2y ago

Porn sites must have government health warning in Texas from September 1st

www.techdirt.com

Texas Age Verification Bill Would Plaster Health Warnings On Porn Sites

Porn sites must have government health warning in Texas from September 1st::Just when we didn’t think the state of Texas could get any more wacko on tech policy, this latest bill really suggests otherwise. House Bill 1181 is an age verification measure that is similar to what we’ve seen in the state legislatures across other red U.S. states. You have an age verification proposal that is similar…

187 comments

The party of small government sure does a lot of mommying.
- I remember being VERY pissed about Obamacare requiring an individual having insurance by paying a for-profit company, else pay a penalty, because of the pro-corp "nanny state" implications, much like I despise legally-required auto insurance (without a government-funded baseline).
  Yet here we are with "muh indivdulizm" republicans making the overreach far worse than Democrats ever would have.
  
  Obamacare was invented by a Republican. It was done as a compromise because most Democrat legislators are right wing and don't want to see public healthcare enacted in the US.
  
  This. I was too young for Obamacare to be something I knew a single thing about but as a car owner and leftist auto insurance has always rubbed me wrong.
  It's just another means to keep people from being hireable by denying them jobs due to shitty public transit and the inability to legally drive their cars.
  
  The government funded baselines for insurance is the high risk pool, or just not driving.
- I know right!? The party of personal responsibility 🤮
- It’s not inconsistent. They want to watch you j/o and only a small government can fit in your bedroom.
- Can we stop associating power overreach with female authority figures, please?
  
  That's reasonable.
Pretty clear First Amendment compelled-speech case. The government may not compel a speaker to say a bunch of false things (the supposed "warnings" are lies; and arguably even defamatory ones) as a condition of being permitted to speak.
The 2018 NIFLA v. Becerra is the most recent Supreme Court case on compelled speech, and it does not look favorable to this sort of thing.
- I doubt that. Cigarette companies have to include warning labels as per the courts and there’s a mountain of evidence that porn can be harmful to people.
  
  Go look at what speech they're compelling. It's outright defamatory.
  
  Damn, people should stop having sex at all. Don't let people view media that shows examples of sex
How "small government" of them.
- We let the South off to easy and they been slowly poisoning America from within.
  
  We learned nothing from Reconstruction.
- Honest opinion: The republican party is flailing and trying to "accomplish" anything they possibly can regardless of the actual benefits to citizens.
- The Supreme Court is heavily in favor of "states rights" now, so state politicians know they can cater to special interest groups (for donations of course) with impunity. States are heavily gerrymandered, so they have little risk of losing their position. In some cases, such as book, education, voting, and immigration laws, the goal is to further ensure the states remain Republican in the future (prevent children from growing up "woke," and prevent immigrants from living there, which tend to vote Dem). Democracy in the U.S. is pretty broken, and is slowly being dismantled further.
- Banning porn has been on the Republican agenda since like the 40s.
- How does this help anyone? Have they got any actual problems to solve?!
- It used to be that pushing positions based on morality was taboo on both the left and the right. Then the social left started pushing things that it wanted purely because of morals and the much larger, much better organized religious right realized there'd be no significant political pushback for doing so with things they've wanted.
  In the past the religious right in the US had been kept in check by the fiscal conservative and neocon wings of the party. But after Trump, those wings no longer have the control they had before.
  
  Then the social left started pushing things that it wanted purely because of morals
  Example?
For retaliation, just block texas IPs. That shit will be fast tracked
- Nah pornhub etc just need to release the number of ip pings they get from texas government locations.
  They absolutely have this info
  
  Why not both?
- That's what PornHub does with IP addresses coming from Utah, Virginia, and Mississippi
Warning: Residency in the state of Texas may result in the inability to function as a decent human being.
- More like 1/3 of the ppl in Texas are actively trying to hurt the rest. Lumping everyone under one bucket helps the Republicans.
That's fine if we have a sign when entering Texas warning us of all the dangerous things there compared to where they were coming from
- I saw a billboard on the way to Texas that read, "Going west? Arm yourself."
  
  I hope it meant arm yourself with knowledge, because what this nation does not need more of is scared folks with firearms. We’ve enough of those as is.
  Sadly, I’m guessing not.
- Warning: the surgeon general has determined that this state contains government representatives whom are dangerous to your health.
What's an example of a health warning for looking at naked humans? Seriously someone explain what they mean because it doesn't make any sense.
- "Those movies are performed by trained professionals, do not attempt to replicate at home."
- Warning: Excessive rubbing can cause friction burns and it might fall off
  
  I have years worth of proof that shows your statement to be false.
  
  I don’t know why, but I started hhwackin’ it when I was about 3 years old.
  I didn’t have anything in mind really. I just remember it felt good and for some reason (probably something my mom said) I just thought of the word “nasty” and that’s what got me going. Like, the word was my OG porn.
  Well, I had this giant Clifford the Big Red Dog plush. It was huge. I was hiding behind it one day hwackin’ when my mom went looking for me to show her friend how cute I was. Well, her friend seen me hwackin’. She was embarrassed as hell. They wanted to put a stop to it, so my father decided he knew what would work.
  “Son, you keep playing with that thing and it’s gonna fall off and you’ll turn into a girl.”
  I thought, “Wait, girls don’t have a wee wee? Ohhhhhh!”
  So now I had an image in mind that worked me up. It was girls, naked, nothing down there, walking without bending their knees. Kind of like walking a pair of scissors. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.
  So while I’m ranting. My mom got a new house. My aunt and my twin cousins came down with us to look at the place. The one said “mommy, I gotta pee.” The other chimed in, she had to pee too. I had a theory about how girls peed, but I really really wanted to know. I turned to my little brother, “littleseal, this is our chance. We can see how girls pee.”
  So we snuck around the corner. My aunt was holding them up in the air, one hanging from one arm, one hanging from the other. We seen them from behind, and it appeared that the pee was coming from the butt. I grabbed my little brother by the shoulders. “LITTLESEAL! GIRLS PEE FROM THEIR BUTTS! I knew it!” We giggled about it for awhile. Like, way too long.
  Fast forward a few years and I was living in a new neighborhood. Me and the girl next door were playing fetch with her dog. I had to pee. She said, “Can I watch? I want to know how boys do it.” I said, “Sure. We do it with our wieners. We don’t have to sit down so we can pee anywhere. I’m glad I don’t pee out of my butt.” She said, “Who pees from their butt?” She was laughing at me like I was crazy. I said, “Girls do! I seen it.” “Well I don’t know what girl you seen, but I pee from my vagina, I poop from my butt.”
  She said, “come on. I’ll show you.”
  I was blown away. Later on it hit me. “Oh my god! It makes sense. That’s why I have a wiener. It’s for sex!”
  Sorry to go on. Your comment made me remember being afraid my wee wee would fall off and then took me down memory lane.
  Get off my lawn. See you next time.
- "Temporary blood pressure increases or decreases blood availability in the brain and other organs" should fit the bill
- The penises featured in this film are capable of doing a lot of destruction. Your ass has been warned.
- Porn is just not naked humans. It's not like art. And the behavior in those movies rubs off on teenage guys, so they start to behave like in the movies.
  I mean, I still think adding health warning is stupid, but at the same time, we can't pretend porn doesn't influence people.
  
  The behavior of the actors in porn does not "rub off on" (lol) on the viewer any more than violent movies rub off on the viewer.
  I'd be more concerned about the guys watching the assholes on YouTube making videos about how to be an "alpha male".
  
  Lol how exactly would you word this health warning? How utterly stupid
  
  the behavior in those movies rubs off on teenage guys, so they start to behave like in the movies.
  I haven't seen a teenage pizza delivery driver in ages! They also aren't going into marine biology to train octopuses!
  You obviously have no idea what you're talking about 😁
  
  You're absolutely right. It absolutely influences people and has a toxic effect on young men.
There is room to talk about the handful parts of porn, but this certainly isn't the way to do it. Porn doesn't increase anyone's desire for a prostitute or pedophilia. That's just insane. There could be evidence that it reduces one's self esteem, but we'd have to study that. This is just Texas furthering the nanny state and actively requiring lying to people. Again.
- Porn actually helped me further my skills in building automation. It gave me a target for learning to scrape websites. Of all the things I've built for myself, this was one of the most generous projects in that I had tons of room for refinement as my skills grew.
Texas is moving to protect against the Communist infiltration comming for our precious bodily fluids.
Could the Texas government also post a list of all the hazardous sites in one place so i know which sites to avoid?
Warning: masturbating may cause post nut clarity. Viewer discretion is advised.
"May cause erectile disfunction"
- Can you put the warning next to a photo of the governor of Texas?
  
  The false part of that statement is "may", it should read "will".
- buy our cure from big texas pharmacy ~~~~
- It's just like any other significant dopamine snowball; perhaps a friendly notice might be in place or some healthy advice in education. Have a healthy wank, but don't lose yourself in it.
  
  Dopamine snowball applies to lots of things like online shopping or following an exercise video. If Texas Republicans want big government regulations such as this, they need to follow through.
Theres a joke about Ted Cruz to be made here.
- 9/11, Never Forget.
The article is a couple months old. I’ve read a couple similar articles in the past, but more recent ones don’t seem to mention the warning. I’d have to look at HB 1181’s full text, but I suspect this language was removed before it passed.
Edit: nvm, Idk why I say shit before researching it. Looks like the language is in the bill as it was signed into law
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/pdf/HB01181F.pdf#navpanes=0
See middle of page 4
- Thanks for double checking!
One of the health warnings:
...[exposure to porn] “is associated with low self-esteem and body image eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses..."
Ummmm but what about BBW? In all seriousness though, for these 'valid' health concerns associated with low self esteem ...isn't this the slippery slope towards modesty policing of women and women only in some of those fun countries??
Warning: You're in Texas.
A health warning?
Warning: You'll shoot your eye out!
Just ignore it in the same way you do with California's everything gives you cancer warnings.
- CAs warnings are designed to force producers to make a version of their products that’s less likely to kill people available (and required in CA). That’s helpful to everyone.
  The intention of this sort of warning label isn’t to make porn better, it is to build toward banning porn entirely. California isn’t trying to ban industrial production, so of course people are going to respond differently.
  
  In response, I restate what I originally said. Ignore the message and watch porn. Not sure what you interpreted my comment to mean other than what I said.
- I have lived in california more than a decade. Still waiting on that cancer.
  
  Just give it another decade the air/water will take care of that.
  And Cali has some of the better environmental protections in the US.
It's always projection...so...
This pisses me off.
What if not? Block it? Just more DNS users.
- I mean the not default DNS
warning: beating off at least once daily may reduce your chance of prostate cancer
Pron is not what it used to be. Pron tubes are so full of crap these days that it indeed warrants some health warning. Those women are often exploited if nothing else.
- How are they exploited? As far as I'm aware, porn actors and actresses sign a contract like you would in any other job.
  
  Some models are exploited victims of sex trafficking. I have a feeling it's usually hard to tell if that's the case. I think that it's not that common, percentage-wise but it's gotta be nonzero. Very uncomfortable to think about but it's there...
  
  Exploited in the sense that the current state of the world gives them little other choice than to resort to pron. Like before there were slaves, then peasants, now there are job contracts, but the person most likely deserves to have some better work than that.

187 comments