Pornhub Sues Texas Over Age Verification Law

Rivers is a Vampire Bear Ghost, 2023

and then those same people who want it banned close their curtains and start watching it.

Like all these child protecting puritans who end up being pedophiles and sex traffickers lol
- They're predators who are paranoid someone's gonna take away "their" prey
Ban curtains!

Age verification for pornography has something like a 70% approval rating. It’s not a religious extremism issue, it’s a “normies don’t want or care about their freedoms issue”.

I think there's a lot of vague support for keeping porn away from children that evaporates in the context of the actual issue at hand where porn sites are being mandated to collect and store the IDs of every visitor.
The concept is not terrible, the implementation is. Passing this law with no secure way of proving identity is where it’s clearly just a Christo-fascist power move.
- I think a law verifying your age over the internet inherently breaks the idea of a free internet, of which we are already seeing degradation of by Google and DRM/web integrity anyways.
  
  I don't see how it doesn't violate free speech. Imagine needing the government's permission to talk to someone?
  Edit: forgot a word
  
  I agree. Even internet security protocols are at risk, and the dinosaurs responsible for writing laws don’t understand basic encryption let alone the idea that it is 100% a needed concept in a free, fair, and just society.
  
  There are already age limitations that are constitutional. You can’t run for office, buy alcohol, drive a car etc.
  
  That's not speech. You can age limit things, but not on speech. Beyond that, the limitations on speech have to meet certain conditions where it's in the publics best interest and doesn't put too much burden on the public.
  
  Restricting access to explicit material is the same as restricting alcohol or tobacco.
  
  Tobacco is not speech.
  Edit: plus one is an economic regulation .The other is not. Like, you can smoke tobacco at really any age. Just can buy it at any age.
  
  Possession is illegal in a majority of states
  https://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/rpt/2005-r-0269.htm
  
  You're still ignoring my first point which is the much more important distinction. It's not speech.
  
  I think a law verifying your age over the internet inherently breaks the idea of a free internet
  That was broken decades ago.
  
  today couldn't have happened if yesterday's degradation didn't occur. it's been slowly breaking for a while now.
- And fuck sending your driver's license to random shady porn sites
- I think there is a lot more to this that a secure way or protecting children.
  It's the base idea that I have to prove who I am online at all. That I cannot lie. Lieing should be a fundamental right. Not identifying yourself should be a fundamental right. Giving a false name should be a fundamental right.
  
  I get that too, but we wouldn’t want people buying alcohol or fire arms anonymously. Imo access to pornography should be like access to R-Rated movies or Parental Advisory music. Guidelines set either by the industries or government, but policed by parents.
  
  You don't want people buying alcohol anonymously? Im totally for it.
  You've hit the nail on the head while at the same time missing everything. Parents should be policing their children and what they do on computers. It's not like there is a spectrum between pg porn and x rated porn. The websites themselves are already the R rating.
  
  things like Ecchi and stripteases exist, but its too mild for PornHub. Soo... I'm not really making a point.
- The way the US is going, with anti-LGBT laws popping up all over the place, I have less trust for the government collecting that information than the sketchy porn sites themselves.
  
  You’re not wrong.
- The only implementation I would support is one where the asking website doesn't know your ID, and the verifying website doesn't know what you're trying to visit. Essentially just asking for a one-time use token that verified your age, and providing that token to the website you're trying to visit.
  Edit for a bit more detail: User authenticates to ID website, which provides them a token with age verification (true/false) and a short (10 minute?) TTL. This token is encrypted by the ID website. User then provides this token to the asking website (eg: pornhub). Pornhub then sends the token back to the ID website to decrypt it. All pornhub knows about you is whether or not you're of age, and the verifying website never knows what the token is for.
  
  There would be too much value in tracking that token for such a scheme to stay secure. Governments or shady corporations or illegal black markets or all of the above would be all over keeping tabs on what sites are visited by which tokens and matching them to identities.
  
  The whole point is that the token itself doesn't have any personal info attached to it, only a yes/no and expiry time.
  I'll even one up my original suggestion - it uses standard public/private key encryption, where the government issues a simple json token with a yes/no Boolean and a TTL. The public key that can decrypt the tokens is public. Pornhub then decrypts the token and verifies the boolean and expiry date, all without talking to the government at all.
  
  ISPs already have, and do sell that data.
  
  that's amazing, I would love to see this implemented, problem is nobody wants to set it up, they want the data. I think they enjoy the discomfort hoping people will stop. If the system was setup and used despite all the pressure, the short TTL may create the risk of traffic correlation attacks, especially for the smaller, less traffic sites. this is something that can likely be fixed.
- The concept is fine, but even the best known implementation is impossible without putting an unacceptable level of trust in one group.
  This should be parental controls - make websites declare a rating, then let the owners lock down devices
  Nothing is going to be absolute, but we have to prioritize freedom or soon our Internet will look like China's. They've already been talking about banning vpns and kosa would make you tie ID to anywhere you can post - all social media is considered possible adult content by default
  
  I like this idea. Have the W3C create a rating system that sites self-select, and then work with Microsoft, Apple, etc to adhere to those ratings in their parental-control systems. I also approve of Apple's idea of CSAM or explicit image scanning on devices where it blurs it out for minors. All of which can be controlled by parents, not governments.
- Both the concept and the implementation were approved almost unanimously, with overwhelming bipartisan support. Not sure why you’re having a hard time with this.
  
  That just means that almost every politician on both "sides" are pushing a Christo-fascist power move.
  The Democratic party is only better than the Republicans on this in relative terms. As a non-American looking in, both of them are right-wing parties that bow to religious interests. It's just that one of them is waaaay off to the right wing, out in the reeds of loonieville, whereas the other has kept at least within spitting distance of center most of the time.
  
  Not sure where stating that means there's any difficulty in understanding anything. That's such a naive perspective to take. No one is claiming a Texas state senator that is a Democrat is the same as a Democrat in a deep blue state. It's all relative and only fools or liars would claim otherwise.
  
  No, not “no one is claiming that”, because I am claiming that. Contrary to your apparent belief, large swathes of urban Texas are little different politically from a blue city anywhere else in the country. A state rep for Austin fought prescription drug companies and against putting the 10 Commandments in classrooms. Does that sound Christofascist to you? Because he voted for the bill. Close to 40% of the State legislature are Democrats and the majority of them approved this bill. Acting like a representative for Austin and a representative for rural Texas are both Christofascists because they come from the same state is actively counterproductive to gaining a better understanding of the situation. If you’re tilting at windmills and blaming imaginary enemies you’re going to miss the real forces that are driving these decisions.
  
  Even if they aren’t Christian, there is a stream rolling effect on “protect the kids” bills where going against it is going to get you thrown out of office. That’s the kind of political climate we are in unfortunately.
  
  Most democrats are Christian too. I’m not excluding them from blame here.
- It’s not Christi-fascist, both parties - if not the entirety of the US government want a Chinese type internet. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they don’t.
  The Patriotic act was never revoked was it? I mean that thing was written in advanced of 9/11 just keep that in mind. There are probably stacks of legislation that is prepared and just waiting to be pushed through on a moments notice.
  
  One side is actively banning books...
  This "both sides" bullshit needs to fucking stop.
  
  It doesn't need to stop, it needs to change. Before assuming it's doomerism or attempts to dissuade people from voting, learn the perspective. The example above was the Patriot Act, a bill written before 9/11 even occurred, passed (and continually passed extensions until 2019) with overwhelming support, and is a fundamental attack on privacy. Things like the Patriot Act don't come from just one side.
  
  This “both sides” bullshit needs to fucking stop.
  It is literally impossible for support to be nearing %70 without support from Blue voters.
  What needs to stop is this pretense that this crap is only being supported by Conservatives / Republicans.
  
  They don't. Christofascist do. Remember, the internet was literally invented in America.
  
  PATRIOT ACT did expire.
  
  Ah yes, I stand corrected. It was replaced with the FREEDOM ACT - yet another Orwellian sounding spy program that was modified slightly to ease American fears of bulk domestic spying.
  Like that really *stopped. *
"Are you over 18: Yes/No"
Think nobody is arguing against that. I'd rather not give 1000 different private companies my government ID who get hacked all the time. The same people passing these laws had nude magazines growing up too.
It's kinda tragic too. I do agree with the sentiment behind age verification, it is in the kids' best interest that they not be using porn at that age. But there's really no way to effectively enforce this without violating basic rights. There is no good solution. Given that dilemma, all we can do is try to better prepare parents to deal with this in their home.
- Is it really that bad if kids see a bit of porn? Like really? I grew up before the internet, but even in my day porn mags and VHS tapes got passed around when I was a teenager. Kids are always going to be curious.
  Even so on the internet there are much worse things than porn that are harmful for the development of children. There are various groups of questionable morality like incels, or other mysogynistic groups, alt right stuff like neonazis, christofascists, climate deniers, ... If I had children, I would be much more concerned about them falling into one of those ideological traps than them seeing some titties. Hell, even TikTok is probably more harmful for giving them a dopamine addiction and an increasingly short attention span.
  So to me, it seems a bit weird to single out porn. It feels like a convenient scapegoat for parents who don't want to spend time raising their kids and paying attention to what they are looking at on the internet.
  
  I don't have kids either, but my siblings and friends do, and kids today aren't just seeing a little porn. It's not like Playboys in the woods or a single 2 MB image downloaded for hours on dial-up. It's pretty violent sexual activities in video, like strangling or surprise anal sex. Even twenty years ago, my first sexual partners had moves they picked up from porn, but they weren't violent. Talking to young women today, the moves their partners are picking up and have been normalized by porn tend to be violent. Like, I never had a friend in college tell me that her boyfriend slapped her during sex and called her a dirty whore while she cried, but that seems to be a pretty common experience today.
  The issue is that even older teens don't have the life experience to contextualize what they see in porn and separate it from how you act in real life. If you're into slapping people, that's fine, but you've got to talk to your partner about it before you do to. If you're getting your sex education from porn, then you don't get the people skills part that's important for successful relationships in real life.
  This study touches on a lot of what I'm mentioning here, and they found a correlation between violence in teen relationships and porn viewing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751001/
  So, yeah. I don't know what the solution is. I don't think it's sending a copy of your ID to a porn site, which seems incredibly risky for other reasons. I think sex and relationship education would help a lot, but that only connects with the kids who listen. Obviously there's a parenting component there, but I don't know how many parents are mentally health enough to have those conversations honestly. 🙃 Probably not the ones who wrote this bill.
  
  I don't really know what the answer is either, but you're right. The extremes we see in porn today are very concerning. The things you listed shouldn't be in main stream porn and need consent and open conversation outside of sex before adults who understand what they are doing actually do them. I find it crazy that it's made its way into mainstream videos and blame the idea of things having to be ever crazier, ever more extreme to get attention.
  But blocking teenagers off from porn, or trying to, won't help anything. I think we need to be open, honest, and have real sex education. I also think these things are why some sex ed now includes actually how to have sex rather than the physical components. But that serves to give the prudish more ammo of how sex education is porn itself even when meant to be purely educational and combat these extremes people are seeing. There's so much nuance to the issue that I think a lot of people get bogged down on one part or on their own preconceptions.
  
  Talking to young women today, the moves their partners are picking up and have been normalized by porn tend to be violent.
  the other thing it does is gives people trauma.
- At what age? 6? Sure.
  16? 13? Less likely that it's "in their best interest", because they're now dealing with those physical and psychological changes that are very much in line with the content of porn.
  Just like TV, movies, video games, books, and other forms of fantasy / entertainment, parents need to be involved, have earnest communication with, and provide education for, their kids about the porn they will be consuming.
  But "porn is icky", so they won't.
- How is it in their best interest not to consume porn?
  I would have guessed that's where the religious oppression was targeted, whatwith being overly obsessed about peoples' sexualities.
  
  Indeed, it's often stated but seldom justified. Religion is far more dangerous than boobs on a screen, we need to protect kids from sexual abuse in church instead
  
  Watch HealthyGamerGG on YouTube, he's done a few videos on it. But, in short, depending on the person porn can have a lot of negative effects on the individual, including damaging one's ability to form and keep relationships.
  It is my opinion that we would all be better off without porn, but it is your right to continue using it if you like.
  The Republicans are absolutely going about this the wrong way. For the record, I've told my representatives in government to oppose bills like this. But that doesn't mean you and I can't understand where their sentiment is coming from.
  
  This sounds an awful lot like confirmation bias to me, so I went to Google Scholar for about 15 minutes.
  A quick scan of meta-studies seem to indicate that teenagers watching pornography mostly leads to them having slightly more sex, which is well known to be healthy.
  For certain vulnerable groups of individuals (poor social integration, weak familial bonds, high risk seeking, and high aggression) porn seems to exacerbate their traits a bit.
  There's also very tenuous results pointing to porn in pre-teens, as well as teens with low self esteem and poor social collection getting a skewed perception of sexuality. These are the only groups who have ever been shown to be affected negatively, and only in a single study each, without reproduction. And for the teens it reversed when they gained self esteem.
  Seems we should actually have better sex education for teens so they have the support to talk and explore sexuality in a healthy manner with their peers.
  
  A lot of the supposed "research" is religious propaganda. They've never given up their agenda to hold a monopoly over people's sex lives and are very angary that it's slipping away from them. We must resist
  
  That's if you watch porn and don't have education or proper parenting along side it. If porn is used as the educative tool for the child learning about relationships and sex, sure. It's a problem. But if it's just used like it's meant to be used, I don't think it's clear cut. It's only a problem if a kid is sheltered from learning proper sex education and gender.
- The simple "Are you over 18? Yes/No" prompt worked just fine. If a kid lies and presses yes, who fucking cares lol. They're not seeing it on accident at that point. We need to stop this puritan society, kids are going to explore this stuff. They always have and they always will.
70% approval rating but what's the base? If it only surveyed 10 people and 7 say yes, it is 70% but means nothing.
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1365965/us-adults-support-online-age-verification-by-gender/
Genuinely curious where you're getting these numbers. I can't seem to find any formal public opinion polls on the enacted or proposed bills
- There was a Politico article about this last week:
  https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/08/age-law-online-porn-00110148
  The public is also on her side. “You poll this, it’s like an 85-15 issue,” explained Jon Schweppe, the policy director for the socially conservative think tank American Principles Project. Age-verification for porn is not his think tank’s only priority, but when they poll it against other priorities in swing states, age-verification blows the rest out of the water, with 77 percent in support and 15 percent opposed.
  Here’s a Pew survey suggesting that the majority of Americans consider porn harmful:
  A large 70%-majority of Americans reject the idea that “nude pictures and X-rated videos on the internet provide harmless entertainment for those who enjoy it”; only 27% agree; in general, opinions about pornography have become slightly more conservative over the past 20 years. Currently 41% agree that “nude magazines and X-rated movies provide harmless entertainment for those who enjoy it,” while 53% disagree. The number saying such material is harmless has fluctuated, declining from 48% in 1987 to 41% in 1990 and then varying by no more than four percentage points thereafter. The pattern is more mixed for other values related to freedom of expression.
  Note that trends in this space are getting more conservative, rather than less. This tracks with my experience with Gen Z.
  Admittedly, I have not seen any polling about specific legislation. It hasn’t been long since these bills were passed, and I don’t know if it’s a priority for pollsters. But if nothing else, just look through the thread. Lemmy leans way further left that the general public, and even here most people’s problems with it are about execution rather than intent.
  
  A lot of Gen-Z, of Gen-Y and Millennials are re-adopting 1950's prudishness. That has the potential to really be horrible for a generation or two before the repression sparks another sexual revolution.
  
  We call them Puriteens for a reason.
  
  I think as mainstream porn has become more extreme more people are viewing it as harmful.
  
  The porn 20 years ago was way more extreme, no idea what you're even talking about there
  
  Edit: oh, something that really changes how these stats are viewed. The poll was conducted solely by phone.
  I do think it's worth noting that they specifically polled swing states. It's a bit different imo to address political stances in specifically swing states and to use that to judge the beliefs of society overall. I think it's also worth noting exactly how they phrased the questions. These answers also make me think that these aren't really swing states at all. I'm appalled by them.
  Women’s Sports: 56 percent supported (33 percent opposed) laws to protect women’s sports at the K-12 and collegiate levels.
  Sex Changes for Minors: 56 percent supported (31 percent opposed) laws banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and physical sex change surgeries for children.
  Sexual Topics in Schools: 60 percent supported (34 percent opposed) laws banning instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.
  Parental Notification: 59 percent supported (30 percent opposed) laws requiring schools to notify parents if their child identifies in class as transgender.
  Age Verification for Porn: 77 percent supported (15 percent opposed) laws requiring age verification for accessing online pornography. Reining in Big Tech: 50 percent supported (36 percent opposed) laws preventing censorship of political speech by Big Tech.
  https://americanprinciplesproject.org/media/new-app-poll-swing-state-voters-strongly-oppose-transgender-agenda/
  
  This is not an objective or unbiased pollster: the American Principles Project is a far-right stack of dark money with some window dressing.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Principles_Project
- I have a source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1365965/us-adults-support-online-age-verification-by-gender/
  68% of people either Strongly or Somewhat support verification mechanisms for online content.

The only porn left will be yiff, because sites struggle to classify it as porn (it even makes it past google's filters). And a new generation of furries will be born. Their ban will be their undoing, lmao.

"The elder scrolls told of their return. The defeat was merely a delay."

The less furry porn lore I know the better
- /c/brandnewsentence

Oh, don't forget kosa, it has bipartisan support

They want to hold sites responsible for children accessing NSFW content on them. Which means ID of some kind

It would also apply to user posted content

I doubt it could be actually banned. The US had this fight decades ago and Porn was given 1A protections. If they could ban it they would but they can't so they are doing the next best thing by making it inconvenient and uncomfortable for people to get to.

The problem though is that all those things we fought for before and being rolled back. You could have said the same about abortion, but then we regressed because of religious extremists.

Christian conservatives want it banned for sure.

Coomers crying fascism because kids can’t jerk off to sexually trafficked women.😐

If you think these bills will do anything to stop teens from accessing porn or women from being trafficked, I have a bridge to sell you. And if you think Republicans actually care about the health and well-being of vulnerable women, I have an even more luxurious bridge to sell you.
- you have TWO bridges?!?
  
  I mean, do you not?
  
  "Gee Bill!" etc.
Meanwhile Nick Fuentes wants a child bride...it's almost as if sad excuses for sacks of shit republicans want to control the sexuality of children...
https://twitter.com/brymicrab/status/1665115820140134402/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1665115820140134402¤tTweetUser=brymicrab
- I mean, that’s also bad?
When we started opening up about sexuality, sexual assaults tanked. It also tanked when we started teaching sex ed to kids
- There’s a difference between sex ed and having them jerk off to porn, much less encouraging them with unrealistic expectations on sex.
  
  That sounds like a parents job then... Like shouldn't the parents be the ones keeping up with what their kids access and look at on the internet to make sure they don't access that stuff then? Shouldn't they be, you know parenting them instead of letting the state parent everyone else for their failures?
  I thought as an American adult I could do whatever I wanted within my legal rights free from government over reach.
  Now I'm being told I have to give my personal ID to a non-government website (to eventually get hacked and leaked, hurray another vector of ID theft being opened up!)... Because other people can't properly take care of their kids or take 15 minutes out of their day to set up a network filter like my parents did? Or even, you know... Just talk plainly to their kid...like growing up I saw blood and guts and gore from films (fictional entertainment and educational ones played at school) but my parents took the time to explain the things I see and interacted with in the world
  This is gross government overreach and is entirely anthetical to American ideals. And as much as I hate the slippery slope argument, do you really trust the American government to not abuse the precedent being set here and expand on it?
  This whole thing feels gross. Imagine the government later on starts saying that you have to have mandatory ID and facial scans to access certain websites. Imagine they use that to track down individuals who made aggressive or hyperbolic comments such as expressing dislike for a political party or person. I can imagine so many scenarios where this just goes from bad to worse that I can't type fast enough. The potential for something like this to slowly or even rapidly become abusable is infinite since we already have countries enacting on these models that started out with these same or similar requirements before ramping up.
  Combine this with the stuff Google is trying to do and oh man, the future looks bleak for free internet and communication and the further enrichment of the elite and powerful... Road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that
Think you meant to sign up on lemmygrad.ml
- 🤮
LOL, you went with a strawman & personal attack because you know your actual argument is garbage.
- Oh the attack isn't personal. I did refer to all republicans , there's enough of my disgust to go around.
  Keep in mind that the republican party is the one that is courting Fuentes, and the meak attempts of republicans trying to curb pornography, sex ed, and LGBTQ content in public libraries is based off of a conservative Christian attempt to control and curb the dissemination of information related to sex and gender.
  I do find this whole discourse sad and pathetic since this kind of control over content and identity never ends up having any positive lasting effect. The children of conservative parents generally become fed up with their repressed out of touch parents and becoming liberals. Or they end up in a hate filled exclusionary community that only accepts them based off of some form of restriction of expression and personhood.
  To the majority of republicans, I will say that you've made your vision for the future plain. We all get that you want a future where generally white male strongmen determine the course of humanity. And to that I say fuck off.
- It’s incredibly hard to change an Intelligent mans mind. It’s impossible to change an stupid mans mind.
  
  Did you just come from reddit with that lame cliché
  
  The entire user base of Lenny came from Reddit, so what?