to kids. So now Bluesky and Mastodon need ID checks. How about music? Remember those "Parental Discretion is Advised" labels on CDs back in the 90s and 00s? Clearly some people think some music, like rap and rock, is harmful to kids. So now Spotify is required to check my ID. Others have mentioned games. Now Steam or an MMO needs to see my ID. Others have mentioned LGBT content. Books bans in schools and libraries show that some think it's harmful. Does Tildes need to check my ID before posting in ~LGBT? How about straight up health-class-style sexual education content from a site like the CDC? Now I need a government ID to view the CDC's website?
Do you see how crazy this gets? And the potential "chilling effects" that will come to be? Will I be as open and honest as I am here, behind a screenname, knowing that my real identity is attached to this account? Maybe, maybe not.
Which gets to my next point: privacy and tracking. OK, so I wanna go rub one out via Pornhub. I'm feeling spicy tonight: let's look up interracial gay furry femboy BBC with "Bad Dragons." I'm not saying that that category of porn is bad or wrong, mostly using it for "shock value," but certainly some people think anything but straight, missionary-style sex to procreate -- and only between the same race -- is the only "acceptable" form of sex. Anyway, now Pornhub knows my real name, what I look like, and what apparently gets me off.
Is Pornhub storing this information somewhere? Even if they say they aren't? Is it secure? Look how many data breaches there are every year and it's only getting worse. Hell, forget breaches. Can a government request or subpoena this information? And what will they do with it afterwards?
Now my real identity is potentially tied to all these things. And all it takes is someone, some group to declare that what I'm doing -- like listening to certain types of music or discussing certain topics online -- is immoral. Maybe even illegal. Then take that information and announce it to the world.
Even if the goal here is to be lauded -- And frankly, I'm not sure it is; others have said why quite well -- the downstream effects are 10x worse than any benefit that kids may receive.
If "think of the children" is not a valid reason to prohibit things, then we should stop denying alcohol and drug sales to them. They already do know your identity and profile in the current...
If "think of the children" is not a valid reason to prohibit things, then we should stop denying alcohol and drug sales to them.
Anyway, now Pornhub knows my real name, what I look like, and what apparently gets me off.
They already do know your identity and profile in the current system unless you go to great lengths to hide your digital footprint. The amount of additional data they get by knowing your real identity is almost completely inconsequential.
"Think of the children" and " these substances are particularly unsafe for people whose brains are not fully developed and due to the physical and/or addictive risks we have an age minimum." are...
"Think of the children" and " these substances are particularly unsafe for people whose brains are not fully developed and due to the physical and/or addictive risks we have an age minimum." are two different things.
The language these laws are using is intentionally brosd. The Kansas law doesn't "prevent access to pornography" or even "obscene materials" it's "harmful to minors."
The options here are not enact these laws or give 4 year olds a Jack and Coke with their heroin and personalized Pornhub login.
Oh shit you're, right, I guess we need to bring out all the left wing pedophiles to start molesting the children since we're arguing against the best welfare of children. Ignoring the fact that...
Oh shit you're, right, I guess we need to bring out all the left wing pedophiles to start molesting the children since we're arguing against the best welfare of children.
Ignoring the fact that substance prohibition is a very different thing from content censorship, I'm kind of sick of the argument of hiding things from children because you're worried they might not be mature enough to fully comprehend the nuance of the real world.
Kids are smarter than people give them credit for, and educating them on the real world is far more important than pretending it just doesn't exist. Healthy, honest discussions about what they encounter is how we raise the next generation to engage with the world they're going to inherit.
I'm not saying five year olds need to watch porn, but I'm not gonna be annoyed if they start looking up girls kissing on YouTube. It's natural, and we can just substitute paranoia with parenting.
Where does it end? Why is it porn that needs age verification? Why not also the news that can discuss rape/murders/etc? Why not games/movies which can also have the same themes? Why is it okay for...
Where does it end? Why is it porn that needs age verification? Why not also the news that can discuss rape/murders/etc? Why not games/movies which can also have the same themes? Why is it okay for some things to assume parents/guardians will control the content intake while other things need your driver license?
Plenty of us grew up with access to porn, whether it was through a VHS you snuck from your parents room or the playboy sitting in the bathroom. And plenty of those people grew up to be fine adults. Those who get singled out for being extremist in some way most likely would've been with or without the moderation. We should be having better education around the topics and not continually blocking access to everything.
Somewhere around where it always has? There's a variation on what's considered acceptable for children by culture, but at the end of the day porn has, usually, been restricted to adults or at...
Where does it end?
Somewhere around where it always has? There's a variation on what's considered acceptable for children by culture, but at the end of the day porn has, usually, been restricted to adults or at least teens.
Yes these laws are used to control expression, speech, and anonymity, but so are many others. The same kind people who seem to be against these laws appear to all be in favor of them when it's for controlling other forms of speech/expression they don't like, say in the name of diversity or safety.
Personally I'm against basically all of this, but I do recognize that there exists a reasonable desire to limit what children are exposed to, and possibly some even decent research to back that up.
Are they? Do you have an example of that? I haven't seen anyone call for age verification requirements for Stormfront.
The same kind people who seem to be against these laws appear to all be in favor of them when it's for controlling other forms of speech/expression they don't like, say in the name of diversity or safety.
Are they? Do you have an example of that? I haven't seen anyone call for age verification requirements for Stormfront.
Not really sure if you're misunderstanding my meaning or i'm misunderstanding yours, but I don't feel stormfront is a relevant example. That said, I do believe there have been plenty of calls to...
Not really sure if you're misunderstanding my meaning or i'm misunderstanding yours, but I don't feel stormfront is a relevant example.
That said, I do believe there have been plenty of calls to outright get rid of stormfront, which strikes me as one step beyond age verification.
If Stormfront is not a relevant example then I think that I'm misunderstanding yours. Could you clarify? Maybe give some examples that you do think are relevant? While I think calls to shut down...
If Stormfront is not a relevant example then I think that I'm misunderstanding yours. Could you clarify? Maybe give some examples that you do think are relevant?
While I think calls to shut down platforms may come from the same places and impulses as calls to document or restrict access, but they are still fundamentally different things that I believe should be considered separately. A platform where dangerous and illegal things are happening might need to be shut down, but many of the users on it are probably not participating in those dangerous and illegal things. They might not even be aware of them. Shutting down the platform may disrupt those dangerous and illegal activities, but (usually) isn't too damaging for any of the users. Documenting access to the site doesn't disrupt the unwanted behavior, and it does include innocent users in the people that it affects or puts at risk.
I think you covered it in your response? Either you think stormfront is a different level of entity (dangerous/illegal material) or you think its the same (they're both supporting...
I think you covered it in your response?
Either you think stormfront is a different level of entity (dangerous/illegal material) or you think its the same (they're both supporting dangerous/illegal material), which doesn't seem to be the case?
This won't accomplish the goal of keeping kids away from porn, it's easy to circumvent. Kids are good at getting around restrictions and with internet communication they can share strategies...
This won't accomplish the goal of keeping kids away from porn, it's easy to circumvent. Kids are good at getting around restrictions and with internet communication they can share strategies quickly and easily.
I agree that it's not ideal for kids to have easy access to porn, but we're decades into that reality and there hasn't been any kind of uptick in issues with sexuality that I'm aware of. If anything the trends seem to be going in the opposite direction. Younger generations want less sex in their entertainment.
These laws are about imposing morality not protecting kids. I just hope the pendulum swings back in these states before they start "protecting" kids from queer people and "wokeness".
On the contrary, sexual assaults are down amongst all ages. But younger people are dating even less as well. I don't know how much of an influence porn has on these, but the sniff test of "porn...
there hasn't been any kind of uptick in issues with sexuality that I'm aware of
On the contrary, sexual assaults are down amongst all ages. But younger people are dating even less as well. I don't know how much of an influence porn has on these, but the sniff test of "porn turns teens into sexual deviants" doesn't pass at all.
Decrease in sexual abuse: https://www.unh.edu/ccrc/resource/decline-sexual-abuse-cases Decrease in sexual assault in the military (despite steady increase in female soldiers)...
The truth is there really isn't an authorative source to look at, and the numbers can say different things depending on how you do the math and what you focus on. Just wanted to point out that there are good reasons to believe sexual violence is decreasing. And why wouldn't it be? The human race in general has become less tolerant of sexual violence both legally and culturally.
I see. Perhaps my statistics are outdated or I over generalized them. It might have been something more specific like domestic violence or child abuse that had such decrease. Rather than sexual...
I see. Perhaps my statistics are outdated or I over generalized them. It might have been something more specific like domestic violence or child abuse that had such decrease. Rather than sexual violence as a whole.
Too bad statista paywalls their supposed sources, and I've seen very questionable stats on statista for other subject matters. Those are less serious things but I was more knowledgeable about them...
Too bad statista paywalls their supposed sources, and I've seen very questionable stats on statista for other subject matters. Those are less serious things but I was more knowledgeable about them and knew there to be stats that were incorrect or misrepresented. In any case, I question the accuracy of statista as a general rule because they frequently show up in search results but it almost feels like they automate generation of pages without proper consideration for what stats are presented or how the data was acquired in order to appear on search results for those inquiries. I could be wrong, but that's just my impression.
In any case, those are also flat numbers not accounting for population growth, and while the original statement didn't specify based on percentage of population or such, that would be the fairer way to assess the matter.
Wikipedia has a page with some sources and graphs to perhaps more easily see trends over time and these are not just flat numbers but based on rates per a defined amount of the population. As we all know with Wikipedia, it's not really to be taken as gospel and is more of a jumping off point, where I see some of the information referenced in there is sourced from the DOJ. A lot of the information on that page is not updated to the last decade or so from what I saw, so there's also that, but prior to that it is supposedly the case that rapes were declining.
However useless Google search was, which I'm sure was partly my fault for not using the best search terms, I managed to use one of my limited 100 trial searches on Kagi to find the DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics. The other problem with this is how sexual assaults have been defined over time and what methodology is used to track and classify this data.
This shows yearly reports of criminal victimization surveys and all the details of how they come up with that and broken down by different types of crimes.
This shows some quick graphics over time, which shows overall violent crime is supposedly down, and then there is a graphic on sexual assault which isn't as clear a picture depending on what time frames you are comparing. If you go back far enough, it's definitely down, but depends on how far back you go. I also don't know if the methodology changed at points between there or how that is conveyed in the graphics.
If you want an example of what is detailed in the full yearly reports, here's a link to one for 2023, but you can find the others in the previous link.
I feel that this needs examination. I married someone about half a generation younger than me, and her experience in life, largely due to sexualization online has manifested numerous serious...
but we're decades into that reality and there hasn't been any kind of uptick in issues with sexuality that I'm aware of.
I feel that this needs examination. I married someone about half a generation younger than me, and her experience in life, largely due to sexualization online has manifested numerous serious issues in our relationship.
My very early exposure to porn (from my dad leaving VHS porn playing while intoxicated) definitely had an impact on my development. My wife's experiences absolutely had powerful impacts on her. The differences in our exposures to sex have been significant, even with relatively close ages at first exposure just due to the nature of the media.
To be clear, I am not in favor of these laws because I think the only result will be people's personal info being exposed in future hacks. As others mention, horny kids will find a way. But I also don't think it's wise to totally rug-sweep the whole conversation.
My personal opinion is that kids learning about sex is a good thing. I'd rather my son first be exposed to sex the way real people do to rather than some of the out-there fantasy-driven stuff that dominates porn sites.
Oh my gosh nobody in this country is rug-sweeping conversations about “what is healthy sexual development”. In no small part because porn became so accessible. It’s created issues and it’s created...
Oh my gosh nobody in this country is rug-sweeping conversations about “what is healthy sexual development”. In no small part because porn became so accessible.
It’s created issues and it’s created whole new and growing tool sets and support communities to address those issues.
As others have said- there are tools and ways for parents to manage this. Hell, if my niece hasn’t don’t the dishes, the first move my sister makes is remotely flipping off her wifi and data to her phone. Dishes get done quick.
On a more personal level, I would keep network logs and flip through the domains my kid was hitting with her devices. One summer there was a weird spike in time spent in google docs. It turned out she and her friends had a secret shared collaborative series of smutty short stories they were writing together.
I know, it’s pretty benign and my wife and I were very entertained… we dealt with it. The reason I’m telling this story is that 1. Kids will always be curious and find ways and that’s just life, and 2. I demonstrably proved to my kid that there’s no such thing as privacy online. It was important for her to know experience that and know that her parents were looking out for her even when she didn’t know.
Just last night she was bragging about how clean her digital footprint is after I was filling her in on other family who still is embarrassingly messy on social media.
Okay, I’ll stop bragging about my kid now.
The point is, for those of us with some experience and success on this topic, we know without a shadow of a doubt, that this is a ploy for harvesting sensitive personal information AND a step forward for shadowy unknown entities to increase the ways to control access to information. That’s ALL this is. It doesn’t work and it actively makes this worse by pretending it could.
I agree with your main thesis, that this is really about data. I know the FL legislature well enough to know that they're not all hip to that reality though, and I think that legitimate concerns...
I agree with your main thesis, that this is really about data. I know the FL legislature well enough to know that they're not all hip to that reality though, and I think that legitimate concerns about kids being exposed to unrealistic sex at an early age is the elevator pitch from the tech folks (who just want data and whose lobby almost certainly authored the bills) to the politicians (who are always seeking a way to appear hard-working while serving their money masters).
There may or may not be an interest in rug-sweeping some of the social impacts of kids exposure to sexual content online. I'm thinking more of the spaces where kids can be manipulated and exploited. Early exposure to porn may set expectations in kids' minds regarding what others want from them.
I don't claim to have answers here. Wife and I talk a lot about what we'll do to manage our son's web traffic down the road. I like what you describe, but I'm not sure I have the time to execute the way you do. I certainly don't expect these draconian laws to help the situation. I'm just observing how they might rationalize them.
Sure. I get it. FWIW, yeah it might be a bit much to expect parents to scroll through network logs. Communication is everything. It just occurred to me that it might be interesting to look at the...
Sure. I get it. FWIW, yeah it might be a bit much to expect parents to scroll through network logs. Communication is everything.
It just occurred to me that it might be interesting to look at the parallels between healthy eating and commercialized food production to like porn and sex? As canning and refinement took off, there wasn’t a lot of info about or interest in food content and nutrients. Only later did we begin to talk about “empty calories”.
Similarly with sex and porn maybe?
Okay, I’m on a parenting nostalgia kick lately, so here’s another trip down memory lane:
There is a story I heard once and repeated to my teenager (to her shock and embarrassment and my amusement) on a walk one day. The topic turned to consent. Something my particular teen female feminist at the time felt pretty strongly about and a bit smugly well versed in.
So she was alarmed when I told her I wasn’t a big fan of talking about consent.
The story was from an article I read once about a college that stirred up a bunch of noise from incoming freshmen parents because at least some of their orientation students began saying this: “At ____ University, we’re not big fans of consent. We think that bar is too low. We aim more for “Begging for it”.
I could hear my daughter’s internal freak out in her silence. I’d made it wonderfully and suddenly uncomfortably “Too Real” as she would later describe it.
I wrapped up by saying “That’s why I think sex is like reading Harry Potter. Remember how we started the books when you were the same age as Harry and we initially said we would read one a year so we matched his age? I was trying to optimize your Harry Potter experience. We didn’t make it, and that’s okay… but I think when it comes to sex it’s important that you like yourself enough to aim for the best experience possible.”
I don’t have many inspired moments, but I think that was one. Made up that analogy on the spot.
That's valid, I was referring more to population wide trends, definitely not saying that early sexualization doesn't have an impact. I think if it was going to have the kind of impact that changed...
That's valid, I was referring more to population wide trends, definitely not saying that early sexualization doesn't have an impact.
I think if it was going to have the kind of impact that changed the relationship to sex of people writ large in some way that was more deviant than the baseline, we'd have seen it by now.
We find all kinds of ways to be confused about sex :) Which imo legislation can't fix, that's up to the adults in our lives and the culture we grow up in. Unless of course the legislation is about education which stands an actual chance of helping.
Definitely agree with your points, that legislation cannot help here, and that folks will always find ways to be confused about sex. I am very against this particular legislation and all laws of...
Definitely agree with your points, that legislation cannot help here, and that folks will always find ways to be confused about sex.
I am very against this particular legislation and all laws of its ilk. I don't think we can legislate morality, and this seems to fall into that camp.
My comment above is trying to think through how lawmakers rationalize passing what seems like an unpopular law, how they might sell it. I think about the ways women I know were manipulated online at a very young age to do and share things they really didn't want to do or share. Mostly on the web-chat sites of the mid 2000s. I do think that some of that manipulation was made easier by the victims' early exposure to porn.
My answers to my wife so far have been that right now we cannot even predict what the web will be like when our kids reach puberty, and that we'll have to be agile, honest with our kids, and open-minded about cultural changes to handle things well. I think it's these concerns in politicians and their constituents that allow the tech lobby to sell these kinds of (bad) laws.
What they want in entertainment is hardly the issue. The issue is what is happening in real life. It's difficult to answer this question without committing the sin of kink shaming, but I'll risk...
If anything the trends seem to be going in the opposite direction. Younger generations want less sex in their entertainment.
What they want in entertainment is hardly the issue. The issue is what is happening in real life.
It's difficult to answer this question without committing the sin of kink shaming, but I'll risk it anyway.
I used entertainment as an example, another example would be the decrease in sexual violence. It's interesting that you see it as a new thing. I wouldn't say it's obvious that it's derived from...
I used entertainment as an example, another example would be the decrease in sexual violence.
This is one of the new things that obviously is derived from porn
It's interesting that you see it as a new thing. I wouldn't say it's obvious that it's derived from porn at all. Getting off on strangulation goes back forever. As an example the more extreme version, erotic asphyxiation, is documented going back to the 17th century and no doubt goes back farther.
From the article you linked:
While there have not been many studies on the prevalence of choking until recently, researchers and campaigners have reported that young people are talking about the practise more in recent years.
So in other words we have no reliable data to say if it's more common, only that people are talking about it more. Which makes a lot of sense, people are talking publicly about all sorts of things more post internet and kinks are much more acceptable to talk about than they used to be. Which is probably part of the reason sexual violence is down. Suppression of sexuality can lead to all sorts of confusion and warped impulses.
I propose that your gut feeling may be fueled by bias. Though I would completely agree that porn has an impact on society, I think it's a relatively small subset of the massive impact of sexuality in general. I also think that while porn can be a bad thing, there are good sides. It meets a demand that would otherwise need to be met other ways, some of them ugly.
I recognize that the original context is kids, we digressed a bit when strangulation entered the chat :)
Strangulation was on the top of my head on this, because there was an article in a Finnish newspaper (unfortunately paywalled, but the link is https://www.hs.fi/pkseutu/art-2000010316288.html)...
I recognize that the original context is kids, we digressed a bit when strangulation entered the chat :)
Strangulation was on the top of my head on this, because there was an article in a Finnish newspaper (unfortunately paywalled, but the link is https://www.hs.fi/pkseutu/art-2000010316288.html) earlier this year which mentioned that teenagers, i.e. people who are legally children already are considering strangulation as a regular, standard sex move when they're starting their very first experiments. In a nutshell, boys expect that they should do it and girls expect that they should take it. So in that way, not really a digression.
I am pretty normie when it comes to sexual preferences but I was over forty and on reddit before I learned that sexual strangulation was a thing other than in the context of rape and murder. It is...
I am pretty normie when it comes to sexual preferences but I was over forty and on reddit before I learned that sexual strangulation was a thing other than in the context of rape and murder.
It is an extra complication and an extra life threatening risk that young women are being expected to deal with that by their male peers who learned it from porn.
I am somewhat skeptical of this article's alarming tone and vocabulary. In my experience choking is usually not done as strangulation, limiting air or blood flow as the article claims, but as a...
I am somewhat skeptical of this article's alarming tone and vocabulary. In my experience choking is usually not done as strangulation, limiting air or blood flow as the article claims, but as a power play - a safe dominating move, holding the partner down partially by the throat rather than squeezing it or putting unsafe amount of pressure on it.
Doing this unconsensually is still a problem, but them conflating it with domestic violence strangulation suggests they might not be entirely unbiased.
I believe you but are 13 or 14 year old kids who have seen some videos going to understand that from the get go? I don't like these registration laws necessarily but I also don't like that kids...
I believe you but are 13 or 14 year old kids who have seen some videos going to understand that from the get go?
I don't like these registration laws necessarily but I also don't like that kids are learning basic ideas about what sex is from what used to be extreme content that can be deadly if done wrong.
A better solution is to do proper sex ed, which I'm aware is unfortunately a hard problem in the US specifically. Anecdotally, I grew up with porn as well, though with a much smaller supply,...
A better solution is to do proper sex ed, which I'm aware is unfortunately a hard problem in the US specifically.
Anecdotally, I grew up with porn as well, though with a much smaller supply, swapping CDs when we were about 10 or 11 and CD burners became somewhat available, and I did understand it. Even though I obviously could not understand in what ways porn is not real, I knew that it wasn't and as I grew older I gradually started perceiving it as something like a violent action movie - it can be fun to watch even when you know very well it's not real. And as with action movies you should reach some level of maturity before you watch it so that you're able to make that distinction (somewhat paradoxically I think that sex requires a higher level of maturity than violence because violence is often made to obviously look cool but not real). I think teaching kids something like that might be a decent form of harm reduction.
The reason why Pornhub blocked access is because the legislature would require it to collect and store personal information from its users. The government requiring a further removal of online...
Even if this doesn't block the most technically proficient kids from doing so, it's still a net positive.
The reason why Pornhub blocked access is because the legislature would require it to collect and store personal information from its users. The government requiring a further removal of online anonymity, let alone with regards to porn, is in no way a net positive.
Another point of view: a parent can block porn on both their home network and their kid's phone, and it won't be any less effective than this law (in fact it might work better, with the exception that the kid's friends may not have those blocks activated). It's not difficult either. So you have a choice to do it. However, once the government forces you to give it your personal information when accessing certain content, there is very little you can do with that, the choice is removed from you.
For this same reason the Australian law banning kids below 16 from accessing social media seems insane and completely unacceptable to me, despite the fact that I don't doubt that in many if not most situations social media is harmful to kids. I don't want my government to think that they have the right to meddle with my life this much. It's just way over the line.
True, but not all parents will do that. It's kinda the same as if alcohol sales to minors was just up to a social convention. Some parents just don't care and then the children of those parents...
Another point of view: a parent can block porn on both their home network and their kid's phone, and it won't be any less effective than this law (in fact it might work better, with the exception that the kid's friends may not have those blocks activated). It's not difficult either.
True, but not all parents will do that. It's kinda the same as if alcohol sales to minors was just up to a social convention. Some parents just don't care and then the children of those parents would become distributors.
I know and I agree that it's a problem, but imo it's a good example of a problem where the proposed solution has much worse consequences than the problem itself. It's easier with alcohol where you...
I know and I agree that it's a problem, but imo it's a good example of a problem where the proposed solution has much worse consequences than the problem itself. It's easier with alcohol where you always get it physically, so you can always be physically carded without any of your data being saved anywhere.
The problem is that the government is using "think of the children" as a front to control access to information. Even if this IS being passed by lawmakers with purely good intentions of protecting...
The problem is that the government is using "think of the children" as a front to control access to information. Even if this IS being passed by lawmakers with purely good intentions of protecting children, it creates an opening to start blocking other sites and content.
As others have pointed out, they'll likely target other "immoral" topics such as anything LGBT because "sexuality and gender is just a step away from sex" or some similar logic. They can further try to restrict access to any topics they claim are "radicalizing the youth", which can be almost anything.
Adding to that, there is currently no way to verify ages online. All the potential solutions I can think of would involve confirming your identity with someone, either the government or a private agency. That would inevitably lead to some sort of record of sites you visit that require that age verification, which can be bad if the government goes full dystopia like we fear.
So without a way to verify ages, affected sites' only recourse is to just cut off access to areas that require age restrictions. Which, again, can come to cover a LOT more than just porn.
It's not even really a secret that 'lewd content' is mostly conservative code for "gay stuff that we legally can't ban because of any anti-discrimination laws so we have to figure out loopholes."
It's not even really a secret that 'lewd content' is mostly conservative code for "gay stuff that we legally can't ban because of any anti-discrimination laws so we have to figure out loopholes."
Pornhub is just one site. Children will still have unlimited access to porn even if you somehow manage to block all domains that are dedicated to porn because you can find porn on sites that...
Pornhub is just one site. Children will still have unlimited access to porn even if you somehow manage to block all domains that are dedicated to porn because you can find porn on sites that usually don't host porn, and because porn sites can just create thousands of new domains per second if they want to.
And porn is just one topic that isn't suitable for kids. The internet simply is not a place to let your kids lose and forget about them, much like most of the real world.
This is what I find so strange about legislation like this: how useless it is. I totally agree with the concerns regarding privacy, slippery slopes, etc.; but it's also such a futile, empty...
Pornhub is just one site.
This is what I find so strange about legislation like this: how useless it is. I totally agree with the concerns regarding privacy, slippery slopes, etc.; but it's also such a futile, empty action.
Even if they censored tenthousand porn sites, there will always be petabytes of porn available for basically anybody with an internet connection. Unless they go full North Korea on the american internet laws like this one are completely meaningless. They can pat themselves on the back, and essentially nothing is done to prevent children from watching porn.
I feel that this is worse than doing nothing. Pretending to care for children and doing basically nothing at all to face the reality they live in.
I think it's virtue signalling. They show the people that they do something that is good, even if it's just on the label. Most people tend to not know enough about the details to see through it,...
They can pat themselves on the back
I think it's virtue signalling. They show the people that they do something that is good, even if it's just on the label. Most people tend to not know enough about the details to see through it, and those who do and call bullshit have to deal with accusations of not wanting to protect the children before they can explain why it doesn't protect them at all. It's the downside of democracy, and the only antidote is education.
I visited Utah last month, which already blocks PH (which was news to me, my home state does not). I was able to find an alternate place in about a minute. (Amusingly, it was reddit)
I visited Utah last month, which already blocks PH (which was news to me, my home state does not). I was able to find an alternate place in about a minute. (Amusingly, it was reddit)
Because I was 10 years old once, and kids today are basically built-in with tech. they will find and use VPNs or go on even sketchier sites to find porn that is under the radar. the less...
I feel a bit weirded out how people are failing to see the positive of this.
Because I was 10 years old once, and kids today are basically built-in with tech. they will find and use VPNs or go on even sketchier sites to find porn that is under the radar. the less technically proficient will just use a peer's phone or laptop.
Or, as the article is saying, a lot of them will just run into it on twitter or reddit (definitely not something I coulda done easily in my day). Are they going to punish Musk/Spez for exposing pornography to children? I wouldn't hold my breath.
This isn't a problem solved with tech nor legislation, it's one solved with proper parenting and education on the topic.
I feel a bit bad piling on after all the other replies- but here’s another reason: bad parents. I raised a kid (she’s going to be 20 before long) with the open internet. It’s important and not...
I feel a bit bad piling on after all the other replies- but here’s another reason: bad parents. I raised a kid (she’s going to be 20 before long) with the open internet. It’s important and not that hard to stay on top of your kids’ online activity. Be a fucking engaged parent.
(Pardon my language, my parents were anything but engaged, so I’m a bit aggro about bad parents.)
Don’t give parents a false sense of security and an excuse to disengage. That’s how I see this. How many parents in these states are just going to abandon the really really important conversations about what’s online, how to behave online, and what doesn’t belong online because of this and because it’s not comfortable.
We are not a nation of children. Our government can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t try to hide/control/moralize the parts of the world we don’t like. That’s each adult’s personal responsibility.
Yeah there’s far too much slippery slope argumentation applied to this. The government wants to protect children from graphic sexual content. “But muh freedom!!! I was a child who watched porn and...
Yeah there’s far too much slippery slope argumentation applied to this. The government wants to protect children from graphic sexual content. “But muh freedom!!! I was a child who watched porn and look at meee!!!!” Sorry to be reductive but I really don’t see the negative with at least some safeguards in place.
States already have been widely censoring books with queer characters with the justification being that it's inappropriate for children. The existence of drag queens in public has been called...
Exemplary
States already have been widely censoring books with queer characters with the justification being that it's inappropriate for children. The existence of drag queens in public has been called pornographic and many are already attempting to legislate against it. My very existence as a trans person is considered harmful to minors by many of these legislatures. Dismissing people pointing this out as making slippery slope arguments is just evidence that you're insulated from the real harms that are already taking place under the exact same justifications.
You don't see a negative in people being required to give over personally identifiable information and private information for it to be stored in unknown databases online? My drivers license is...
You don't see a negative in people being required to give over personally identifiable information and private information for it to be stored in unknown databases online?
My drivers license is one of the few things that I rarely ever have to give out or put what exclusive information is on it (mostly the drivers license number) into online databases. I of course don't know what the DMV/BMV does with it on the other end in my state, and there's been cases of states who have been compromised and that data has come out, yet many of these laws are forcing people to fork over an image of their drivers license or some other identification to prove their age. Now is the drivers license number really private or significant? Probably not, but it could be if we weren't so cavalier about things and forced to submit all of this information in the least secure ways possible which inevitably results in someone in the chain not doing their job to secure the information and then gets compromised and spread everywhere.
This is all true for porn sites or any other scenario where this age gating is going to end up spreading too if we don't pressure legislators to better alternative solutions. They might use middle-men websites to do the identity verification and so while it might not be Pornhub that gets hacked, it might be IdentaMidMan LLC they contracted who records my information and then gets hacked.
It's bullshit and these decrepit 70 year old legislators need to stop passing laws that force people to give up security of their personal and private information in order to participate in ordinary activities, which I'd qualify a porn website to be fairly ordinary. There's better technical ways to solve these problems.
not a slipperly slope when it's already happening: https://www.newamerica.org/oti/blog/how-anti-lgbtq-web-filters-stand-between-lgbtq-youth-and-the-online-resources-they-need/ you think this will...
Yeah there’s far too much slippery slope argumentation applied to this.
not a slipperly slope when it's already happening:
If no other reason whatsoever, I simply don't trust legislators to properly define and enforce what is "sexually explicit". And that's not even how they describe the bills. Like how are they defining:
Kansas, for instance, enacted a law effective July 1 mandating websites where at least 25% of content is classified as "harmful to minors" implement age verification. Proponents argue these measures protect children. Florida’s HB3 requires 33.3%.
In a way that won't completely overstep the spirit of the law?
I don't think this is necessarily a slippery slope argument. For me personally a policy like this is already located on a steep slide. I don't want the government to force anyone to store...
I don't think this is necessarily a slippery slope argument. For me personally a policy like this is already located on a steep slide. I don't want the government to force anyone to store personally identifiable data about what porn I watch - which won't happen here, because PornHub correctly also sees this as wrong and decided to close off access entirely instead, but the law was already passed and it's likely that not everyone will do the same.
I also think that "slippery slope" is in many situations a completely reasonable argument. "Salami method" is basically a different name for a slippery slope and it's a common tactic for passing unpopular laws (or for geopolitical aggression and other things) that's not considered to be a logical fallacy because it's real. Especially with Trump in office and likely to try to declaw functional US institutions that would serve as a safeguard against more controversial policies, I would assume that people are going to be very cautious with regards to anything resembling a slippery slope.
I completely agree with you on this. I view this as it being illegal to show pornographic content to someone under 18 years old. If a minor were to go to a store and attempt to buy a pornographic...
I completely agree with you on this.
I view this as it being illegal to show pornographic content to someone under 18 years old. If a minor were to go to a store and attempt to buy a pornographic movie they'd be stopped and asked for their ID to verify their age. Just like if there were purchasing something else that is gated behind age verification, say alochol or marijuana (in states that have legalized that). Sure a minor may access a fake ID to attempt circumvent this and they may succeed, but the check is still in place.
I don't see why on the internet sites distributing pornographic content get a free pass to not verify that someone is of a legal age to view this content in accordance with federal law. A "scout's honor" verification button doesn't do anything. I don't buy that this is an undue burden on adults accessing free speech material. If they also have to provide ID (or by virtue of being looking sufficiently old enough which can subjective of course and cause lapses if you had a minor dedicated enough to try to dress up for it) in real life for viewing this content or in real life/online when buying alcohol it's no different accessing pornography online.
Minors shouldn't be viewing pornographic content. If you sincerely believe that they should have unfettered access to this, please write to your representatives, run for office yourself, campaign on changing the federal law. Ask yourself what the appropriate age should be. Unless you say it should be available with no age restrictions of any kind so that toddlers and newborns have access to it as well, there will need to be some cut off point in place, which will then necessitate a means to verify that someone is of the appropriate age.
While I would rather not have more big government overreach, I do feel like an effective solution for this would require a central governmental approach to regulating the processing/control of PII stored by a pornographic site. The haphazard method of individual states blocking this, which is their own perogative, is going to be annoying for everyone involved. With how much money sites like PornHub make they can afford to invest in their security to secure users data for whatever time frame is deemed appropriate.
I acknowledge that there's privacy concerns, but I also don't think leaving things as they are now with there essentially being no enforcement should stand. If the majority of the population thinks the law should change then it should be changed not ignored because it will sit there until someone decides to enforce it.
The scale of it is completely different. Giving my ID over to a person in real life exposes my information to that one person who has ephemeral access to the ID within my vision so I can see what...
If they also have to provide ID (or by virtue of being looking sufficiently old enough which can subjective of course and cause lapses if you had a minor dedicated enough to try to dress up for it) in real life for viewing this content or in real life/online when buying alcohol it's no different accessing pornography online.
The scale of it is completely different. Giving my ID over to a person in real life exposes my information to that one person who has ephemeral access to the ID within my vision so I can see what they do and don't do with it aside from what happens in their brain and whether they attempt to memorize information on the ID. At least historically this was the predominant context in which this whole system began and was operated under. Modern surveillance and digitization and scanning of IDs does happen in person sometimes these days, and those may also prove to be breaking the dynamic under which IDs were originally designed for.
Giving my ID over the internet exposes my information to billions of people for eternity and they can do whatever they want with it and I have no clue who has seen it or what they might try to do with it.
With how much money sites like PornHub make they can afford to invest in their security to secure users data for whatever time frame is deemed appropriate.
This is just naive. Huge organizations with tons of resources get hacked all the time. Yes there are also some that have designed systems that so far have not necessarily been compromised completely, but as a matter of principle it is safer to assume it is only a matter of time, because of the nature of how security works. PornHub is not on the level of Apple or Google etc. with regards to what one would expect for security, and even those companies have had their lapses in some context or another.
Minors shouldn't be viewing pornographic content.
Based on what? Evidence that overwhelmingly says it leads to disastrous outcomes? On your own sensibilities? I'm not advocating that minors should have access, but I would advocate that parents should have a greater role in that unless evidence overwhelmingly suggests that no parental guidance can overcome detrimental effects. Laws should be in place to help empower parents in technical ways that they may not be able to accomplish on their own because you can't expect everyone to be an expert with computing devices, but by doing this it mitigates the impact on adults who aren't parents while enabling adults who are parents to be able to better influence their child's development. In theory a 'free market' should provide solutions for this without regulation but we all know that we rarely ever have a 'free market' and sometimes regulations are necessary to compel businesses to develop standards that allow them to work together to create solutions that they couldn't otherwise make if they have to compete against each other.
On a tangent, it seems insane to me that the right is relinquishing their responsibility as parents in regards to things like controlling their children’s access to pornography and content they...
On a tangent, it seems insane to me that the right is relinquishing their responsibility as parents in regards to things like controlling their children’s access to pornography and content they feel is objectionable while simultaneously using the concept of “parental rights” to increase their control over their children’s lives in regards to things like the content of their school libraries, the things they teach, and the robbing of the public school system in the form of “school choice”
It’s not everyone on the right of course, but I find the specific people doing this to be maniacal, dangerous, and even simply evil. They are attempting to destroy some of the best aspects of society when it would be more responsible for them to leave it.
Absolutely none of the other proposed age verification measures will do anything either, so I'm not sure what your point is
I don't see why on the internet sites distributing pornographic content get a free pass to not verify that someone is of a legal age to view this content in accordance with federal law. A "scout's honor" verification button doesn't do anything.
Absolutely none of the other proposed age verification measures will do anything either, so I'm not sure what your point is
If it were just like the clerk checking your ID at the liquor store, it would be another one of the necessary lies of civilization. Those laws don’t stop teens from getting their booze & smokes,...
If it were just like the clerk checking your ID at the liquor store, it would be another one of the necessary lies of civilization. Those laws don’t stop teens from getting their booze & smokes, but it makes the voting public feel good to pretend.
However, such laws almost certainly have auditing and verification requirements which turn the measures into “papers, please” Statsi nonsense by requiring a paper trail to be made. The best way to prevent a data breach is to minimize the data collected.
I don't understand why governments consistently put the onus on the websites themselves to implement age verification; how hard can is be to enforce a centralised government OTP or passkey app?...
I don't understand why governments consistently put the onus on the websites themselves to implement age verification; how hard can is be to enforce a centralised government OTP or passkey app? The same thing is happening with the social media ban in Australia, and instead of using their pre-existing government authentication apps, they're asking websites to implement the verification?? Why?
My issue is that I don't believe that anyone would reasonably trust Pornhub of all places to keep their sensitive personal details such as their drivers licence secure. Meanwhile, the government already has this information, so I trust them to have an app like myID and only provide the boolean value of whether my age is >18 or >16 or whatever relevant number to the service. Nothing more. Not my name, identity, driver's licence, only the simple fact that my age is indeed greater than the number required. If they could create that with an independently verifiable promise that they are not tracking what websites I am using, 95% of my concerns with laws like these would be alleviated.
In my opinion, that is the only way any of this could be reasonably implemented.
While I get the sentiment, I think I would trust PH's cybersecurity more than a state governments, given recent cybersecurity history. Any rando website? no way, but PH seems to have their...
While I get the sentiment, I think I would trust PH's cybersecurity more than a state governments, given recent cybersecurity history. Any rando website? no way, but PH seems to have their security well done, and there have been a lot of state government breaches in the past 5 years.
I’m inclined to agree for the single instance of Pornhub, but given that the legislation seemingly applies to any websites with a certain percentage of material deemed "harmful to minors", it all...
I’m inclined to agree for the single instance of Pornhub, but given that the legislation seemingly applies to any websites with a certain percentage of material deemed "harmful to minors", it all seems unreasonably fractured.
That being said, US state governments (in contrast to governments like Australia) don’t seem to be the most competent either based on recent history, ig it’s a decision between the lesser of two evils ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And we begin another chapter in the assault on access to information combined with morality laws. Exactly what we need as we march towards converting towards a Christian Fundamentalist Autocracy.
I fully expect these 'age verification laws' to be used to block sites wholesale that have little to do with porn.
Next thing will be anything LGBT. They'll say because it can involve sexuality it's essentially pornographic and children shouldn't have access to it.
It’ll be anything that LGBT content could conceivably be hosted on. So things like Tumblr and Archive of their Own will be targeted, and the social media companies will have pressure put on their moderation/trust-and-safety policies to police the content. The internet as we know it might not survive the expansion of this logic frankly. More “normie” activity will be driven underground to the dark web, which means comparatively “innocent” kinds of things will be much closer to not-so-innocent sorts of things, which can include solicitation and scams but also malware.
A lot of people can follow step-by-step guides to get out of their walled gardens but, if they needed a step-by-step guide they likely do not have the foundational technical skills to be able to survive outside the walled garden on their own. It dramatically opens up their risk profile as well as that of everyone they interact with (if you get emails from them, if you’re the family tech support line, etc.)
Of course, that makes sense. Florida has basically been the test case for that, in schools anyway. It's always so politically convenient to have an internal enemy you can dehumanize and work your way to some 'final solution' for. The conflict it produces serves as such an excellent diversion from other things.
It's not so much "next thing" as it is already happening, unfortunately.
Yep, that's the modus operandi of the concerted school library book bans that have been happening over the past few years: anything LGBT is pornographic and is challenged.
At least one did the same with Maus. And we all know there's only one reason someone would want to ban Maus: because they're Nazi fuckers who want to suppress the history of what the Nazis did.
I hate living in Fahrenheit 451.
In case anyone missed it, there are several large public libraries that will let kids get cards for free.
I would not discount just straight up stupidity and trying to shelter their kids from ugly things, which is relatively common as well. I think that's more probable than them being straight up nazis.
I bet they're going for VPNs for the public next.
That would not surprise me. If you want to run a repressive regime, blocking and controlling information access is a must. Can't have the masses able to educate themselves or communicate privately with one another.
I feel a bit weirded out how people are failing to see the positive of this. I mean, have you been to porn sites? Children should not have unlimited access to that material. Even if this doesn't block the most technically proficient kids from doing so, it's still a net positive.
"Harmful to Minors" is so vague that it can be applied to anything. OK, sure, porn is "harmful to minors," I guess. How about social media? Seems like there's some consensus to social media being harmful to kids. So now Bluesky and Mastodon need ID checks. How about music? Remember those "Parental Discretion is Advised" labels on CDs back in the 90s and 00s? Clearly some people think some music, like rap and rock, is harmful to kids. So now Spotify is required to check my ID. Others have mentioned games. Now Steam or an MMO needs to see my ID. Others have mentioned LGBT content. Books bans in schools and libraries show that some think it's harmful. Does Tildes need to check my ID before posting in ~LGBT? How about straight up health-class-style sexual education content from a site like the CDC? Now I need a government ID to view the CDC's website?
Do you see how crazy this gets? And the potential "chilling effects" that will come to be? Will I be as open and honest as I am here, behind a screenname, knowing that my real identity is attached to this account? Maybe, maybe not.
Which gets to my next point: privacy and tracking. OK, so I wanna go rub one out via Pornhub. I'm feeling spicy tonight: let's look up interracial gay furry femboy BBC with "Bad Dragons." I'm not saying that that category of porn is bad or wrong, mostly using it for "shock value," but certainly some people think anything but straight, missionary-style sex to procreate -- and only between the same race -- is the only "acceptable" form of sex. Anyway, now Pornhub knows my real name, what I look like, and what apparently gets me off.
Is Pornhub storing this information somewhere? Even if they say they aren't? Is it secure? Look how many data breaches there are every year and it's only getting worse. Hell, forget breaches. Can a government request or subpoena this information? And what will they do with it afterwards?
Now my real identity is potentially tied to all these things. And all it takes is someone, some group to declare that what I'm doing -- like listening to certain types of music or discussing certain topics online -- is immoral. Maybe even illegal. Then take that information and announce it to the world.
Even if the goal here is to be lauded -- And frankly, I'm not sure it is; others have said why quite well -- the downstream effects are 10x worse than any benefit that kids may receive.
If "think of the children" is not a valid reason to prohibit things, then we should stop denying alcohol and drug sales to them.
They already do know your identity and profile in the current system unless you go to great lengths to hide your digital footprint. The amount of additional data they get by knowing your real identity is almost completely inconsequential.
"Think of the children" and " these substances are particularly unsafe for people whose brains are not fully developed and due to the physical and/or addictive risks we have an age minimum." are two different things.
The language these laws are using is intentionally brosd. The Kansas law doesn't "prevent access to pornography" or even "obscene materials" it's "harmful to minors."
The options here are not enact these laws or give 4 year olds a Jack and Coke with their heroin and personalized Pornhub login.
Oh shit you're, right, I guess we need to bring out all the left wing pedophiles to start molesting the children since we're arguing against the best welfare of children.
Ignoring the fact that substance prohibition is a very different thing from content censorship, I'm kind of sick of the argument of hiding things from children because you're worried they might not be mature enough to fully comprehend the nuance of the real world.
Kids are smarter than people give them credit for, and educating them on the real world is far more important than pretending it just doesn't exist. Healthy, honest discussions about what they encounter is how we raise the next generation to engage with the world they're going to inherit.
I'm not saying five year olds need to watch porn, but I'm not gonna be annoyed if they start looking up girls kissing on YouTube. It's natural, and we can just substitute paranoia with parenting.
Where does it end? Why is it porn that needs age verification? Why not also the news that can discuss rape/murders/etc? Why not games/movies which can also have the same themes? Why is it okay for some things to assume parents/guardians will control the content intake while other things need your driver license?
Plenty of us grew up with access to porn, whether it was through a VHS you snuck from your parents room or the playboy sitting in the bathroom. And plenty of those people grew up to be fine adults. Those who get singled out for being extremist in some way most likely would've been with or without the moderation. We should be having better education around the topics and not continually blocking access to everything.
I see little to no benefit with these rules.
Somewhere around where it always has? There's a variation on what's considered acceptable for children by culture, but at the end of the day porn has, usually, been restricted to adults or at least teens.
Yes these laws are used to control expression, speech, and anonymity, but so are many others. The same kind people who seem to be against these laws appear to all be in favor of them when it's for controlling other forms of speech/expression they don't like, say in the name of diversity or safety.
Personally I'm against basically all of this, but I do recognize that there exists a reasonable desire to limit what children are exposed to, and possibly some even decent research to back that up.
Are they? Do you have an example of that? I haven't seen anyone call for age verification requirements for Stormfront.
Not really sure if you're misunderstanding my meaning or i'm misunderstanding yours, but I don't feel stormfront is a relevant example.
That said, I do believe there have been plenty of calls to outright get rid of stormfront, which strikes me as one step beyond age verification.
If Stormfront is not a relevant example then I think that I'm misunderstanding yours. Could you clarify? Maybe give some examples that you do think are relevant?
While I think calls to shut down platforms may come from the same places and impulses as calls to document or restrict access, but they are still fundamentally different things that I believe should be considered separately. A platform where dangerous and illegal things are happening might need to be shut down, but many of the users on it are probably not participating in those dangerous and illegal things. They might not even be aware of them. Shutting down the platform may disrupt those dangerous and illegal activities, but (usually) isn't too damaging for any of the users. Documenting access to the site doesn't disrupt the unwanted behavior, and it does include innocent users in the people that it affects or puts at risk.
I think you covered it in your response?
Either you think stormfront is a different level of entity (dangerous/illegal material) or you think its the same (they're both supporting dangerous/illegal material), which doesn't seem to be the case?
I still don't think I understand. Where have people asked to implement laws like these in the name of diversity or safety?
This won't accomplish the goal of keeping kids away from porn, it's easy to circumvent. Kids are good at getting around restrictions and with internet communication they can share strategies quickly and easily.
I agree that it's not ideal for kids to have easy access to porn, but we're decades into that reality and there hasn't been any kind of uptick in issues with sexuality that I'm aware of. If anything the trends seem to be going in the opposite direction. Younger generations want less sex in their entertainment.
These laws are about imposing morality not protecting kids. I just hope the pendulum swings back in these states before they start "protecting" kids from queer people and "wokeness".
On the contrary, sexual assaults are down amongst all ages. But younger people are dating even less as well. I don't know how much of an influence porn has on these, but the sniff test of "porn turns teens into sexual deviants" doesn't pass at all.
Is that true? It doesn't seem to be.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/642458/rape-and-sexual-assault-victims-in-the-us-by-gender/
Decrease in sexual abuse:
https://www.unh.edu/ccrc/resource/decline-sexual-abuse-cases
Decrease in sexual assault in the military (despite steady increase in female soldiers)
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3779672/dod-report-prevalence-of-sexual-assault-declined-across-services-in-2023/
Rape and sexual assault down 53%
https://www.warpnews.org/human-progress/large-decrease-in-domestic-violence-2/
Sexual violence down 50%
https://psmag.com/social-justice/violence-women-decline-stopping-fast-enough-82752/
The truth is there really isn't an authorative source to look at, and the numbers can say different things depending on how you do the math and what you focus on. Just wanted to point out that there are good reasons to believe sexual violence is decreasing. And why wouldn't it be? The human race in general has become less tolerant of sexual violence both legally and culturally.
I see. Perhaps my statistics are outdated or I over generalized them. It might have been something more specific like domestic violence or child abuse that had such decrease. Rather than sexual violence as a whole.
Too bad statista paywalls their supposed sources, and I've seen very questionable stats on statista for other subject matters. Those are less serious things but I was more knowledgeable about them and knew there to be stats that were incorrect or misrepresented. In any case, I question the accuracy of statista as a general rule because they frequently show up in search results but it almost feels like they automate generation of pages without proper consideration for what stats are presented or how the data was acquired in order to appear on search results for those inquiries. I could be wrong, but that's just my impression.
In any case, those are also flat numbers not accounting for population growth, and while the original statement didn't specify based on percentage of population or such, that would be the fairer way to assess the matter.
Wikipedia has a page with some sources and graphs to perhaps more easily see trends over time and these are not just flat numbers but based on rates per a defined amount of the population. As we all know with Wikipedia, it's not really to be taken as gospel and is more of a jumping off point, where I see some of the information referenced in there is sourced from the DOJ. A lot of the information on that page is not updated to the last decade or so from what I saw, so there's also that, but prior to that it is supposedly the case that rapes were declining.
However useless Google search was, which I'm sure was partly my fault for not using the best search terms, I managed to use one of my limited 100 trial searches on Kagi to find the DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics. The other problem with this is how sexual assaults have been defined over time and what methodology is used to track and classify this data.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/list?series_filter=Criminal%20Victimization
This shows yearly reports of criminal victimization surveys and all the details of how they come up with that and broken down by different types of crimes.
https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/quick-graphics#quickgraphicstop
This shows some quick graphics over time, which shows overall violent crime is supposedly down, and then there is a graphic on sexual assault which isn't as clear a picture depending on what time frames you are comparing. If you go back far enough, it's definitely down, but depends on how far back you go. I also don't know if the methodology changed at points between there or how that is conveyed in the graphics.
If you want an example of what is detailed in the full yearly reports, here's a link to one for 2023, but you can find the others in the previous link.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv23.pdf
Also here's the dashboard that leads to one of the graphics linked above as well as other ways to show or access the data
https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/Home
I feel that this needs examination. I married someone about half a generation younger than me, and her experience in life, largely due to sexualization online has manifested numerous serious issues in our relationship.
My very early exposure to porn (from my dad leaving VHS porn playing while intoxicated) definitely had an impact on my development. My wife's experiences absolutely had powerful impacts on her. The differences in our exposures to sex have been significant, even with relatively close ages at first exposure just due to the nature of the media.
To be clear, I am not in favor of these laws because I think the only result will be people's personal info being exposed in future hacks. As others mention, horny kids will find a way. But I also don't think it's wise to totally rug-sweep the whole conversation.
My personal opinion is that kids learning about sex is a good thing. I'd rather my son first be exposed to sex the way real people do to rather than some of the out-there fantasy-driven stuff that dominates porn sites.
Oh my gosh nobody in this country is rug-sweeping conversations about “what is healthy sexual development”. In no small part because porn became so accessible.
It’s created issues and it’s created whole new and growing tool sets and support communities to address those issues.
As others have said- there are tools and ways for parents to manage this. Hell, if my niece hasn’t don’t the dishes, the first move my sister makes is remotely flipping off her wifi and data to her phone. Dishes get done quick.
On a more personal level, I would keep network logs and flip through the domains my kid was hitting with her devices. One summer there was a weird spike in time spent in google docs. It turned out she and her friends had a secret shared collaborative series of smutty short stories they were writing together.
I know, it’s pretty benign and my wife and I were very entertained… we dealt with it. The reason I’m telling this story is that 1. Kids will always be curious and find ways and that’s just life, and 2. I demonstrably proved to my kid that there’s no such thing as privacy online. It was important for her to know experience that and know that her parents were looking out for her even when she didn’t know.
Just last night she was bragging about how clean her digital footprint is after I was filling her in on other family who still is embarrassingly messy on social media.
Okay, I’ll stop bragging about my kid now.
The point is, for those of us with some experience and success on this topic, we know without a shadow of a doubt, that this is a ploy for harvesting sensitive personal information AND a step forward for shadowy unknown entities to increase the ways to control access to information. That’s ALL this is. It doesn’t work and it actively makes this worse by pretending it could.
I agree with your main thesis, that this is really about data. I know the FL legislature well enough to know that they're not all hip to that reality though, and I think that legitimate concerns about kids being exposed to unrealistic sex at an early age is the elevator pitch from the tech folks (who just want data and whose lobby almost certainly authored the bills) to the politicians (who are always seeking a way to appear hard-working while serving their money masters).
There may or may not be an interest in rug-sweeping some of the social impacts of kids exposure to sexual content online. I'm thinking more of the spaces where kids can be manipulated and exploited. Early exposure to porn may set expectations in kids' minds regarding what others want from them.
I don't claim to have answers here. Wife and I talk a lot about what we'll do to manage our son's web traffic down the road. I like what you describe, but I'm not sure I have the time to execute the way you do. I certainly don't expect these draconian laws to help the situation. I'm just observing how they might rationalize them.
Sure. I get it. FWIW, yeah it might be a bit much to expect parents to scroll through network logs. Communication is everything.
It just occurred to me that it might be interesting to look at the parallels between healthy eating and commercialized food production to like porn and sex? As canning and refinement took off, there wasn’t a lot of info about or interest in food content and nutrients. Only later did we begin to talk about “empty calories”.
Similarly with sex and porn maybe?
Okay, I’m on a parenting nostalgia kick lately, so here’s another trip down memory lane:
There is a story I heard once and repeated to my teenager (to her shock and embarrassment and my amusement) on a walk one day. The topic turned to consent. Something my particular teen female feminist at the time felt pretty strongly about and a bit smugly well versed in.
So she was alarmed when I told her I wasn’t a big fan of talking about consent.
The story was from an article I read once about a college that stirred up a bunch of noise from incoming freshmen parents because at least some of their orientation students began saying this: “At ____ University, we’re not big fans of consent. We think that bar is too low. We aim more for “Begging for it”.
I could hear my daughter’s internal freak out in her silence. I’d made it wonderfully and suddenly uncomfortably “Too Real” as she would later describe it.
I wrapped up by saying “That’s why I think sex is like reading Harry Potter. Remember how we started the books when you were the same age as Harry and we initially said we would read one a year so we matched his age? I was trying to optimize your Harry Potter experience. We didn’t make it, and that’s okay… but I think when it comes to sex it’s important that you like yourself enough to aim for the best experience possible.”
I don’t have many inspired moments, but I think that was one. Made up that analogy on the spot.
That's valid, I was referring more to population wide trends, definitely not saying that early sexualization doesn't have an impact.
I think if it was going to have the kind of impact that changed the relationship to sex of people writ large in some way that was more deviant than the baseline, we'd have seen it by now.
We find all kinds of ways to be confused about sex :) Which imo legislation can't fix, that's up to the adults in our lives and the culture we grow up in. Unless of course the legislation is about education which stands an actual chance of helping.
Definitely agree with your points, that legislation cannot help here, and that folks will always find ways to be confused about sex.
I am very against this particular legislation and all laws of its ilk. I don't think we can legislate morality, and this seems to fall into that camp.
My comment above is trying to think through how lawmakers rationalize passing what seems like an unpopular law, how they might sell it. I think about the ways women I know were manipulated online at a very young age to do and share things they really didn't want to do or share. Mostly on the web-chat sites of the mid 2000s. I do think that some of that manipulation was made easier by the victims' early exposure to porn.
My answers to my wife so far have been that right now we cannot even predict what the web will be like when our kids reach puberty, and that we'll have to be agile, honest with our kids, and open-minded about cultural changes to handle things well. I think it's these concerns in politicians and their constituents that allow the tech lobby to sell these kinds of (bad) laws.
What they want in entertainment is hardly the issue. The issue is what is happening in real life.
It's difficult to answer this question without committing the sin of kink shaming, but I'll risk it anyway.
https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/current/thought-leadership/2024/09/sexual-strangulation-has-become-popular--but-that-doesnt-mean-its-wanted/
This is one of the new things that obviously is derived from porn. My gut feeling suggests that it cannot be the only one.
I used entertainment as an example, another example would be the decrease in sexual violence.
It's interesting that you see it as a new thing. I wouldn't say it's obvious that it's derived from porn at all. Getting off on strangulation goes back forever. As an example the more extreme version, erotic asphyxiation, is documented going back to the 17th century and no doubt goes back farther.
From the article you linked:
So in other words we have no reliable data to say if it's more common, only that people are talking about it more. Which makes a lot of sense, people are talking publicly about all sorts of things more post internet and kinks are much more acceptable to talk about than they used to be. Which is probably part of the reason sexual violence is down. Suppression of sexuality can lead to all sorts of confusion and warped impulses.
I propose that your gut feeling may be fueled by bias. Though I would completely agree that porn has an impact on society, I think it's a relatively small subset of the massive impact of sexuality in general. I also think that while porn can be a bad thing, there are good sides. It meets a demand that would otherwise need to be met other ways, some of them ugly.
I recognize that the original context is kids, we digressed a bit when strangulation entered the chat :)
Strangulation was on the top of my head on this, because there was an article in a Finnish newspaper (unfortunately paywalled, but the link is https://www.hs.fi/pkseutu/art-2000010316288.html) earlier this year which mentioned that teenagers, i.e. people who are legally children already are considering strangulation as a regular, standard sex move when they're starting their very first experiments. In a nutshell, boys expect that they should do it and girls expect that they should take it. So in that way, not really a digression.
I am pretty normie when it comes to sexual preferences but I was over forty and on reddit before I learned that sexual strangulation was a thing other than in the context of rape and murder.
It is an extra complication and an extra life threatening risk that young women are being expected to deal with that by their male peers who learned it from porn.
I am somewhat skeptical of this article's alarming tone and vocabulary. In my experience choking is usually not done as strangulation, limiting air or blood flow as the article claims, but as a power play - a safe dominating move, holding the partner down partially by the throat rather than squeezing it or putting unsafe amount of pressure on it.
Doing this unconsensually is still a problem, but them conflating it with domestic violence strangulation suggests they might not be entirely unbiased.
I believe you but are 13 or 14 year old kids who have seen some videos going to understand that from the get go?
I don't like these registration laws necessarily but I also don't like that kids are learning basic ideas about what sex is from what used to be extreme content that can be deadly if done wrong.
A better solution is to do proper sex ed, which I'm aware is unfortunately a hard problem in the US specifically.
Anecdotally, I grew up with porn as well, though with a much smaller supply, swapping CDs when we were about 10 or 11 and CD burners became somewhat available, and I did understand it. Even though I obviously could not understand in what ways porn is not real, I knew that it wasn't and as I grew older I gradually started perceiving it as something like a violent action movie - it can be fun to watch even when you know very well it's not real. And as with action movies you should reach some level of maturity before you watch it so that you're able to make that distinction (somewhat paradoxically I think that sex requires a higher level of maturity than violence because violence is often made to obviously look cool but not real). I think teaching kids something like that might be a decent form of harm reduction.
Probably because anyone who is queer or is passingly aware of Republican policy in the US knows that this is going to be used to oppress queer people.
The reason why Pornhub blocked access is because the legislature would require it to collect and store personal information from its users. The government requiring a further removal of online anonymity, let alone with regards to porn, is in no way a net positive.
Another point of view: a parent can block porn on both their home network and their kid's phone, and it won't be any less effective than this law (in fact it might work better, with the exception that the kid's friends may not have those blocks activated). It's not difficult either. So you have a choice to do it. However, once the government forces you to give it your personal information when accessing certain content, there is very little you can do with that, the choice is removed from you.
For this same reason the Australian law banning kids below 16 from accessing social media seems insane and completely unacceptable to me, despite the fact that I don't doubt that in many if not most situations social media is harmful to kids. I don't want my government to think that they have the right to meddle with my life this much. It's just way over the line.
True, but not all parents will do that. It's kinda the same as if alcohol sales to minors was just up to a social convention. Some parents just don't care and then the children of those parents would become distributors.
I know and I agree that it's a problem, but imo it's a good example of a problem where the proposed solution has much worse consequences than the problem itself. It's easier with alcohol where you always get it physically, so you can always be physically carded without any of your data being saved anywhere.
The problem is that the government is using "think of the children" as a front to control access to information. Even if this IS being passed by lawmakers with purely good intentions of protecting children, it creates an opening to start blocking other sites and content.
As others have pointed out, they'll likely target other "immoral" topics such as anything LGBT because "sexuality and gender is just a step away from sex" or some similar logic. They can further try to restrict access to any topics they claim are "radicalizing the youth", which can be almost anything.
Adding to that, there is currently no way to verify ages online. All the potential solutions I can think of would involve confirming your identity with someone, either the government or a private agency. That would inevitably lead to some sort of record of sites you visit that require that age verification, which can be bad if the government goes full dystopia like we fear.
So without a way to verify ages, affected sites' only recourse is to just cut off access to areas that require age restrictions. Which, again, can come to cover a LOT more than just porn.
It's not even really a secret that 'lewd content' is mostly conservative code for "gay stuff that we legally can't ban because of any anti-discrimination laws so we have to figure out loopholes."
Pornhub is just one site. Children will still have unlimited access to porn even if you somehow manage to block all domains that are dedicated to porn because you can find porn on sites that usually don't host porn, and because porn sites can just create thousands of new domains per second if they want to.
And porn is just one topic that isn't suitable for kids. The internet simply is not a place to let your kids lose and forget about them, much like most of the real world.
This is what I find so strange about legislation like this: how useless it is. I totally agree with the concerns regarding privacy, slippery slopes, etc.; but it's also such a futile, empty action.
Even if they censored tenthousand porn sites, there will always be petabytes of porn available for basically anybody with an internet connection. Unless they go full North Korea on the american internet laws like this one are completely meaningless. They can pat themselves on the back, and essentially nothing is done to prevent children from watching porn.
I feel that this is worse than doing nothing. Pretending to care for children and doing basically nothing at all to face the reality they live in.
I think it's virtue signalling. They show the people that they do something that is good, even if it's just on the label. Most people tend to not know enough about the details to see through it, and those who do and call bullshit have to deal with accusations of not wanting to protect the children before they can explain why it doesn't protect them at all. It's the downside of democracy, and the only antidote is education.
I visited Utah last month, which already blocks PH (which was news to me, my home state does not). I was able to find an alternate place in about a minute. (Amusingly, it was reddit)
Because I was 10 years old once, and kids today are basically built-in with tech. they will find and use VPNs or go on even sketchier sites to find porn that is under the radar. the less technically proficient will just use a peer's phone or laptop.
Or, as the article is saying, a lot of them will just run into it on twitter or reddit (definitely not something I coulda done easily in my day). Are they going to punish Musk/Spez for exposing pornography to children? I wouldn't hold my breath.
This isn't a problem solved with tech nor legislation, it's one solved with proper parenting and education on the topic.
I feel a bit bad piling on after all the other replies- but here’s another reason: bad parents. I raised a kid (she’s going to be 20 before long) with the open internet. It’s important and not that hard to stay on top of your kids’ online activity. Be a fucking engaged parent.
(Pardon my language, my parents were anything but engaged, so I’m a bit aggro about bad parents.)
Don’t give parents a false sense of security and an excuse to disengage. That’s how I see this. How many parents in these states are just going to abandon the really really important conversations about what’s online, how to behave online, and what doesn’t belong online because of this and because it’s not comfortable.
We are not a nation of children. Our government can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t try to hide/control/moralize the parts of the world we don’t like. That’s each adult’s personal responsibility.
Yeah there’s far too much slippery slope argumentation applied to this. The government wants to protect children from graphic sexual content. “But muh freedom!!! I was a child who watched porn and look at meee!!!!” Sorry to be reductive but I really don’t see the negative with at least some safeguards in place.
States already have been widely censoring books with queer characters with the justification being that it's inappropriate for children. The existence of drag queens in public has been called pornographic and many are already attempting to legislate against it. My very existence as a trans person is considered harmful to minors by many of these legislatures. Dismissing people pointing this out as making slippery slope arguments is just evidence that you're insulated from the real harms that are already taking place under the exact same justifications.
You don't see a negative in people being required to give over personally identifiable information and private information for it to be stored in unknown databases online?
My drivers license is one of the few things that I rarely ever have to give out or put what exclusive information is on it (mostly the drivers license number) into online databases. I of course don't know what the DMV/BMV does with it on the other end in my state, and there's been cases of states who have been compromised and that data has come out, yet many of these laws are forcing people to fork over an image of their drivers license or some other identification to prove their age. Now is the drivers license number really private or significant? Probably not, but it could be if we weren't so cavalier about things and forced to submit all of this information in the least secure ways possible which inevitably results in someone in the chain not doing their job to secure the information and then gets compromised and spread everywhere.
This is all true for porn sites or any other scenario where this age gating is going to end up spreading too if we don't pressure legislators to better alternative solutions. They might use middle-men websites to do the identity verification and so while it might not be Pornhub that gets hacked, it might be IdentaMidMan LLC they contracted who records my information and then gets hacked.
It's bullshit and these decrepit 70 year old legislators need to stop passing laws that force people to give up security of their personal and private information in order to participate in ordinary activities, which I'd qualify a porn website to be fairly ordinary. There's better technical ways to solve these problems.
not a slipperly slope when it's already happening:
https://www.newamerica.org/oti/blog/how-anti-lgbtq-web-filters-stand-between-lgbtq-youth-and-the-online-resources-they-need/
you think this will just stop at schools?
If no other reason whatsoever, I simply don't trust legislators to properly define and enforce what is "sexually explicit". And that's not even how they describe the bills. Like how are they defining:
In a way that won't completely overstep the spirit of the law?
I don't think this is necessarily a slippery slope argument. For me personally a policy like this is already located on a steep slide. I don't want the government to force anyone to store personally identifiable data about what porn I watch - which won't happen here, because PornHub correctly also sees this as wrong and decided to close off access entirely instead, but the law was already passed and it's likely that not everyone will do the same.
I also think that "slippery slope" is in many situations a completely reasonable argument. "Salami method" is basically a different name for a slippery slope and it's a common tactic for passing unpopular laws (or for geopolitical aggression and other things) that's not considered to be a logical fallacy because it's real. Especially with Trump in office and likely to try to declaw functional US institutions that would serve as a safeguard against more controversial policies, I would assume that people are going to be very cautious with regards to anything resembling a slippery slope.
I completely agree with you on this.
I view this as it being illegal to show pornographic content to someone under 18 years old. If a minor were to go to a store and attempt to buy a pornographic movie they'd be stopped and asked for their ID to verify their age. Just like if there were purchasing something else that is gated behind age verification, say alochol or marijuana (in states that have legalized that). Sure a minor may access a fake ID to attempt circumvent this and they may succeed, but the check is still in place.
I don't see why on the internet sites distributing pornographic content get a free pass to not verify that someone is of a legal age to view this content in accordance with federal law. A "scout's honor" verification button doesn't do anything. I don't buy that this is an undue burden on adults accessing free speech material. If they also have to provide ID (or by virtue of being looking sufficiently old enough which can subjective of course and cause lapses if you had a minor dedicated enough to try to dress up for it) in real life for viewing this content or in real life/online when buying alcohol it's no different accessing pornography online.
Minors shouldn't be viewing pornographic content. If you sincerely believe that they should have unfettered access to this, please write to your representatives, run for office yourself, campaign on changing the federal law. Ask yourself what the appropriate age should be. Unless you say it should be available with no age restrictions of any kind so that toddlers and newborns have access to it as well, there will need to be some cut off point in place, which will then necessitate a means to verify that someone is of the appropriate age.
While I would rather not have more big government overreach, I do feel like an effective solution for this would require a central governmental approach to regulating the processing/control of PII stored by a pornographic site. The haphazard method of individual states blocking this, which is their own perogative, is going to be annoying for everyone involved. With how much money sites like PornHub make they can afford to invest in their security to secure users data for whatever time frame is deemed appropriate.
I acknowledge that there's privacy concerns, but I also don't think leaving things as they are now with there essentially being no enforcement should stand. If the majority of the population thinks the law should change then it should be changed not ignored because it will sit there until someone decides to enforce it.
The scale of it is completely different. Giving my ID over to a person in real life exposes my information to that one person who has ephemeral access to the ID within my vision so I can see what they do and don't do with it aside from what happens in their brain and whether they attempt to memorize information on the ID. At least historically this was the predominant context in which this whole system began and was operated under. Modern surveillance and digitization and scanning of IDs does happen in person sometimes these days, and those may also prove to be breaking the dynamic under which IDs were originally designed for.
Giving my ID over the internet exposes my information to billions of people for eternity and they can do whatever they want with it and I have no clue who has seen it or what they might try to do with it.
This is just naive. Huge organizations with tons of resources get hacked all the time. Yes there are also some that have designed systems that so far have not necessarily been compromised completely, but as a matter of principle it is safer to assume it is only a matter of time, because of the nature of how security works. PornHub is not on the level of Apple or Google etc. with regards to what one would expect for security, and even those companies have had their lapses in some context or another.
Based on what? Evidence that overwhelmingly says it leads to disastrous outcomes? On your own sensibilities? I'm not advocating that minors should have access, but I would advocate that parents should have a greater role in that unless evidence overwhelmingly suggests that no parental guidance can overcome detrimental effects. Laws should be in place to help empower parents in technical ways that they may not be able to accomplish on their own because you can't expect everyone to be an expert with computing devices, but by doing this it mitigates the impact on adults who aren't parents while enabling adults who are parents to be able to better influence their child's development. In theory a 'free market' should provide solutions for this without regulation but we all know that we rarely ever have a 'free market' and sometimes regulations are necessary to compel businesses to develop standards that allow them to work together to create solutions that they couldn't otherwise make if they have to compete against each other.
On a tangent, it seems insane to me that the right is relinquishing their responsibility as parents in regards to things like controlling their children’s access to pornography and content they feel is objectionable while simultaneously using the concept of “parental rights” to increase their control over their children’s lives in regards to things like the content of their school libraries, the things they teach, and the robbing of the public school system in the form of “school choice”
It’s not everyone on the right of course, but I find the specific people doing this to be maniacal, dangerous, and even simply evil. They are attempting to destroy some of the best aspects of society when it would be more responsible for them to leave it.
Absolutely none of the other proposed age verification measures will do anything either, so I'm not sure what your point is
If it were just like the clerk checking your ID at the liquor store, it would be another one of the necessary lies of civilization. Those laws don’t stop teens from getting their booze & smokes, but it makes the voting public feel good to pretend.
However, such laws almost certainly have auditing and verification requirements which turn the measures into “papers, please” Statsi nonsense by requiring a paper trail to be made. The best way to prevent a data breach is to minimize the data collected.
I don't understand why governments consistently put the onus on the websites themselves to implement age verification; how hard can is be to enforce a centralised government OTP or passkey app? The same thing is happening with the social media ban in Australia, and instead of using their pre-existing government authentication apps, they're asking websites to implement the verification?? Why?
My issue is that I don't believe that anyone would reasonably trust Pornhub of all places to keep their sensitive personal details such as their drivers licence secure. Meanwhile, the government already has this information, so I trust them to have an app like myID and only provide the boolean value of whether my age is >18 or >16 or whatever relevant number to the service. Nothing more. Not my name, identity, driver's licence, only the simple fact that my age is indeed greater than the number required. If they could create that with an independently verifiable promise that they are not tracking what websites I am using, 95% of my concerns with laws like these would be alleviated.
In my opinion, that is the only way any of this could be reasonably implemented.
While I get the sentiment, I think I would trust PH's cybersecurity more than a state governments, given recent cybersecurity history. Any rando website? no way, but PH seems to have their security well done, and there have been a lot of state government breaches in the past 5 years.
I’m inclined to agree for the single instance of Pornhub, but given that the legislation seemingly applies to any websites with a certain percentage of material deemed "harmful to minors", it all seems unreasonably fractured.
That being said, US state governments (in contrast to governments like Australia) don’t seem to be the most competent either based on recent history, ig it’s a decision between the lesser of two evils ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ironically this website blocks access from the UK, EEA and EU so nobody in Europe can read the article.
This is a link to the same article but published on AOL.
Another irony is that I usually VPN to the UK to get around these silly blockades. USA, "land of the free" my ass.